the city-lit cafe

Three of the best writers on London? London in literature with Rachel Lichtenstein, Sukhdev Sandhu and Craig Taylor

London's most secret street? Diamond Street: The Hidden World of Hatton Garden by Rachel Lichtenstein

London’s Hatton Garden, the centre of the UK’s diamond trade, has been called one of the city’s most secret streets. Even that most intrepid of London wanderers, Iain Sinclair, admits to never being able to pluck the heart out of its mystery.

An exciting journey then for reader and author Rachel Lichtenstein, who following her On Brick Lane, now moves further west to a tiny village-like part of Clerkenwell and Farringdon that teems with rich layers and layers of buried history and the hidden River Fleet.

At the heart of the book is the author’s Jewish family who worked in Hatton Garden – her husband continues to manage their jewellery business there. Through her personal connections Rachel Lichtenstein is able to give us a compelling and atmospheric picture of the street’s almost one hundred per cent Jewish past and present, through its craft workers and traders – a recommended career route for young Jewish men from the East End.

In many ways the end of an era - as the old craftsmen die off and the diamond business faces globalisation – the lives of master workers such as the eccentric Mitziman are lovingly and painstakingly recreated. It was only after the Second World War that the street’s shops sold direct to the public. Before then it was an even more secretive place, with its surrounding streets and alleys, a warren of overcrowded and sweaty workshops and studios, producing some of the most priceless jewellery for the English and European aristocracy.

It is this theme of hardship, struggle and survival for most that links Hatton’s Garden’s near-present with its past. Most of its Jews lived in East London and it was the area’s Italian and Irish immigrant population which contributed to the place’s torrid street life. The latter joined natives in a part of London that for centuries had been infamous for its crime, poverty and disease and where Jonathan Wild, Dick Turpin and, who knows, Moll Flanders once rubbed shoulders.

It is the threat of crime that, understandably, still keeps the street a secretive place, together with its closed and guarded protectors – the female author only just manages to enter the even more secretive Diamond Bourse. Unlike Brick Lane Hatton Garden doesn’t wear its rich multicultural history on its sleeve. But for a London street that one often takes for granted, Rachel Lichtenstein reveals to us in wonderful detail the fascinating place that Hatton Garden is.

Diamond Street: The Hidden World of Hatton Garden by Rachel Lichtenstein is published by Hamish Hamilton on 7 June 2012, £20.00 hardback

Er, ten #Londonbookshops whose staff won't ask you to please spell Proust.

1. London Review of Books Bookshop, 14 Bury Place, WC1A2JL

A wonderfully serious, but seriously wonderful bookshop close to the British Museum and a favourite of academic types. Founded by the London Review of Books, it has a very popular café attached where you can read, drink and eat or just chat with friends.

 www.lrbshop.co.uk

 2. Foyles Bookshop, 113-119 Charing Cross Road, WC2H OEB

London’s biggest independent bookseller is a part of Britain’s bookselling mythology and a real delight. It now has six branches (Westfield Stratford City beside the Olympic site opened recently) but Charing Cross Road is the flagship. It claims to have the widest range of titles of any bookshop in the UK and has year-round events, plus the excellent Ray’s Jazz Café and gallery.

 www.foyles.co.uk

 3.Waterstone’s Piccadilly, 203 – 206 Piccadilly, W1J9LE

 Six floors dedicated to books … 150,000 titles in stock …. over eight-and-a-half miles of shelving … what’s not to love in Europe’s largest bookshop and the flagship store of the Waterstone’s group. Once home to the Simpson’s department store, it has a café and a fab fifth floor bar with great views, plenty of comfy sofas and frequent big name celebrity author events.

www.waterstones.com

 4. Daunt Books, 83 Marylebone High Street, W1U 4QW

 A highly recommended bookshop famous for its brilliant travel department, which brings non-fiction and fiction titles together for countries and cities. Daunt Books Marylebone is an original Edwardian bookshop with beautiful oak galleries and skylights.

