Thursday 1 October 2015

London Lit Weekend

This Sunday I'll be in conversation with Jerry White (historian of modern London), Gillian Tindall (author, among other books, of The House by the Thames and The Fields Beneath about Kentish Town) and Tessa Mcwatt, author of Higher Ed, a novel about London today. 

We're expected to discuss "how London appears in literature – historically, architecturally and imagined – to insiders and outsiders."

I have no idea where this will take us, but I hope to work in a favourite paragraph, from  Conan Doyle's The Sign of Four, in which Doctor John Watson reflects on life before his momentous encounter with Sherlock Holmes:

I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air -- or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances, I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

Do come along to King;'s Place this Sunday at 5:00pm Details here.




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