It is very beautiful, very clever, and very funny. (“Like many auto-didacts, Robinson is prone to misconceptions about his subject, but since there is no-one at the University to oversee him, his position is relatively secure.”) Repeated viewings reward, not least because of the subtlety of Scolfield’s unreliable narration – what is the narrator’s attitude to his Robinson really?

I was surprised to see there was a sequel – since my original reading of the way LONDON ended was that Robinson had died. LONDON is by far the warmer film of the two, though ROBINSON IN SPACE is another great pleasure. The liner notes in the BFI DVD pack are nice too.

Comparisons with Sebald are very valid. I saw Sebald read in Dublin in ‘99 and wanted to ask him if he had seen LONDON, but didn’t pluck up the courage in the end.

What I find fascinating about London, looking at it now, is how much of a period piece it seems compared with when I first watched it. It was shot 15 years ago, I suppose, but with its boxy cars and IRA bombs and Conservative election victories it seems like another world.

Keiller stares at London with autistic steadiness. It discomforts us, we are not used to it. He freezes still lifes, arrangements of municipal flowers, swirls of brown riverwater. When some gatepost or doorway takes his fancy he gazes at it with the abstracted longing of an out-patient at a discontinued bus stop. Sinclair, Lights Out, p310.