London Voices, London Lives - Peter Hall

It's not every day I read a book based on a qualitative research project, but my interest in London and my uncle being a professor of social policy combined to make this one of my more unlikely Christmas presents last year.

Essentially a series of interviews with Londoners about their lives, this contains some pretty obvious conclusions (London transport is unreliable) as well as some fascinating insights, particularly into racism and immigration.

As a book it's way too long and the linking prose tends towards the leaden, but the excerpts of Londoner's own voices are wonderful. Their words are scrupulously reproduced with hesitations, elisions and non sequiturs intact, and they may prove as interesting to linguists as to sociologists in the future.