Grenfell didn’t have to happen.

***WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING 2023***

'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

On 14 June 2017, a 24-storey block of flats went up in flames.

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.

It was a tragedy decades in the making.

Peter Apps meticulously exposes how a steady stream of deregulation, corporate greed and institutional indifference caused a tragedy. 72 people did not need to die, as the Grenfell Tower Inquiry makes clear. Here is the story of a grieving community forsaken by our government, a community still waiting for justice.