London Gazetteer

There comes a time when my London Thoughts are no longer satisfied with tour books and picture books of all the common stuff that tourist like to look at. I like the occasional book that takes me a little farther afield, and I hope that next time I in London, I will go a little farther a field myself.

With this thought in mind, I found Chambers London Gazetteer. Here is a nice thick book which has over 1,300 entries covering all manner of places that I would have never known of otherwise. Oh I suppose I could chat up some other London blogger and arrange to met and get a proper tour of the city-but the odds of that happening are pretty slim. Besides, I can enjoy the company of the book at anytime, not just when I am in that grand old city of London.

The London Gazetteer has a couple of sections of photos, mostly of places I have never heard of, but which look very interesting. For example, Ash Tree Cottage and Old Keeper's Cottage have that nice thatched look I associate with Standford Upon Avon. While places like BedZED and the Halls of residence for the University of East London remind that London never stops growing and changing.

The entries are seldom very long, but still long enough to give their subjects a good going over. In addition to the text of the articles, there are also web page addresses when applicable, postal district, bus and underground routes, riverboat piers, populations, and books to look up for further reading. They also help on pronunciations such as Euston-pronounced yoostan.

Right, reading the London Gazetteer is not going to let me pass as a local, but it might help me figure out what the people on Masterpiece Theater are on about.

The Pink Carnation Series

The Pink Carnation stories are a lot of fun. These are silly books for the most part, but I still like them. They tell the story of a modern day historian looking for the elusive Pink Carnation, a spy in the mold of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Lauren Willig goes one step further and creates an entire garden of flower named spies doing their skulduggery during the Napoleonic years. Which we see through the standard plot device of a hidden cache of documents revealing all secrets for our hero to find.

I have been listening to the audio books of the Pink Carnation Series and the reader, Kate Reading does a great job of giving voices to a large and ever growing cast of odd characters with all kinds of accents. Her American hero sounds, for the most part, like an American, and her modern Londoners sound like modern Londoners. I have no idea what English sounded like a couple of hundred years ago, but Kate Reading's take on it sounds good to me.

I'm listening to the Seduction of The Pink Carnation at the moment, which is spending a lot more time in Modern London and making a lot of fun of the American expat historian for not knowing such things as Working in The City means Working on Wall Street. The modern London story is a romance and a mystery, while the world of the Pink Carnation is pretty much a romance and a mystery with a touch of espionage tossed in for good measure. There are a lot of characters and I would advice that anyone tackling the series start at the beginning. The Secret History of The Pink Carnation was the first book.

These are fun books, neither pure romance nor pure cloak and dagger. Many of characters like to speak in a very refined and very round about manner and it can be fun to try and figure out what exactly they mean by what they are saying. The cast remains more or less the same and as with all series, that's just as it should be.

Mind The Gap

Mind the Gap is a book about magic and murder and thievery. But really, it's about the world under the city of London. The Tube Tunnels and the misplaced fallout shelters and the deep shelters for hiding away from the Blitz. We all want to be Indian Jones and who wouldn't want to find a whole hidden world right under their feet?

Like all stories that feature children as the heroes, Mind the Gap opens with out hero's mother being killed by the mysterious Uncles in their BMWs. Jazz, the girl who has a heightened sense paranoia, is chased by the bad guys. She hides the best place she can think to hide-in the tubes of The Underground.

She soon enough runs into Mr. F and his gang of children pick pockets. The Artful Dodger would have felt right at home in the London Underground. One thing leads to another. Jazz becomes a good thief. Ghosts are hanging out in the many tunnels and forgotten passages of London. Jazz has special powers she doesn't understand. All kinds of strange and wonderful things happen.

The ending is a bit quick and dirty and everything is wrapped up in one fell swoop. For a while there I was dreading those three little words I hate to find at the end of a book-To Be Continued. But that didn't happen. The villi ans were all sorted out and the good guys, such as they are, carry on.

