Book review: London Bridge in America, by Ian Sansom
With his fourth book, Travis Elborough might be said to have perfected his impressive trifling technique: to salvage objects, places and ideas that have been overlooked and write about them in rich prose.
by Travis Elborough
Jonathan Cape
London Bridge tells three stories: that of the building of the bridge in the 19th century; the story of its sale to a wealthy oil baron in the 1960s; and the long story of 20th-century British decline and American ascendancy. But there is much else here, including a debunking of the myth of Arthur Furguson, the conman who has long been reputed to have sold Nelson's Column, Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square to greedy Americans.
Furguson turns out to be an imaginary figure representing Old World/New World anxieties and antipathies. At no point, Elborough makes clear, were the US buyers of the dull, granite-arched London Bridge under the impression they had bought the much more impressive Tower Bridge. This is just a Furguson-style fantasy.