Our favourite London fiction
Our favourite London fiction
19 May 2020 Comments Off on Our favourite London fictionLockdown means that our Footprints of London guides are doing even more reading than usual, and we are all avid readers. So we asked some of our guides to recommend some of the works of fiction set in London they have enjoyed (and books for which London, or a part of London, as a location is an integral part of the narrative).
We hope you enjoy our selection, whatever kind of fiction you enjoy you should find a few good ideas here for your own lockdown reading.
London Belongs To Me by Norman Collins
This modern classic spans two years from the Christmas of 1938 to that of 1940. It tells the stories of the lives of ordinary Londoners, most of whom are residents of Mrs Vizzard’s boarding house at 10 Dulcimer Street, a fictional address in Kennington. The large and small dramas of their everyday lives play out against the backdrop of impending and actual war.
Collins narrates the thoughts and motivations of his characters entertainingly, never more so than when explaining how car mechanic Percy Boon got into scrapes which led to charges of car theft and murder, and a fateful appearance at the Old Bailey. Or when Connie, an ageing night club cloakroom attendant, rationalises her own eavesdropping and petty pilfering. Vivid characters and dark comedy abound. The obese nightwatchman, Mr. Puddy, plans his unappetising meals with great care, and becomes an unlikely hero while trying to retrieve his newly purchased ham during an air raid. The indolent Mr. Squales, a medium at seances, preys on wealthy widows by conveying ‘messages’ from their late husbands. The widowed landlady, Mrs. Vizzard, needs to watch out! Holding the narrative thread together is the meek yet decent, stoical clerk, Mr. Josser, whose snobbish wife regrets her son’s marriage to a mere usherette, and a blonde at that! Collins wittily exposes the petty class prejudices and shabby lower middle class gentility of many of his characters.
Above all, London pervades the book’s 734 pages. A London of smog, long bus journeys, genteel poverty and petit bourgeois respectability, but also of petty criminality, late night drinking clubs and fashionable seances. A London of Luftwaffe raids, evacuations and off-duty servicemen seeking a good time in Soho, but of quiet determination and heroism too.
Noonday by Pat Barker
Pat Barker is best known for her ‘Regeneration’ trilogy set in the First World War. But she also wrote a trilogy based around students at the Slade Art School in Gower Street. This follows Paul, Kit and Elinor as artists in 1914 to their encounters during World War Two. When I began developing a literary walk on Bloomsbury in the Blitz I used ‘Noonday’, the last book in the trilogy, to bring to life some of the themes of women and wartime; Blitz affairs; the role of fate; and the fear but also exhilaration of destruction. Last year the walk featured in the Bloomsbury Festival. Hopefully you can enjoy it soon.
Barker based aspects of her characters on real people. An example is Graham Greene, who was an air raid warden in the basement of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). In his memoir, ‘Ways of Escape’’, Greene describes the night of 16/17 April 1941 where Malet Street and surrounding areas faced destruction.
Barker’s Paul is also an air raid warden at LSHTM and as the Bloomsbury flat he shares with Elinor is torn apart by a bomb, he expresses some of the joy described by Greene when his Clapham house was hit. The loss of a former existence can be liberating.
‘Noonday’ has some terrific descriptions of London life under the threat of extinction from the air. As an ambulance driver, Elinor encounters dray horses with their manes on fire. Paul searches the ruined Docklands for a missing boy. Kit is threatened by a collapsing wall. The Blitz brought new intensity to life and loves – if you survived!
The Clerkenwell Tales by Peter Ackroyd
In ‘The Clerkenwell Tales’, Peter Ackroyd takes us back to 1399 to tell the story of the religious and political intrigues surrounding the plot to depose Richard II through characters taken from Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’. Ackroyd vividly recaptures the sights and sounds of medieval Clerkenwell and includes locations with which we can identify today – always good for a tour guide!
The novel centres around the prophesies of the mad nun of Clerkenwell, Sister Clarice, who was the offspring of an illicit liaison between a nun from the Nunnery of St Mary and a priest from the Priory of St. John of Jerusalem. She had been born in the underground tunnels which ran under Clerkenwell Green, linking these two religious institutions. The Nunnery church stood on the site occupied by St James’s Church today and some remnants of its walls can still be found in the churchyard. Nearby, on the other side of Clerkenwell Road, is St. John’s Gate, formerly the entrance to the inner precinct of the Priory.
But what of the tunnels? In 1986, during refurbishment works at the Marx Memorial Library, tunnels were discovered beneath. Their origins were obscure but they pre-date the building significantly, and there were suggestions that they may have been connected with the nunnery.
Just below the nunnery, towards the bank of the Fleet River, was the Clerk’s Well, the site of annual mystery plays performed by the Guild of Parish Clerks in medieval times. It was this well, of course, that gave Clerkenwell its name and it can still be seen today.
Blood and Sugar by Laura Shepherd-Robinson
Many great murder mystery novels open with the grisly discovery of a body, which in turn unveils a conspiracy, and so it is with Shepherd-Robinson’s thrilling ‘Blood and Sugar’.