www.dauntbooks.co.uk

 5. Hatchards, 187 Piccaddilly, WIJ 9LE

Booksellers since 1797, Hatchards is the oldest surviving bookshop in London whose customers have included Queen Charlotte, Wellington, Lord Byron and Oscar Wilde (the store displays a Royal coat of arms as bookseller to the Royal Family). Often attracts a distinguished clientele, as befits its location next door to Fortnum and Mason and opposite the Royal Academy.

www.hatchards.co.uk

 

6. Stanfords Travel Bookshop, 12 – 14 Long Acre, WC2E 9LP

From Florence Nightingale to Michael Palin, Stanfords claims over 150 years’ experience helping travellers plan their journeys. Everything for the serious and armchair traveller and the world’s largest stock of maps and travel books, plus a highly tempting café.

www.stanfords.co.uk

 7. Victoria and Albert Museum Bookshop, Cromwell Road, SW72RL

For fashion, design and the decorative arts, the V & A bookshop is an art lovers’ delight! A thoughtful mix of the glossy and the academic, including the museum’s own publishing imprint, with special promotions around current exhibitions.

 www.vandshop.com

 8. Tate Modern Bookshop, Summer Street, SE1 9TG

 Together with Tate Britain in Pimlico, the best bookshop in London for quality art books and exhibition books, catalogues and others from Tate Publishing. Also has an excellent selection of high quality children’s books and the kind of quirky gifts you might end up buying for yourself!

www.tate.org.uk

 9. National Theatre Bookshop, South Bank SE1 9Px

Everything you ever wanted to read about the performing arts – play texts, biographies and criticism and much more. All National Theatre publications are available, plus titles and related books for current productions. Restaurants, cafes and free Platform Performances are just round the corner in the theatre.

www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/bookshop

 10. BFI Filmstore, Belvedere Road, South Bank, SE1 8XT

From books and magazines to DVDs, the British Film Institute’s Filmstore is a cineaste’s dream. Includes titles from across the world, together with the complete range of BFI titles. Outside is the BFI’s mediatheque and also the best bar and café on the South Bank with views to kill and free Wi Fi.

www.filmstore.bfi.org.uk

 

 

 

 

Boring animals on the outside of Regent's Park Zoo that you can see for free #London. Sum up the city in under 10 words

Every city has so many different sides. It’s what makes them so exhilarating – and sometimes exasperating.

Keith Ridgway makes a fine job of enumerating Dublin’s multiple personalities in his wonderful 2003 novel, The Parts, included in our city-pick Dublin. Here’s the start of the opening chapter:

Dublin.

Plural proper noun.

There is a Dublin of the rich of course, and a Dublin of the poor. That’s standard stuff. But there’s more than that. The rich like a little multiplicity after all; the poor are wealthy in variation. And then there’s the neither rich nor poor — the getting by, the middle mass, the bulk. Where do they live?

They live in Dublin with the others. A million kittens in a sack, down by the river.

Working Dublin, queer Dublin, junkie Dublin, media Dublin, party Dublin, executive Dublin, homeless Dublin, suburban Dublin, teenage Dublin, gangland Dublin, Dublin with the flags out, mother Dublin, culchie Dublin, Muslim Dublin, the wind ripped rain at eleven o’clock in the morning on Pearse Street in February Dublin, drunken Dublin, hungry Dublin, Dublin of the vice squad and the syphilis outbreak, dancing Dublin, pro-Cathedral Dublin, writer’s Dublin, politician’s Dublin, Dublin on the telly, Bono’s Dublin, Ronnie Drew’s Dublin, Bloomsday Dublin, the Dublin of Arbour Hill and Kilmainham Jail, Gandon’s Dublin, Durcan’s Dublin, Teaching English as a Foreign Language Dublin, Jewish Dublin, the emigrant’s Dublin, the immigrant’s Dublin, Dublin where they beat you up, railings Dublin, Dublin where they rob you, fanlight Dublin, Dublin where they rape you, golf club Dublin, Dublin where they kill you, the American Dublin, the St Patrick’s Day Dublin, the Phoenix Park Dublin, serial killer’s Dublin, paradise, scary Dublin, money in brown envelopes Dublin, traffic jam Dublin, property Dublin, inept Dublin, the Dublin you can’t afford, the Dublin that needs you, the Dublin that doesn’t, Dublin with its view of the hills, Dublin with the sea in the bay and the river stumbling towards it, drunk.

