I’ve just found a great new book, which perfectly combines my love of walking and reading (not usually at the same time, bit dangerous).
London: City of Words is one of those brilliant ideas you wish you’d thought of yourself. Anyone who walks regularly in London is aware of the pages of history and literature that turn as you go. Can any other city have inspired quite so many books? David Caddy and Westrow Cooper had the top idea of writing a literary guidebook to the capital, with maps showing not just where authors lived, but where books themselves were set.
Now, I thought I knew Dulwich’s literary connections, but this book opened a few more to me. I’d heard that PG Wodehouse (author of the sublimely ridiculous Jeeves and Wooster books) was a Dulwich College boy. But hard-boiled thriller writer Raymond Chandler? Nope, me neither. Then there’s Michael Ondaatje, Graham Swift, Chiwetel Ejiofor…
Brockwell Park - paradise?
Local literary ladies hold their own too. Booker Prize winner Anita Brookner was a JAGS girl. Enid Blyton‘s flat on Lordship Lane was a long way from the Famous Five’s Cornwall beaches, but Wendy Cope took inspiration from Brockwell Park (‘And Brockwell Park is Paradise now’) in her first collection of poems, the deliciously titled Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis.
I knew one of my favourite novels, Angela Carter’s surreal and funny Wise Children, was set in Brixton. But until I read City of Words, I hadn’t picked up that the home of the heroines, at 49 Bard Road, could be identified as one of the ‘poets corner’ streets between Brockwell Park and Railton Road.
And then there’s Dickens. Is there a single corner of London that extraordinary man didn’t know, or write about? He gives us a lovely portrait of Dulwich at the end of Pickwick Papers, where Mr Pickwick ‘may still be frequently seen, contemplating the pictures in the Dulwich Gallery, or enjoying a walk about the pleasant neighbourhood on a fine day.’
I’ll be enjoying many more walks around pleasant neighbourhoods in future, with London: City of Words in my backpack.
Photo of Brockwell Park from Loz Flowers’ photostream on Flickr.com with CCL.
