I took a walk through Kensington and Notting Hill this afternoon and noticed this very large house perched atop Campden Hill Road. The English Heritage blue plaque on the wall drew my attention. It indicated that Ford Maddox Ford (1873-1939), a novelist and critic, once lived there. He is best remembered for his novel The Good Soldier.
Yesterday evening I took a walk around St James's Square in London's West End. It was that in-between time when the light fades from the sky and a kind of golden pinkish glow descends, making everything look strangely magical.
The square, which was set out in the 1650s, is lined with buildings that once housed famous residents -- British Prime Minister William Pitt The Elder (1708-1778), the 34th American President General Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969) and British mathematician Countess Augusta Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), among others.
Tucked away in the north-west corner is the London Library. Until last night, I'd never heard of this private lending library which was founded in 1841 by the historian Thomas Carlyle.
According to the official website, it is now the largest independent lending library in the world. Individual membership starts at £210 (about $US420) per annum but judging by their stock and the lovely-looking book-filled rooms within, I reckon it might be worth it.
I'll give you a couple of clues: he's not from London, and poetry was his thing.
Yes, that's a book shop underneath that green, leafy, overtake-everything-in-its-path vine. The shop is in a little street behind the British Medical Association in Bloomsbury, London.
Continuing the theme of dining in pubs named after famous London literary figures, today my colleagues and I ventured to The Charles Dickens in Southwark for our lunch.
On the walk there it became a game to interweave the names of Dickens' works into our conversation. This is what happens when you work with sub-editors who delight in getting good puns into headlines!
Anyway, the conversation went something like this...
"We're going to a pub that was recommended by Our Mutual Friend."
"Really? I thought it was mentioned in The Pickwick Papers."
"Whatever. Let's just hope it's not a Bleak House."
"Yes, and let's hope it hasn't fallen on Hard Times."
God help us if we ever go to a pub called The Shakespeare!
My Easter Sunday started off with a Sunday roast and a pint of the black stuff in The Daniel Defoe, a pub in Stoke Newington in London's north...
I'm not quite sure what possessed me, but at 7.45 this morning I went on a rather longish bicycle ride to Richmond Park in London's west. Richmond Park, which was used as royal hunting ground by Henry VII, is one of those amazingly wonderful green spaces that has to be seen to be believed: it covers some 2,500 acres with wild deer roaming free and there are wooded glens and open fields and undulating hills that are a bugger to climb on your bike!
I have been to this park many times but today I made a new discovery: Poet's Corner which sits atop King Henry's Mound -- a high point, said to have used by Henry Vlll to watch hunting -- just off the main road that skirts the perimeter of the park.
George Orwell fans or anyone who has read Nineteen Eighty-Four may recognise this building, which is officially known as Senate House.
During the Second World War it housed the British Government's Ministry of Information*. One of the ministry's functions was the censorship of information. In 1944 it advised against the publication of Orwell's Animal Farm on the basis that it might offend the Russian allies.
Orwell eventually found a new publisher willing to ignore the advice and the book was published the following year.
The experience obviously had a marked affect on the author. He went on to use this building as the basis for the Ministry of Truth which appears in Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949.
The building is now London University's administrative centre and is located on Malet Street in Bloomsbury.
* The ministry also has two more literary connections. Graeme Green was an employee. He used his experiences here as inspiration for his novel Ministry of Fear, published in 1943. Evelyn Waugh's Put Out More Flags, published in 1942, is also a spoof on the ministry's mechanisations.
Wandering through cemeteries and trying to find famous graves seems to have become a recent pastime in this household. We've explored Hammersmith Cemetery and Highgate Cemetery (both East and West) and on Sunday we took a trek to Kensal Rise Cemetery in West London, specifically to go on a guided tour (held the first Sunday and the last Sunday of the month) of its eerie catacombs.
After 30 minutes wandering around coffin-lined tunnels in
semi-darkness (unfortunately, no photography allowed), we spent a
further 90 minutes being led on a late-afternoon tour of the graveyard.
I donned my Reading Matters' hat and asked if it was possible to be
shown Wilkie Collins' (1824-1889) grave -- and the tour guide, a charming
jockey-sized man with a Welsh accent, obliged.
Wilkie Collins, the author of The Woman in White, Moonstone and countless other novels, is buried under a simple granite cross with one of his mistresses, Caroline Graves. Our tour guide told us that Wilkie's refusal to get married had earned him the wrath of his friend Charles Dickens, who did not approve of his immoral lifestyle!
Later, while wandering down the main broad, sweeping, tree-lined and
very muddy avenue, an older gentleman in our tour party sidled up to me
and asked whether I was a Wilkie Collins fan? He then gave me a hot
tip: Armadale is a better read than The Woman in White.
Book tips by gravesides. I can feel a new series for this blog coming on...
The Dove is a quiet riverside pub in Hammersmith, London. I'd like to claim it as my local, but it actually takes a good 20 minutes to walk there from my flat. That said, it is definitely worth the stroll and on days like today, when the weather is cold but dry, it's a perfect destination if you feel like stretching your legs. I enjoyed a lovely pint of Guinness here this afternoon after taking a walk along the river.
What's this got to do with books, I hear you ask.
Well, this cosy little 17th century pub, which is in the Guinness Book of Records for having the smallest bar in the UK, has many literary connections.
Scottish poet James Thomson (1700-1748), who wrote Rule Britannia, lodged here.
Graham Greene and Ernest Hemingway reputedly drank here, as did A.P. Herbert (1890-1971), whose novel The Water Gypsies features a pub called The Pigeon, which is believed to be The Dove.
And William Morris (1834-1896), artist, writer, socialist, activist and founder of the Kelmscott Press, lived next door.
If you're ever in London and feel like a drink here, the pub is located at 19 Upper Mall, Hammersmith, W6.
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