Dublin.

But Ridgway’s list has got us thinking how this approach might work for other cities. London, for instance.

That’s why we’re asking for ideas towards a 360 degrees portrait of the UK capital. We’ll be awarding copies of city-lit London for the best contributions – the deadline is 20 May. Just tweet us at #thecitylitcafe or send to malcolm.burgess3@ btopenworld.com We’ll be putting all  the entries on our blog site.

And to get you started here are some ideas we’ve already received …

Cornish pasty shop London, boring animals on the outside of Regent’s Park Zoo that you can see for free London, white bicycle London, Shakespeare’s London, seeing Timothy Spall saying hallo to a beggar London, Her Majesty’s London, two mile an hour London, vinyl record shop London, Barbican geraniums in January microclimate London, Jack the Ripper London, chugger London, woman not working in Tower Hamlets London, woman not working in Holland Park London, psychogeographer’s London, buying £500 worth of make-up in Selfridges because you’re depressed London, Anthony Gormley sculpture London, riding on Rotten Row London, Occupy London, being an unemployed actor in Crouch End London, eating in a Garfunkel’s wearing a plastic policeman’s hat London, pigeon with one foot London, Caribbean liming London, freegan London …

 Good luck!

Tales of the city: the rise of the local blog

In its daily blogposts, Spitalfields Life aims to portray the full colour of life in London's East End. But who is the mysterious 'Gentle Author' behind this extraordinary work of social history? Patrick Barkham in The Guardian investigates.

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guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 March 2012 20.00 GMT

Article history

A Baishakhi Mela procession in Spitalfields, just one of the colourful – and not so colourful – facets of life recorded by the Gentle Author. Photograph: The Gentle Author/Spitalfields Life

Every day for the past-two-and-a-half years, an anonymous author has written a story about a place or a person in the East End of London. In 900,000 words, and pictures that tell at least another 900,000, are lovingly drawn portraits of remarkable, ordinary folk, from Maurice Franklin, a 93-year-old wood-turner, to Myra Love, who lives in a one-bedroom flat in Bethnal Green but also happens to be a Maori princess. There is a chestnut seller, a jewel thief, a pigeon flyer, curry chefs, trendsetters, oddballs, artists, umbrella makers and Sandra Esquilant, the landlady of the Golden Heart, who is in many locals' eyes the de facto Queen of Spitalfields.

1. Spitalfields Life: In the Midst of Life I Woke to Find Myself Living in an Old House Beside Brick Lane in the East End of London
2. by The Gentle Author
3. 
4. Buy it from the Guardian bookshop

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1. Tell us what you think: Star-rate and review this book

The author of this fascinating and herculean social history, which forms an ongoing blog, Spitalfields Life, now turned into a book, is known only as "the Gentle Author". I have been summoned to meet him or her at E Pellicci, an Italian cafe run by Maria Pellicci, who features in the book. Maria's son Nevio is a fan of the Gentle Author (or GA), despite having his eyebrows likened to Groucho Marx's. "S/he writes so nicely about people," says Nevio.

When GA arrives, they are pathologically reluctant to discuss their age, family, working life or whether they live with anybody at all (apart from, as readers of the blog will know, Mr Pussy). "All readers need to know is that the writer's intention is benign," they say. To make a readable story, I assumed I would identify GA's gender but s/he looks so mortified when I mention this that I relent. Plenty of blogs have thrived on the frisson of anonymity, most notably Belle de Jour, but this does not feel like a publicity stunt. GA stresses their sincere commitment to placing their subjects, not their self, in the spotlight. Besides, some readers have such a firm conception of GA as female or male that unmasking their gender would be like ripping the false beard off Father Christmas in front of a small child.

"I'm not being mean. I think it's not part of this story," says the Gentle Author about their identity and background. But GA, who I feel obliged to record is a fragile-looking middle-aged bohemian with pale blue eyes and a terrible cough that is the remnant of pneumonia, eventually reveals some of the motivations behind what is a deeply personal project. An only child, after GA's father died, s/he moved back to their childhood home in Devon to care for their mother. She had dementia and her only child cared for her for five years. She was paralysed for the final two years; GA fed her with a spoon. "I lived in the presence of death for two years," s/he says. "I made a promise to my mother that she would be able to die at home. Then I made a new promise, which was to write about the people around me and record their stories."

