I remember the news the day the tower caught fire and by reading this I feel I have a wider view of what happened before and after the towers caught fire. This gives more of an impact of the fires on the fire service and the information that the press did not divulge,

I was so grateful to Pen & Sword publishers for granting my wish and sending me the ARC of The Grenfell Tower Fire: A Firefighter’s View by Tony Sullivan. I was absolutely fascinated by Tony’s career with the London Fire Brigade from how different and difficult the recruitment process was in the 80s, to his personal experiences at many well-known disasters including The Marchioness, and The King’s Cross Fire. I loved his anecdotal style of writing when it came to his career, and found myself emotionally engaged and thoroughly absorbed. If Tony ever writes his memoir I would rush to read it.

With reference to this book I clearly incorrectly assumed that Tony was giving a first person account of being actively involved in the firefighting and rescue at The Grenfell Tower. This is my mistake and as such I did not find this part of the book as engaging as his personal story.

I hope you find my honest review fair and acceptable, and I thank you again for this opportunity.

I found this to be a genuinely eye-opening account of the Grenfell Tower fire. At first, I wondered if the author had been responsible for any other works of non-fiction when in the beginning he stated, “it was difficult to decide where to begin this sorry tale; perhaps with the development of aluminum composite panels” (1). To be honest this didn’t bode well for me as a reader because, honestly, who wants to read about that? And I often times felt the author could’ve started by bringing us headfirst into the fire to lure the reader in and then go back to the beginning as some non-fiction narratives do.

As I continued reading, I felt the story begin read in the same vein as the triangle factory fire, however this story did feel like a first draft of that story. This story did start to gain traction in certain areas, for example when the author discussed the blatant disregard of fire regulations within the Grenfell building: the use of fire-spreading materials and insufficient cladding to prevent the fire from spreading, and as we discover later, the fire doors and firefighting lifts not working as intended and failing to sustain the fire to the degree that regulations mandated.

Overall, I did feel this read and was outlined a bit more like a research report than an engrossing piece of non-fiction. The author clearly did their research, but the best non fiction I’ve read has come off more personal and engrossing. In terms of the fire, the author did a great job of explaining fire terms in layman’s terms, describing the aftermath, and the aftermath of the aftermath, and there were moments when I found this story genuinely interesting and the injustice eye-opening and infuriating.

The author is all over the place and it makes it very difficult to follow.

Tragic absolutely, but I feel as though this needed a lot of continuity