Finished this last night - excellent little read about the highs and (mainly) lows of south London's most maligned (not least by me) town (it has applied for city status countless times and always been ignominiously rejected). It's so often been a pioneer but somehow fallen by the wayside.
Croydon Aerodrome was once the place to catch your flight from, the first airport in the country - that is until Heathrow relegated it to obscure history.
And then there was the wanton destruction. First by a megalomaniac councillor who oversaw the bulldozing of swathes of historic buildings that didn't fit in with the new fashion for high-rise and concrete.
And second, the looting, pillaging rioters in 2011 who caused terrible damage including setting alight a 150-year-old family-run furniture store and burnt it to the ground.