Paul the Urban Shepherd in Spitalfields Market, Spitalfields, London. Photograph: Jeremy Freedman/Spitalfields Life

GA calculated there were 10,000 days until they were the same age as when their parents died. Rather crazily, s/he vowed to write a story for every day left. After GA's parents died, s/he sold their house and with the proceeds bought a tiny cottage in Spitalfields. Finding people with tales to tell has not proved difficult. Dining in E Pellicci quickly illustrates how the East End is rich in stories. As we eat steak-and-kidney pudding, another diner, Henrietta Keeper, stands up and clears her throat. She is tiny, in her 80s and she sings A Beautiful Night for Love. The cafe claps and cheers. You couldn't make it up. The Gentle Author rushes over, notepad in hand, and requests an interview.

"I believe in microcosm, that everything in the world is here," says GA. Everything in the world might be in the East End but could such fascinating stories really be found in more insular, monochrome communities? "There is something extra here," admits GA, who nevertheless argues it could be replicated anywhere because people are infinitely fascinating. "I don't understand why everybody isn't doing what I'm doing. I don't understand why this isn't everywhere. It's free to do. It just takes time."

However, GA admits to being in a privileged position, without dependants or mortgage, devoting all hours to the blog and leading an ascetic life based on the sale of a few online adverts and on charity – receiving a veg box from a local grocer and a weekly chicken from another friend. "Only someone as privileged as me could be as poor as me." Spitalfields Life, they say dryly, has been "a catastrophic success".

The East End may be crowded with interesting characters but writing 900,000 well-crafted words in less than three years is a towering achievement. GA seems extraordinarily driven and has barely left the East End, except to interview a 90-year-old former sea cadet in Dover and Crayfish Bob on the Thames. They are now assisted by a younger writer who sets up interviews (a time-consuming process) and local photographers happy to publish their work online. Last year GA took two weeks off to work on the book; two other writers took over chronicling duties.

Reminiscent of other projects giving voice to ordinary people, such as Ronald Blythe's Akenfield, the story of a Suffolk village in the 1960s, and Craig Taylor's updating of the format in last year's Londoners, Spitalfields Life is undoubtedly a significant work of social history. The blog is being archived in both digital and printed form by the British Library and the Bishopsgate Institute. Rather than a stereotypical portrayal of East End poverty, GA calls it "a history of resourcefulness", of "people inventing their own ways to live in an extraordinary and infinite variety".

Sammy Minzly serving beigels at his Beigel Bake shop in Spitalfields, east London. Photograph: The Gentle Author/Spitalfields Life

It is also a riposte to the conventions of the arts, history and media. GA insists they would never accept, for instance, Arts Council funding, believing that government grants compromise an artist's freedom of choice. The internet has created a "great liberation", GA believes, in which "the means of printing and distribution has been given to writers to write what they choose". But most writers in mainstream publishing tend to focus on celebrities. "There's this sense, which I reject, that famous people are more interesting than non-famous people," says GA.

The Gentle Author's gentle style is rapturously received by a loyal band of readers around the world. "There is a great appetite for people who have led self-respecting lives," GA thinks. It might seem churlish to criticise such a heartfelt exercise but Spitalfields Life does not dwell on dissent in the community. The author admits they were "too frightened" to leave their house and bear witness to last summer's riots. What about the dark side? GA says s/he avoids featuring anyone they "can't feel sympathy for" and so Spitalfields Life does not feature any crooks or bankers. The whole approach is to "not be wiser" than the person they are interviewing; does this mean no critical scrutiny?