The year is 1781, the location Deptford’s commercial dockyard, and the badly mutilated body hung from a makeshift riverside gibbet is that of missing Barrister and abolitionist, Tad Archer. His killing is clearly a warning. Our hero is his oldest friend, Captain Henry Corsham, a celebrated hero of the ongoing American War who must now delve into the murky world of the slave trade in an unfamiliar Deptford. In order to unmask both his friend’s killers and the horrors of the Middle Passage, he must also investigate the equally murky records of the slave owners and cargoes at the shipping offices in Whitehall.
This highly accomplished first novel beautifully recreates the sounds, smells, and characters of a Deptford that was an important centre for both military and commercial shipping.
My personal interest stems from living in a modern building erected on the exact seedy riverside district where much of the action takes place. And there are some of the Georgian locations from the novel still to be seen: the churches of St. Nicholas and St Paul, smart captain’s houses on Albury St. from the 1720s and even older worker’s cottages at Tanners Hill. Perhaps most evocative is the three hundred year old Master Shipwright’s House on Watergate, privately owned but open to the public in September for London Open House Weekend.
Pilgrimage by Dorothy Richardson
“…It was all she wanted. That was why she was young and glad; that was why fatigue had gone out of her life. There was nothing in the world that could come nearer to her than the curious half twilight half moonlight effect of lamplit Endsleigh Gardens opening out of Gower Place;”
London is central to Dorothy Richardson’s ‘Pilgrimage’ sequence of 13 loosely autobiographical novels or chapters following the life of Miriam Henderson. Miriam comes to Tansley Street (Endsleigh Street) in the 1890s. She’s 21, newly independent and living on £1 a week as secretary to a West End dentist. We follow her exploration of a city as a ‘new woman’. Miriam (like Richardson) smokes in public, walks alone at night, rides a bicycle, and attends lectures and meetings.
Meeting leading writers and intellectuals, Miriam has an affair with Hypo G Wilson (as Richardson did with H.G. Wells). She moves to Flaxman’s Court “… a scrap of old London standing apart…”. This is Woburn Walk where there is now a plaque to Dorothy Richardson, opposite one to W.B. Yeats.
Walks are central. In ‘The Tunnel’ over 40 pages are given to an evening walk from Wimpole Street via Bond Street, Piccadilly and Shaftesbury Avenue to her home in Bloomsbury with its creaking window frames and the sounds of St Pancras’ bells.
Everything is seen through Miriam’s eyes. Richardson writes about what Virginia Woolf described as the “psychological sentence of the feminine gender”.
Lockdown may now provide time to (re)read some or all 13 novel/chapters of ‘Pilgrimage’. At a time when we cannot physically explore London it also gives us the chance to enjoy some brilliantly evocative descriptions of Edwardian London through Miriam’s/Dorothy’s eyes.
Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovitch
This seventh novel in Aaronovitch’s ‘Rivers of London’ series is a wondrous mix of urban fantasy, police procedural, travelogue and history. In the series Peter Grant (detective and apprentice wizard) works for the SAU (Special Assessment Unit of the Metropolitan Police) to solve magical crimes across London.
In ‘Lies Sleeping’ our hero is in the Square Mile liaising with the City Police. His investigations take him to the Museum of London, St Paul’s Cathedral, the Temple of Mithras, and back in time to Roman Londinium. Along the way we also take time out to enjoy Peter’s interaction with friends, enemies and family.
The love of books is subjective and for me ‘Lies Sleeping’ ticks all the boxes as a hymn to the streets, the architecture and the history of the City I love. I also need to care about the characters. I would love to hang out with Peter Grant and his girlfriend Beverly (goddess of a minor river in south west London), DS Sara Guleed and her Ninja boyfriend, and to have tea at the Folly (SAU HQ)
I had to pick one book but it is part of a series, so as a Lockdown gift I offer up all the ‘Rivers of London’ books for your enjoyment. They are also available on Audible for good company on those Lockdown walks and runs.
As a City Guide with a lot of time on my hands currently, it should come as no surprise that I am working on a walk based on this book.
Dodger by Terry Pratchett
The late and very much-lamented Sir Terry Pratchett is known mostly for his wonderful books about the Discworld but of the fifty or so works he wrote, two are set in London. One was his collaboration with Neil Gaiman in ‘Good Omens’ (shown as a TV mini-series last year) and this is the other, a glorious romp through the underworld of Victorian London featuring caricatures of Dickens, Disraeli, Peel, Angela Burdett-Coutts and even Queen Victoria among others. The hero, Dodger, is a ‘tosher’ who makes a living by finding lost coins and valuables in London’s sewers. He is a charming rogue who rescues a princess, foils Sweeney Todd and does other things it would spoil the book to reveal. Great literature this is not and it is written in the breathless style of Pratchett’s tragic last years when he was dictating not writing, but some serious research went into the background including reading the true descriptions of the Victorian underclass in Henry Mayhew’s ‘London Labour and the London Poor’ (1851). This lends a coherent, semi-realistic, if rose-tinted background to a lively story.