Larry Niven wrote a series of short stories about a world where The Magic Goes Away. In this reality there was a lot of magic in the good old days, and some of it is still around in certain objects of power. There is a lot of that here, with the magic of London residing in the lost tunnels of the forgotten subway lines and storage rooms.

Mind the Gap was a quick and easy read and the ending was not quite what I expected. The running around and under London was what made it a fun book.

Brideshead Revisited London in The Good Old Days

. . .a happy childhood, and though its toys were silk shirts and liqueurs and cigars and its naughtiness high on the catalogue of grave sins.-Charles, Brideshead Revisited


Brideshead Revisited on PBS was the first time I ever saw Jeremy Irons and took note of him. Jeremy Irons has played a thoroughly depressed fellow in most of the films I have seen him in. Maybe it's all he can play. But this somber and serious demeanor is perfect for the story of an unusual friendship in prewar Britain. There was a recent movie made of Brideshead Revisited-I have not seen it yet, but it is not possible for it to be as good as the tv show was.

In conjunction with the new movie there is a new aduio book-read by Jeremy Irons. My only complain about this audiobook is that it was recorded at inaudible levels. Even with the sound all the way up on my car stereo I could not make out Jeremy Irons deep and depressing tones over the sounds of the road. Still, I have been listening to it when not on the freeway and I find it to be brilliant.

Brideshead Revisited is one of those novels about how a man's life is over, really over, by the time he is forty. Everything of any significance has already happened and all that lays ahead in the future is death and loneliness-not necessarily in the order. Brideshead Revisited is just a light summer read. Not.

The great quality of Jeremy Iron's voice is his ability to perfectly capture that longing for the past, that painful nostalgia for what was once and can never be again. Like visiting a cherished childhood amusement park which has been closed and left to rust and rot. How could it be that this place was once so happy and now is not.

So it is that everything in the story is tainted with sorrow, even those passages which might otherwise have been happy. The recounting of the glory days with Sebastian are not so glorious as they might otherwise have been. We know, at least, that Charles-our hero, does not seem overly happy in his current life as a company Capitan in a battalion that will never see any action.

The great and powerful Flight family fall into Charles young life and change its course forever. Charles is gay/straight/frankly unlovable and totally unsympathetic. And yet, here among the cardboard cutouts of the Flight Family, Charles is the only real person. His love for Sebastian is unending, but he never tries to reconnect with him or help him with his drinking problem. His love with Julian is merely an echo of his love for Sebastian. He marries and has two children, but he cares nothing for the wife or children. Its a story filled with sorrow and lost opportunities.

Charles is not just a loser in love, he is also a loser in his many friends, and a loser in his faith and his lack of faith. He is an Agnostic, which means he doesn't have the faith of an Atheist. The two main story lines twisting through Brideshead Revisited are love and religion. Charles is bad at both. His refusal of both make him miserable, but it is hard to image that anything could ever really make Charles happy.

London plays a recurring part in Brideshead Revisited, as our heros move in a circle with London at it's core. While the Brideshead estate is not in London, the rich and insane Flight family has property in London. Charles and Sebastian met at Oxford and they spend a lot of time riding trains in and around London. There is that fairy tale quality about London between the Wars and that beginning of the tragedy that is London during World War Two. The outside world is always threating to intrude upon Charles is tiny world, but it never really does. Charles is self contained and remains so-though he clearly wants to be something more.

This is one of those stories that makes me think of London, it is a great book. Jeremy Irons does a great job of creating the feel and tone of the TV show he starred in all those years ago. Great Stuff.

Spielberg to Make Chocky Movie

Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks has acquired the rights to the science fiction novel Chocky by John Wyndham, according to reports.

Trade magazine The Hollywood Reporter said Pollinger, the UK agency which handles the literary estate of the late author John Wyndham, agreed the deal.