"I'm not presuming to be objective. My subjectivity is very apparent," says GA. "You always allow people to say what they want to say and sometimes people say contentious things." There is some shade amid all this light – Spitalfields Life records one local's battle with horrific racism and another who was tortured by Reggie Kray – and GA harbours strong critical feelings about, for instance, the "pretty iniquitous" displacement of local businesses by the Olympics. "Nobody I know in the East End has managed to get a ticket." The Olympics' impact on the East End has been interrogated through some blogposts, with GA thundering about the "autocratic caprices" of the Olympic Delivery Authority in one about the Eton Mission, a historic rowing club not permitted to use the River Lea for weeks around the games because of a supposed security risk.

A sense of documenting the last of things pervades Spitalfields Life. GA says they don't intend it to be elegiac but tries to catch things before they disappear. Older interviewees also have more stories. GA does not, however, fear the East End itself is coming to an end. The area is constantly changing but doesn't gentrification threaten a more permanent kind of change, tidying up the chaos and throttling the creativity? "That's what I thought before I started but the strength of culture is such that people who come here tend to go native. I have complete faith in the tenacity of people here to overcome the tyranny of any circumstances. All the people who have moved around, and all the buildings that have gone, you would think this place should have been wiped out culturally and it hasn't."

And so the Gentle Author slips into the East End beyond E Pellicci's, a slightly stooped, rather shy figure, in search of a mere 9,100 more stories. "Without me wanting to sound like a sentimentalist, I write about the things that delight me," s/he says. "It's given me a beautiful life."

David Szalay's London and the South East is a great London novel says Hatchards. We so agree!

 

Wonderful selection of London novels currently on display in Hatchards Piccadilly. But what really caught caught our eye was the inclusion of David Szalay’s brilliant London and the South-East. There are of course lots of great London novels but there aren’t many that take us into the deep and bitter interstices of the London workplace.

David Szalay worked in tele-sales in London for several years before writing London and the South-East and it shows. His book quotes from Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet’s salesman drama, that ‘a man is his job’ and is one of the few novels to write about this world full stop.

‘A sales office is a very dramatic environment; it’s all or nothing, and is quite different from a normal office,’ he says. Everything is stripped away – it’s all about success or failure and this made it fascinating to write about. But I was also interested in how we spend so much time at work and how it’s inevitable that its methods and mores get into us and affect our social definitions and how other people see us.’

The office politics, the crises, the targets, the redundancies, the worse next job, the terrible commute, the drinks with colleagues (the Old Cheshire Cheese off Fleet Street will never be the same again), all London working life is here. The London lives that most of us live – and with increased hours – but most novelists don’t seem that interested in. Except David Szalay. For which much thanks – and to Hatchards of course (and to our city-lit London we guess, as we included an excerpt from it too)

 

Four global cities. Four teams of writers. One 24-hour book for World Book Day

On Wednesday 29 February 2012 London's Spread the Word is bringing together four teams of writers and editors in London, Delhi, Kuala Lumpur and Vancouver, to create a unique novel. The project is an experiment in collaborative writing, using digital technology. The book, which will be written by multiple authors, operating in different time zones and countries, will be launched at noon on World Book Day, Thursday 1 March 2012.

How to get involved

Facebook: ‘like’ our page: www.facebook.com/pages/24hourbook, post your inspirational ideas before the day, and pop in on the 29th to see how things are going, respond to our writing challenges, and support our writers across the globe.


Twitter: Follow us @STWevents using the hashtag #24hourbook. We’ll be asking questions throughout the day and we’d love you to tweet us your answers.



Our London Writing Team
Shamim Azad was born in Bangladesh and moved to the UK in 1990.  Since 2004, she has worked in London as a poet and storyteller and a heritage animator in the UK creative industry. She has written plays and published novels, collections of short stories, poems and essays. www.myspace.com/shamimazad



Yemisi Blake writes poetry and short stories. He has been commissioned to create new work by Southbank Centre, The Wellcome Trust and Oxford University. He had been published in Spread the Word's Flight: Anthology of New Writing and in 2011 was one of 66 writers commissioned by The Bush Theatre to create a contemporary response to the King James Bible.



Sarah Butler is fascinated by the relationship between writing and place. She has been writer in residence for the Central Line, on the Greenwich Peninsula and at Great Ormond Street Hospital. Her debut novel will be published by Picador in Spring 2013.



