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

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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.COINCIDING with last week’s closing of the 300-day inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire comes the publication of a damning and moving account of the events leading up to the entirely preventable disaster that claimed 72 lives, 17 of them children. 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. 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. 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. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month.

Peter Apps has written a searing indictment of what he rightly calls "the most serious crime committed on British soil this century" in this forensic account of the deregulation, cost-cutting and sheer negligence behind the Grenfell fire and its human cost. It’s essential reading if we are to avoid such needless tragedy in the future.' 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.’ 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.' Show Me the Bodies takes its title from the response, reported by a number of witnesses at the inquiry, given by civil servant Brian Martin when asked about dangerously permissive regulations on cladding and fire safety: he would believe the dangers when he was shown the bodies. It was the flammable cladding that most contributed to the fire’s deadly nature, and it is the cladding and the way in which it undermined the fire safety of the whole building that receives the most attention in the book. It would be easy to let the apparently dry nature of the topic (building materials regulation) undercut the outrage of what happened. Apps’s clear writing, however, ensures sight is never lost of how ideology, arrogance, and contempt came together to cause the fire. We Had Already Seen the Bodies 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.

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.