Show Me the Bodies: WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING 2023

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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.

The London 🔥Brigade shouldn't escape without censure, as their archaic structure that never really allowed adequate training for senior staff / call centres, proved to be decisive in the disaster, as dropping the normal "stay put" guidance and instructing people to leave their homes earlier would at worst have saved many more lives, and may even have allowed all residents to have made it out had this been enacted earlier. 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.’ With moving personal stories from victims and their families, accounts from fire fighters, control room operators and extracts from the inquiry transcript, Peter Apps tells the full story of Grenfell.The fire climbed up cladding as flammable as solid petrol. Fire doors failed to self-close. No alarm rang out to warn sleeping residents. As smoke seeped into their homes, all were told to ‘stay put’. Many did—and they died. Perhaps the most powerful takeaway is the critical importance of what we do to the lives of people who will use our buildings. It would be impossible to read the accounts of the night of the fire without reflecting on what and who we consider when we design. Mæ’s John Morden Centre wins RIBA Stirling Prize 2023 Mæ’s John Morden Centre wins RIBA Stirling Prize 2023

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? A strange hubris animates the way in which Britain conducts itself in this area: British buildings are sturdy, almost axiomatically so, and so our strategy is sound. This compartmentation strategy might have worked in the past. It no longer does. It is the best account of the Grenfell disaster and one of the most important books about British politics to come out in recent years… Apps’s book is a masterclass in reporting; across a wide span of highly technical detail, it never loses sight of the human story… Show Me the Bodies is a haunting indictment of contemporary Britain and all the people who claimed they could not see the harms caused by austerity, and a moving testament to those who paid the price.' 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?Utterly heartbreaking... I’d urge you to read this book. It will make you sad, furious, ashamed and disgusted by the industry we work in and determined to change it for the better.’ Grenfell was not an accident, but a foretold and carefully planned tragedy, built up for decades. It was prepared through a series of decisions and political or economic games, aiming to maximize profit, thus setting the value of human life below the importance of financial interest. Peter Apps provides a multilateral understanding of the events leading up to the Grenfell disaster, through the revelation of the multitude of factors that led up to it. This important book… makes a damning condemnation of profit-hungry business and neo-liberal politicians of both big parties… [This] book will aid the fight for a better alternative.’