Robert Collins is the author of the thriller Soul Corporation (Arrow) and is currently writing his second novel, set in London and Brazil. His journalism has appeared in The Daily Telegraph, The Observer and the Financial Times. He is the Assistant Literary Editor of The Sunday Times. www.soulcorporation.com



Cath Drake is an Aussie lured to literary delights of London who has been published in anthologies and magazines in UK, Australia and US. She has performed her work in cafes, bookshops, theatres, festivals, at Southbank, Tate Modern, and for unsuspecting passers by. She's also a non-fiction writer and award-winning journalist. cathdrake.wordpress.com

Romesh Gunesekera’s Booker short-listed Reef  and his other Granta books were reissued in September 2011. His new novel The Prisoner of Paradise is published this month by Bloomsbury. He writes without ink. More at www.romeshgunesekera.co.uk



Shaun Levin is the author of five books, the most recent of which are Snapshots of The Boy and Trees at a Sanatorium. He teaches creative writing on The Complete Creative Writing Course and makes chocolates and marshmallows in his spare time (or when he should be writing).

Aoife Mannix is an Irish writer and poet based in the UK.  She is the author of four collections of poetry and a novel.  She regularly features on BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live and has been poet in residence for the Royal Shakespeare Company.  www.aoifemannix.com



Femi Martin is a flash fiction writer and performer. Her ongoing collection, 'This Didn’t Happen', is comprised of more than 150 tiny tales. Femi has been a featured performer at numerous events including Literary Death Match,  UpRise Festival, Theatre Local (Royal Court Theatre), and the Southbank Centre. She is currently Spread the Word's Young Writer in Residence at the Charles Dickens Museum. www.femimartin.com



Chris Meade is Director of if:book UK. He writes, gives talks around the world, co-ordinates the if:book cafe writers, a group collaborating to make and sell new digital forms of literature, and is working on his own fiction project, The Nearlyography.  www.futureofthebook.org



Ben Payne is a writer, director and dramaturg with a background in theatre writing and production.  He is Co-Director and Co-Founder of Ministry of Stories, a writing centre for young people aged 8-18 in East London. www.ministryofstories.org

Saradha Soobrayen is the reviews editor for Modern Poetry in Translation. She was born in London where she works as a poetry editor, mentor and coach providing professional development for emerging and established writers and artists. She is widely published in anthologies. She received an Eric Gregory Award in 2004.

Simon Cole's alternative Olympic tour takes in Hackney's art, history and fashions

As the Olympics loom, Alexandra Topping takes a tour within sight and sound of the London 2012 site

Interactive: an alternative tour around the site

guardian.co.uk, Monday 20 February 2012 16.27 GMT

Article history

An alternative tour of the Olympics area takes in filter beds and football pitches, street art and the former Matchbox factory, as well as the swoop of the Aquatic Centre and the unromantic bulk of the media hub. Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian

The Olympic Stadium gleamed in the winter sunshine: imposing, elegant and, best of all, complete. But from the vantage point of the Greenway path, all around the signs of construction rumbled on.

Damien Erni, visiting the Olympic site with his family from Switzerland, looked impressed, if slightly concerned. "It's quite amazing how they are constructing all these buildings which will be used for different things afterwards," he said. "But we did kind of wonder ... is it going to be finished on time?"

Despite the lorries, high wire fences and men in hard hats, visits to the Olympic site are booming. Jo Hoad, chair of the Blue Badge 2012 tours, said: "People from all over the world are genuinely interested in the chance to see and hear about the Olympic Park for 2012. Over 34,000 of the public have been on the walking tours since April 2010 – the majority of these are proud Brits."

On a weekday trip, the viewing area is packed with visiting groups: a group of older women from Wimbledon, an army of small, very excited children and a batch of hungover students among them. Myrtle Linberg, 76, on a private tour with a Wimbledon ladies' group, admitted she wouldn't normally venture to this part of the city. "It was such a poor area before, wasn't it? But look at it now," she says, pointing at the stadium. "We've just been told there are more than 10,000 toilets in there."

