'By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.' - Samuel Johnson
From Chaucer's pilgrims meeting in a Southwark inn to the Hogwarts Express leaving from King's Cross, London has always been a popular place for writers to weave into their own work. With its bustling, multicultural population and unique localised weather, the city is almost a character in its own right. Fictional London explores the capital through the eyes of both the reader and the writer. Celebrated London historian Stephen Halliday traces the stories from one end of London to the other, digging into the history and character that has made it an unrivalled source of inspiration for authors and poets from the Middle Ages to the early 2000s and beyond.
London in unrivalled as a source of inspiration for writers from Geoffrey Chaucer to J K Rowling. From 221B Baker Street to the Old Curiosity Shop will explore the capital both from the viewpiont of the many writers who have used it as a stage for their plots and their characters; and of the readers whose imagination is fired by the knowledge that they are standing outside the home of David Copperfield on the Strand or Count Dracula's residence in Piccadilly. All of London's fictional clubs, pubs, restaurants, houses and streets that have been made famous in the works of the like of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Ian Fleming, Charles Dickens and Evelyn Waugh are featured in this exhaustively researched volume. Listed geographically and alphabetically, each entry provides a description of the location, its place in literature and its inspiration. From Fleming's legendary Blades Club in Mayfair, that made appearances in both Moonraker and Goldfinger, to Waugh's bohemian Shepheard's Hotel from Vile Bodies, that was based on the celebrated Cavendish Hotel, to the haunts of Sherlock Holmes and Bertie Wooster, From 221B Baker Street to the Old Curiosity Shop will appeal to all lovers of classic fiction set in the great city.
