You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. Peter Apps’ book about the Grenfell Tower fire and the subsequent inquiry is an essential work of journalistic scrutiny. The author is deputy editor at Inside Housing and has covered the story meticulously over the past five and a half years. His account is extraordinarily difficult to read, not because his writing isn’t clear and direct throughout – it is – but because Show Me the Bodies is a document not of a tragedy, but of an atrocity.

For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. In an official culture of cost-cutting and eliminating as much red tape as possible, this sort of attitude was par for the course, and meant that the use of ACM cladding, which contained petroleum-derived plastic, went ahead in the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower. For the last few years, Peter Apps has been writing the most important reportage on the most important disaster in this country since Hillsborough. Here, he makes clear how this atrocity was easily preventable. Show Me the Bodies also reveals just how little those responsible, from the construction industry to the government, have learned. Whatever the courts eventually decide, this book deserves to be widely read so that the rest of us can finally hold them to account.' This book expresses reprobation of the careless mentality and societal inequity haunting Grenfell's legacy. It is ruthlessly realistic, and aims to channel the spherical comprehension of the tragedy toward the need of a more philosophized future policy regarding fire safety, material choices and evacuation plans. I’ve never read a book which has had me so angry at our system and so heartbroken for those involved.Apps alternates his narrative between the escalating events of the fire on 14 June 2017, and the decades of deregulation, isolated decisions and blantant neglect which cumulatively created to a tinder box scenario. British fire safety strategies have their roots in the Great Fire of London, where fire spread between wooden buildings. The idea that arose from it was “compartmentation” — building from strong materials and partitioning dwellings from one another, with the aim of ensuring fires do not spread. Coming from these ideas is the principle of “stay in place”; if your building is on fire, you should stay put and wait for fire services rather than attempt to exit yourself, because the fire will not spread. The Grenfell inquiry chair termed this strategy “an article of faith [for firefighters] so powerful that to depart from it was to all intents and purposes unthinkable.” This is what residents of Grenfell were told when they called emergency services that night: stay in place. No fire alarm rang out across the building, because like all UK high rises, it had no central fire alarm. Almost exactly two years ago, just after the cross examinations with the insulation companies, I wrote about how the Inquiry had revealed a construction industry devoid of morality or ethics. I wrote optimistically about how architects might form part of a solution: custodians of a new set of values that can run through every stage of a project. A meticulous study of the Grenfell disaster and subsequent inquiry… a powerful reminder that management is not just about managing resources but managing people’s lives.’

It’s difficult to imagine a more informed or passionate summary than this book provides and I encourage everyone to read it. Then, if you teach, add it your students’ reading list, if you work in an office, lend it to your colleagues. From Knowsley Heights (1991), Lakanal House (July 2009), and multiple fires in Dubai there were warning signs way before June 14, 2017. Show Me the Bodies is littered with accounts of incidents like these. Why did fire doors fail? Why was there no plan to evacuate disabled residents? Why did the building’s smoke control system malfunction? For every one, Apps provides a clear explanation. The explanation is always, in the end, that the people in charge were not interested in the input, and consequently in the lives, of the residents of the tower. They were only interested in costs. Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial?Never before, in years of reviewing books about buildings, has one brought me to tears. This one did.’ Rowan Moore, Observer Book of the Week This book will make you cry, and it will also make you very angry. This is the story of the people who escaped and of those who died, but also, why this happened, why it didn't have to and shouldn't have, how campaigners were ignored and how the government really does value business and profit over the lives of the poor, the working classes and the disadvantaged. Show Me the Bodies is a staggering achievement, both a testament to the victims, the bereaved and the community of Grenfell and a painstaking, forensic investigation into the causes of the crime itself. Yet it is also an unflinching portrait of UKplc: a divided, deregulated, privatized and neglected kingdom where profit for the few always triumphs over the health, safety and lives of the many, where the victims are always left voiceless, and where the dead never find justice or peace. And where, most damningly of all, we still choose not to act and so still let crimes such as Grenfell happen, over and over, again and again. In short, this is the most harrowing, moving, powerful and important book of the year, and one which every citizen should read. And remember. And learn from and then act upon.'

It was impossible to choose between the harrowing quotes from this book, but here is one, that bought angry tears to my eyes: Apps’s book is a master class in reporting; across a wide span of highly technical detail, it never loses sight of the human story. This concentration on the personal lives and experiences of the residents serves as a rebuke to the logic that brought about the disaster. It says, real value is personal, relational, reflected in care, not profits. Despite the council’s frequent neglect of its tenants, Grenfell was a place where people lived happy lives. As Daffarn told the inquiry, “I dearly miss our community.” Show Me the Bodies, with its quiet narrator and rigorous approach, is a polemic that never needs to be polemical. Its narrative is instead propelled by the lives of the individuals and families that it documents, and to whom it gives dignity. It's hard to read Peter Apps book and not think that Grenfell falls into this category. It's a book that will want to make you want to scream with frustration and weep for the lives cut short and for the grief of those who survived. It also acts as a call to arms to make sure this never happens again, revealing the mistakes we continue to make despite the fire and the efforts by so ecto deflect blame.I read this book on recommendation from a relative, and I am glad I did. It took me longer to read than my average reading pace because some parts were incredibly emotional and heavy to get through.