Official tours run daily and cost £9, but some private companies are taking a more lavish approach. The Blue Tiger Company offers a 30-minute private helicopter flight above the site, lunch and tour for £350 a couple. "We get a lot of corporate and private clients, entertaining clients from the far east and Russia, but most people are from the UK," said Mia Patel, the sales director.

Simon Cole, tour guide and Hackney resident, has a different take. For him the Olympic boroughs – Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, Newham, Greenwich and Barking and Dagenham – are worth discovering on their own merits. "To a lot of people, the idea of east London conjures up images of industrial decay or gun crime," he said. "But there is an incredible amount to discover here – you can look back 200 years and to the future, without having to move."

Cole gave the Guardian an alternative tour of the Olympics, taking in filter beds and football pitches, street art and the former Matchbox factory, as well as the swoop of the Aquatic Centre and the unromantic bulk of the media hub.

Starting the tour at the Princess of Wales pub on Lea Bridge Road in Hackney, he led the way into a little-known east London delight – the Middlesex Filter Beds, built after London's worst cholera outbreak struck in 1852. When they were closed a century later, the beds became an inner-city wildlife haven and today provide a pocket of tranquillity. Rushes rustle in the wind and the rumble of traffic can only be faintly heard behind the birdsong. A short walk further on to the expanse of Hackney Marshes – the spiritual home of Sunday league football with more than 80 pitches – provided a particularly urban bucolic scene – with centuries-old trees surrounded by tower blocks and former power stations. It is an area packed with historical significance: in the ninth century part of the Danelaw boundary between the Saxons and Vikings, later a haunt of highwaymen. Edward Walford wrote in 1878: "In the Marshes towards Hackney Wick were low publichouses, the haunt of highwaymen and their Dulcineas. Dick Turpin was a constant guest [...] and few police-officers were bold enough to approach the spot."

Following the walk along the Hackney Cut – an artificial channel of the Lee Navigation canal built in 1770 to improve transport links – towards the Olympic Stadium takes the explorer though the East End's former industrial centre. The area has its own wildlife – the lesser-spotted hipster, to be found among the street art and identifiable by thrombosis-inducing trousers and bear-like overcoats. "Walking around here gives you a timeline of London history," said Cole. "This was the beating heart of industrial east London but in recent years has started to transform and now has the highest concentration of artists in Europe, with more than 600 studios."

After passing the media centre we entered the Olympic zone: security fences grow higher, canary-yellow sentry posts appear along the route and urban ramblers – slightly incongruous with walking poles and backpacks – stomp by. Random facts from different and competing tour guides fill the air: "The Olympic Park is two and a half square kilometres – that's the same size as Hyde Park!"; "At the peak of construction more than 10,000 people were at work here"; "The Aquatics Centre is made from 2,800 tonnes of steel."

From the Greenway, the Olympic Stadium, which will seat 80,000 people during the games and may afterwards, legal wrangling permitting, be the home of West Ham, fills the horizon.

More than 800,000 tonnes of soil were removed and 33 buildings demolished before construction could begin, with 5,250 workers taking three years to finish the stadium on time and within budget. A little further along the path you see Zaha Hadid's Aquatics Centre, with its wave-shaped roof and detachable wings for spectators that will be removed after the games, the concave roof of the Velodrome and the temporary bubble structure of the Basketball Arena, which will glow at night.

Next to the stadium, Anish Kapoor's ArcelorMittal Orbit – Britain's largest public sculpture – rises like the world's most frightening rollercoaster, promising the best view of the Olympic Park.

Still, those looking on from the Greenway don't seem to mind this next best option.

There is a sense of fizzing anticipation, which seems set to keep visitors streaming to the site right up until the Olympic flame is lit during the opening ceremony.

"It's something a bit different to do, for certain," said Erni. "And even though it looks a bit like a building site at the moment, it is really quite exciting."

Simon Cole also appears in city-lit Berlin (£8.99) published by Oxygen Books

The night bus, where London's heart truly beats

A lovely piece by the London Evening Standard's Richard Godwin on travelling on a London night bus.

Admittedly, you need to be in the right frame of mind to appreciate the London night bus. An evening's worth of alcohol usually does the trick.

