As I’ve talked about greater than as soon as in latest months, I set myself the duty for 2024 of studying after which writing about 25 items of London fiction I hadn’t learn earlier than. Because the record beneath exhibits, I’ve accomplished that heroic mission.
A few of the works during which I’ve immersed have been huge, fats novels of nicely round 550 pages. Others have been very brief brief tales. Some had been books I’ve had on my cabinets at residence for a few years, even a long time. I not need to really feel responsible about neglecting them. Others had been titles dropped at my consideration by readers – a couple of third of them – for which I’m very grateful.
For somebody who writes in a single kind or one other nearly every single day, together with a little bit of fiction, I don’t learn as a lot as I ought to. It has subsequently been what the Victorians might need referred to as an enhancing expertise to have devoured this very big selection of artistic endeavours, a lot of them excellent and all of them enlightening.
A lot of the stuff remains to be in print, some can solely be obtained by looking out on-line. All of it has one thing to suggest it for individuals who, like me, are enthralled by London and Londoners the way in which they’ve been portrayed in works of fiction.
Syed Manzurul Islam: The Mapmakers of Spitalfields
Muriel Spark: The Ballad of Peckham Rye
Nell Dunn: Up the Junction
Rian Hughes: The Black Locomotive
Fred Basnett: Gropers
Jean Rhys: After Leaving Mr Mackenzie.
Mollie Panter-Downes: Good Night, Mrs Craven
Joe Thomas: White Riot
Arthur Conan Doyle: The Journey of the Bruce Partington Plans
Arthur Morrison: A Youngster of the Jago
Alan Hollinghurst: The Swimming-Pool Library
George Orwell: Hold the Aspidistra Flying
Graham Greene: The Finish of the Affair
Charles Dickens: Oliver Twist
Margery Allingham: The Tiger within the Smoke
Stephen King: Crouch Finish
Agatha Christie: The Journey of the Low-cost Flat
Michael Bond: A Bear Known as Paddington
Tom Barling: The Smoke
Esther Freud: The Bodyguards
Peter Ackroyd: The Clerkenwell Tales
Zadie Smith: White Enamel
Dominic Nolan: Vine Road
Alexander Baron: Rosie Hogarth
George & Weedon Grossmith: The Diary of a No one
John Vane is a pen identify utilized by Dave Hill, editor and writer of On London. Purchase his London novel Frightgeist: A Tall Story of Fearful Instances right here, right here or right here. Subscribe to his Substack too.
