Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen

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The morning after the Grenfell Tower disaster, Jon Snow arrived at the offices of Channel 4 News, the programme he had been hosting since 1989. Initially, he and his colleagues did not have much sense of the significance of a story that was just starting to become clear. But after he arrived at the scene having impulsively cycled across London, he realised that he was about to front his channel’s coverage not just of an unimaginable tragedy, but of glaring truths about the modern United Kingdom. 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.' - David Peace, author of the Red Riding Quartet Regulation codes, refurbishment cost savings, the total sum of buildings wrapped in flammable cladding. Over the course of a four-year inquiry, now finally in its closing stages, survivors and the bereaved have learned a new language of figures and acronyms relating to 30 years of neglect: three decades of political and corporate choices that took more London lives in any single event since the Blitz. In Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen, by the housing journalist Peter Apps, one number stands out early on: “seven minutes”. This is the time it would have taken, according to an expert witness at the inquiry, for all 293 residents of the tower to open their front doors, walk down the stairs and escape. If the London Fire Brigade had instructed them to do so within an hour of the fire starting at 12.54am – from a fridge-freezer on the fourth floor – they would have survived.

Every dish tells a story of history, culture and family, and each has been developed to use few ingredients and easy methods so that anyone can cook these personal recipes. The received wisdom, on which decades’ worth of increasingly threadbare regulation and oversight relied, was that flat fires didn’t spread to other flats, and so high-rise residents were always instructed to “stay put” in the event of an emergency. The introduction of combustible insulation and cladding in flat regeneration programmes made that advice lethal.After being displaced following the Grenfell tower fire, some of the local women needed a place to cook fresh food for their families. They began to use the kitchen at the Al-Manaar Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre, where the women who worked there had been using the facilities to cook for the community. They all shared the kitchen for two days every week, preparing food and eating together. Word spread and more local women began to join in, embracing community and supporting their neighbours in their time of need. At the October planning committee meeting, Sarah Parkinson from developer Vistry Partnerships told councillors: “Fire safety considerations have been front and centre of our approach to design […] Vistry has gone over and above fire safety regulations.” Gary Younge won the journalism prize for pieces including Lest We Remember: How Britain its History of Slavery for the Guardian as part of its Cotton Capital series. Over the chatter and aromas of the kitchen they discovered the power of cooking and eating together to create connections, restore hope and normality, and provide a sense of home. This was the start of the Hubb Community Kitchen.

Single staircases in tall buildings remain permitted under building regulations in England and the council is not breaching fire safety rules by approving them. However, it is an aspect of fire safety regulations that has received criticism from industry experts following Grenfell.Show Me the Bodies is a clear, moving and powerful account of Britain's worst fire since the second world war, written by someone who knows what he's talking about... 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 All profits from the sales of this book will help the Hubb Community Kitchen to strengthen lives and communities through cooking. The inquiry took evidence over four and a half years, and its final hearings were in November 2022. In September, two towers of 24 and 30 storeys were approved with single staircases at Meridian Water. In October another four towers, up to 16 storeys, were also given the go-ahead despite having only single staircases. Joining Tonkin on the fiction judging panel were New Scientist comment and culture editor Alison Flood, UCL professor of English Julia Jordan and New Statesman contributing editor Tomiwa Owolade.

A jaw-dropping account of a callous system that swept individual conscience aside in favour of profit and politics. It is hard to convey how moving and enraging the book is - I urge you to read it for yourself. Because one thing almost all of us have been guilty of since the worst disaster in the UK this century is complacency.' - Evening Standard Matt Burn, from Better Homes Enfield, said: “Anyone who reads Peter Apps’ book will understand why tall buildings should have more than one staircase. Never before, in years of reviewing books about buildings, has one brought me to tears. This one did, with the story of a Grenfell resident struggling to escape with his young daughters and heavily pregnant wife. Those who justified the deregulating policies that led to this misery sometimes spoke of the interests of “UK plc”. But, even if you put basic humanity aside, how is it good business to create the situation we now have, where billions have to be spent correcting mistakes that should never have been made?The oversights are occasionally maddening, but Snow is usually redeemed by the self-awareness that underpins most of what he says. The essence of his talents as a news anchor came down not just to his unquenchable interest in his fellow humans, but an urbane, unrufflable disposition traceable to an early life spent among “giant doors, vaulted ceilings and esoteric codes of conduct”. In the future he seems to want, voices like his would recede, leaving the news to be delivered by people closer to their audiences. At that point, perhaps, the “us” in his title might at last mean what it ought to.