"Chocky" tells the story of a boy who has a mysterious imaginary friend with whom he frequently argues. As the boy's father gets increasingly suspicious, it becomes clear that an alien entity has taken up residence in the boy's consciousness. Spielberg likes stories with spooky sci fi kids, A.I. was a sci fi movie about a strange child who was a robot.

Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg's credits include such sci fi greats as ET and Jurassic Park.

Chocky is a 1968 novel written by John Wyndham, the British science fiction writer best known for writing The Day of the Triffids.

Of course, just because Steven Spielberg had optioned the rights does not mean there will actually be a Chocky movie made. But we can keep our fingers crossed and hope that it will happen. While a lot of the story in Chocky takes place out in the country, I would expect there to be a scene or two in London, as just about every movie set in England has to have a least a few shots of the River Thames and London Eye.

Folio Society-Thousand Best Houses in England

Best Bookshops in London

Since I generally work under the assumption that any bookstore is a good bookstore, I am not too critical of anyone trying to make a living selling books. There is something nice and comforting about being surrounded by all that knowledge and all those stories and all that history. A good bookstore warms the heart with its clutter and crowded shelves.

I used to be a book dealer myself and it was often a bittersweet moment when a good book would sell. But that was the nature of the business, let go of one book and go out and find another. It does the heart good to know that there are still people who read and care about books in this age of the blog and the DVD. Great bookstores are always a joy to enter.

So here is a list of London Bookshops in no particular order.

bookartbookshop 17 Pitfield St, London N1 6HBn-features the publications of some of Britain’s best-known artist presses and publishers of artists’ books, as well as books from abroad. The shop is a centre and a service for individual & institutional collectors, artists, publishers and the aesthetically and bibliographically curious. Where a book is more than just something to read.

Newham Bookshop, London, 747 Barking Road, Newham, London E13 9ER-East Londons leading independent bookseller, supplying books for over 29 years. Newham books has recently entered the exciting world of blogging-clearly they are more interested in books than blogs.

London Review Bookshop, Bloomsbury, London, 14 Bury Place, London WC1A 2JL-ah, any bookstore in Bloomsbury has to be good for a quick look. And they have cake. Nestled within the London Review Bookshop, the London Review Cake Shop is an exuberant expression of the thread of gaiety so familiar to those that know and love the LRB.

John Sandoe (Books) Ltd, London, 10 Blacklands Terrace, Chelsea, London, SW3 2SR-John Sandoe started this shop in 1957. Before that, the premises were partly devoted to the grooming of poodles. The other half was a junkshop, where books were sold by weight. In 1989 the shop was sold to members of staff. Since then, the business has grown and moved with the times, but it remains essentially the same - an independent literary bookshop with many regular customers.

Daunt Books, Marylebone High St, London, 83 Marylebone High Street, London, W1U 4QW-Just looking at the outside of the shop makes me want to go inside. Looks like the kind of place of that Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson would while away the odd hour looking for that rare book on tobacco ash. Called by The Daily Telegraph the Most Beautiful Bookshop in London this is certainly a bookstore worth paying a visit.

Black Gull Books, Camden 70-71 Camden Lock Place, Camden Lock Market, NW1 8AF-One of the Wife's goals for our visit to London was to find a book by John Wyndham that she had not read-since many of his books never seemed to make the trip to Texas. She found an old paperback in a bookstall at Camden Lock-and there was much rejoicing. It may well have been Black Gull Books, but there are so many cool place in Camden Lock you should go anyway.

Bertram Rota, Covent Garden, 31 Long Acre, WC2E 9LT-Since its foundation, Bertram Rota Ltd has established a reputation for handling the sale of archives for major figures in the fields of literature and the arts. Since its foundation, Bertram Rota Ltd has established a reputation for handling the sale of archives for major figures in the fields of literature and the arts.

There are many other great bookshops in London. Bloomsbury is famous for all its bookshops and Notting Hill has more bookstores to browse in than the famous Travel Book Shop.