Last Updated on July 18, 2024 by Marian Jones
London through prose, poetry and literary walking tours
This episode collects together information on Literary London, beginning with a list of reading ideas and continuing with information on four London anthologies, all of which we highly recommend as being choc-full of poetry, prose and non-fiction to enhance your knowledge of London. Then there are ideas for walking tours of London with a literary theme and we end with the classic Wordsworth poem, Composed Upon Westminster Bridge. As ever, there is much more on the podcast, including readings of the extracts mentioned – and more. Read (and listen) and enjoy!
A London Reading List
The podcast opens with a reading list of on Wonderful Books Set in London compiled by friend-of-City-Breaks Tal Bright on her Bright Nomad website. Extracts read on the podcast include one from Agatha Christie’s At Bertam’s Hotel and another from Tarquin Hall’s Salaam Brick Lane, in which he describes Mr Ali’s approach to Ramadan fasting:
‘Fasting’s murder, innit’ he admitted to me at the end of the first week, groaning and clutching his stomach. ‘All I can think about all day is ‘aving a Whopper cheese burger with chips and a Coke.’
Mr Ali’s daily strategy for the fast was to rise at four o’clock and stuff himself with an enormous breakfast. In the afternoon, he would sit down to a huge iftar meal. And later, before going to bed, he would feast again, usually on a large Turkish doner kebab with extra chilli sauce.’
4 Anthologies on Literary London
London An Illustrated Literary Companion
A delightful small-format book, lavishly illustrated with black and white photos, prints, line drawings and cartoons. Extracts read on the podcast are Virginia Woolf on feeling ‘in the heart of life’ at Piccadilly tube station, W E Henley’s Aloft and Alone, in praise of Nelson’s statue in Trafalgar Square, 2 different versions of Bells of London (‘Two sticks and an apple, say the Bells of Whitechapel …’) and the wonderful Burlington Bertie by W F Hargreaves.
I’m Burlington Bertie
I rise at ten-thirty and saunter along like a toff
I walk down the Strand with my gloves on my hand
Then I walk down again with them off.
The Blue Guide Literary Companion to London
An anthology from across the ages, on subjects as varied as Dr Johnson and James Bond, including poetry, fiction, plays and non-fiction. Extracts read on the podcast include Oscar Wilde on dawn in London, a passage from Antony Trollope’s Can You Forgive Her? where the protagonist does a good deed for a girl he meets begging in the street and an amusing passage by Edward Bulwer-Lytton on visiting a London tailor, which begins like this:
‘We are a very good figure, Mr Pelham; very good figure, repeated the Schneider, surveying me from head to foot while he was preparing his measure; ‘we want a little assistance, though; we must be padded well here; we must have our chest thrown out, and have an additional inch across the shoulders; we must live for effect in this world, Mr Pelham; a leetle tighter round the waist, eh?’
Fictional London A Guide to the Capital’s Literary Landmarks
This explores London area by area, highlighting all sorts of places connected to authors and featuring in their works. Extracts read on the podcast cover Mayfair and St James’s and Middle and Inner Temple. The book’s introduction begins like this:
‘London’s place in literature is unrivalled. From Chaucer’s pilgrims gathering at the Tabard Inn in Southwark to the Hogwarts Express departing from King’s Cross, it has proved endlessly tempting to novelists, poets and others whose imaginations have woven the great city into their stories; its streets, parks, squares, buildings and, of course, its river … even its weather…. London’s sinister ‘smog’ has appeared not just as an element of the tale, but almost as a character in its own right.’
City-Lit London
Ten themed sections include such offerings, as the blurb puts it, as ‘Monica Ali smelling the curry on Brick Lane, Dostoyevsky strolling down the Haymarket …. Barbara Cartland taking us to a West End ball.’ Extracts highlighted on the podcast include Margaret Attwood out sightseeing, a lively description of a London market from Ruth Rendell’s novel, Portobello and a few lines from Tim Bradford’s list of reasons for loving London, which begin like this:
‘The girls in their first strappy dresses of the summer, the smell of chips, the liquid orange skies of early evening, high-rise glass office palaces, the lost-looking old men still eating at their regular caffs even after they’ve been turned into Le Café Trendy or Cyber Bacon, the old shop fronts, the rotting pubs, the cacophony of peeling and damp Victoria residential streets, neoclassical shopping centres, buses that never arrive on time ….’
4 walks around literary london
This Walk through Dickens’s London will take you to many of the places Dickens knew intimately and featured in his novels. Click the link for much more detail.
This self-guided walk (download the map here ) will allow you to visit many places connected to Shakespeare and the life he led in London.
The Sherlock Holmes Mystery Trail (private bookings only, more details here ) promises ‘an elementary tour of London’, a journey of discovery following in the footsteps of Holmes and Watson’.
For Harry Potter fans, the Tour for Muggles company offers various walking tours of the locations linked to the Harry Potter books and films.
And, to finish, here’s the best-known poem on London, William Wordsworth’s Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, written in September, 1802
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
Listen to the POdcast
Reading suggestions
London: An Illustrated Literary Companion by Rosemary Gray
Blue Guide Literary Companion to London compiled by Robin Saikai
Fictional London: A Guide to the Capital’s Literary Landmarks by Stephen Halliday
City Lit London edited by Heather Reyes
links for this post
Bright Nomad List Wonderful Books set in London
A Walk Through Dickens’s London
Self-guided Shakespeare Walk through London
Sherlock Holmes Mystery Trail Walk
Guided Walks of Harry Potter’s London
4 more books on Literary London
Chaucer by Peter Ackroyd
Globe Life: Life in Shakespeare’s London by Catherine Arnold
Inside Dickens’ London by Michael Paterson
Living in Squares, Loving in Triangles (on the Bloomsbury Group) by Amy Licence
5 Novels set in London
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
Salaam Brick Lane by Tarquin Hall
Capital by John Lanchester
At Bertram’s Hotel by Agatha Christie
Previous episode London’s Diarists and Travel Writers
This is the final episode in our London series