Pratchett is careful not to be too specific about many locations (as guides know, it takes a lot of work to find out what stood on a particular spot and this is not meant to be a realistic book) but one which does appear several times is Seven Dials where Dodger lives with his mentor, a Jewish craftsman called Solomon, and a smelly dog, Onan. Seven Dials was not the worst part of London (the rookeries, or slums, of St Giles just to the north probably had that reputation, or the Devil’s Acre near Westminster) but it was only a short step up. The illustration for Seven Dials in Sketches by Boz, Dickens’s first best seller, could almost be an illustration for ‘Dodger’ too.
RIP, Sir Terry.
Witchcraft by Nigel Williams
For the Williams male, fantasy is dangerous. Central London is a place where the protagonist of ‘Witchcraft’ (a second-rate writer called Jamie Matheson) can indulge his fantasies. We meet him first in the Reading Room at the British Museum, where his imagination roams dangerously. It is here that two people enter Jamie’s life: a seductive redhead called Anna, and a seventeenth-century witch-hunter called Ezekiel Oliphant.
Anna offers uncomplicated sex. She takes him to her flat in a house seemingly on Montague Street. He watches her movements like ‘a man in the front row of a Soho strip joint’, and likens her to a female pigeon in Trafalgar Square pursued by a male. Williams stays in Central London for his sexual similes.
Ezekiel Oliphant, the Bloomsbury Witchfinder, is even more dangerous. Conjured up by Jamie’s research he becomes the object of Jamie’s obsession. Lying in bed with Anna, Jamie has a vision of Oliphant climbing into his body like putting on a coat: obsession turns to possession, with terrible results.
By contrast life in Putney with his wife and family seems empty. Jamie stresses the ‘pointless, endlessly repetitive, desperate re-enactment of the right suburban rituals’ to justify his disloyalty to his family. But it is only in the family home that he finds safety.
As Williams moves on to the Wimbledon Trilogy (starting with ‘The Wimbledon Poisoner’), Central London starts to disappear with the focus moving firmly to suburbia. It is in ‘Witchcraft’, however, that Williams draws a distinction between the unreal, dangerous Central London and the realistic, hopeful context of suburban life.
The Sign of Four: A Study in Geography’
‘The Sign of Four’ by Arthur Conan Doyle is the second Sherlock Holmes novel and one that features many London locations. The investigation covers a wide swathe of London and the reader is treated to a description of three routes taken by our heroes, Holmes and Watson. They are accompanied, in turn, by Miss Mary Morstan, Toby the bloodhound, and Inspector Athelney Jones.
Route 1: Baker Street to Upper Norwood via Brixton.
Holmes and Watson accompany Mary Morstan to a mysterious rendezvous at the Lyceum Theatre. They are collected and travel by carriage a circuitous route to Brixton, as Holmes observes: ‘Priory Road. Larkhall Lane. Stockwell Place. Robert Street. Coldharbour Lane. Our quest does not appear to take us to very fashionable regions’.
Route 2: Upper Norwood to Broad Street Wharf, opposite Millbank.
Toby the bloodhound leads Holmes and Watson through much of South London, following a creosote trail accidentally made by the murderer. Despite a small hiccup when Toby follows the wrong creosote trail, our heroes follow the correct trail to its end, only to find themselves looking at a deserted wharf on the River Thames! Over to the Baker Street Irregulars, Holmes’ private army of street urchins who ‘go everywhere and see everything’ to continue the search.
Route 3: Westminster Pier to Plumstead Marshes.
This is a thrilling river chase, as Holmes, Watson, and Jones use the fastest police launch on the river to catch Jonathan Small and his murderous companion as they attempt escape on the launch ‘Aurora’. There is the small matter of recovering treasure and dodging poison-tipped arrows from the companion’s blow-dart.
London Rules by Mick Herron
This is the fifth book in a series that focuses on Slough House, a seedy office in Old Street that houses the MI5 spooks who have problems or character defects that would lead them to be fired in any normal business, but know too much about MI5 operations to be allowed to leave. The nominal hero of the series is Jackson Lamb, the head of Slough House, who is about the worst boss you can imagine – obese, flatulent, an alcoholic and a chain smoker. He breaks all the rules. He and his team also somehow get involved in whatever key operation is keeping MI5 busy, and Lamb usually manages bring the villains to some kind of justice.
I love the series, partly because the cast of characters at Slough House are so odd and so despised by the other MI5 people that you end up cheering for them. The books are extremely funny although the humour can be very dark. Completely opposite to the world of George Smiley, each volume follows a story that hits hard against the establishment. And perhaps most importantly for the reader interested in London many scenes are set in and around Old Street, the fringes of Regents Park (where his MI5 is based), and the various parts of the city visited by his team are all really well described. This is an author who really knows London. I thoroughly recommend the books. It is probably best to start with ‘Slow Horses’, the first in the series.
Happy reading!