Who They Was – signed, lined & dated

Longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize

A literary rendering of the Top Boy generation I cannot conjure another work which captures this culture in such depth or with such brutal honesty as only lived experience can tell Graeme Armstrong, author of The Young Team

An astonishingly powerful book Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of The Last Act of Love

This life is like being in an ocean. Some people keep swimming towards the bottom. Some people touch the bottom with one foot, or even both, and then push themselves off it to get back up to the top, where you can breathe. Others get to the bottom and decide they want to stay there. I dont want to get to the bottom because Im already drowning.

This is a story of a London you wont find in any guidebooks.

This is a story about what its like to exist in the moment, about boys too eager to become men, growing up in the hidden war zones of big cities and the girls trying to make it their own way.

This is a story of reputations made and lost, of violence and vengeance and never counting the cost.

This is a story of concrete towers and blank eyed windows, of endless nights in police stations and prison cells, of brotherhood and betrayal.

This is about the boredom, the rush, the despair, the fear and the hope.

This is about whats left behind.