Ideally, it should be Friday or Saturday night, about 2.30am. Then your fellow passengers will not be the sensible ones who have traipsed home early - but neither will they be the ones who have stayed to the bitter end. Any later and their thoughts will be on their beds, or their comedowns, or whoever they've dragged home with them. At around 2.30am, there's still life in the evening.

The optimum position is standing on the top deck.

The best buses are the ones that ply Kingsland Road (the 149, the 76, the 67), though the N29 from Camden has its moments. Still, it should be cold enough outside for there to be condensation on the windows, and when the bus moves it should feel as if you're sailing.

The ideal mood is bittersweet. Perhaps you have left the club too soon; perhaps it didn't quite work out and you're nursing a slight regret. Either way, you should carry a sense of the sorrows and pleasures of city life, its infinite possibilities and the impossibility of following them all.

If most of these conditions are met, then you can lose yourself in the scene. The French girl in the Harry Potter glasses, chirping away to her friend (French seems to be the second language on east London night buses); the black girl draped over the white guy, who's tracing the mysterious word KRUDE into the window mist; the Irishman on the stairs, holding a bottle of blue raspberry rotgut, singing some embarrassing pop song (Boyzone?
Actually: didn't he used to be in Boyzone?); Portuguese, Polish and possibly Vietnamese are audible. Someone is furtively chomping a burger, someone is rolling a spliff and a girl in a cowboy hat towards the back is laughing at you laughing at all of this...

Of course, London is not the only place with night buses. Still, there aren't many other cities where you find so many people so touchingly intent on having a good time - and a transport system so geared up to helping them do so. On certain top decks, you find a sort of cosy mayhem that's London at its most distinctive and best: tolerant, madly varied, infectious.

It rarely lasts all the way home. Soon after the Harry Potter girl gets off, somewhere in Dalston, you gain a seat and lose your vantage point. The singing gets annoying, there's some aggro downstairs and then the bus stands at a stop for ages. The couples huddle closer, the single people lose themselves in their iPhones, the spell is broken.

It's precious while it lasts, though. You may be the sentimental side of several pints but you're proud to call London your home

 

Reading the Olympic City: London - from the best books, blogs and literary places to visit to cafes, events and courses

 

 

 

From the best books and places to visit to cafés and events and courses, Malcolm Burgess helps you make the very most of the literary city.

Classic books on London: Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway, Charles Dickens Bleak House, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, Norman Collins, London Belongs to Me, Colin McInnes, Absolute Beginners, Virginia Woolf, The London Scene, Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners, John Evelyn, Diary, Samuel Pepys Diary

Recent recommended books: Monica Ali, Brick Lane, Xiaolu Guo, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, Sukdhev Sandu, Night Haunts, Gillian Tindall, The House by the Thames, Rachel Lichtenstein, On Brick Lane, David Szalay, London and the South-East, Clare Clark, The Great Stink, Will Self, The Book of Dave.

Favourite literary landmarks:

Keats House, Hampstead The beautiful Regency home where the Romantic poet lived and wrote from 1818 – 20. Now a thriving museum about Keats’ life and work with related exhibitions, events and walks, plus a delightful Keats-themed garden. www.keatshousecityoflondon.gov.uk 

Shakespeare’s Globe, Southwark Built close to the site of the original Thames-side Globe Theatre where many of Shakespeare’s most famous plays were first performed. Productions from Shakespeare and his contemporaries and modern playwrights from April to October with a year-round exhibition and tour. www.shakespearesglobe.com

Dr Johnson’s House, Fleet Street The wonderful Georgian home of Samuel Johnson from 1748-1759, where he compiled the first English Dictionary. Restored to its original design and full of writer memorabilia, with related literary and artistic exhibitions and events. www.drjohnsonshouse.org

Charles Dickens Museum, Holborn Dickens only surviving London home, where he lived from 1837 – 1839 holds the world’s most important collection of his rare editions, manuscripts, paintings and furniture. Special exhibitions throughout the year – 2012 is the 200^th anniversary of Charles Dickens’ birth.

www.dickensmuseum.com www.dickens2012.org

William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow Writer, designer, political campaigner and founder of the Arts and Crafts movement, William Morris lived at the family home Water House from 1848 – 1856. Re-opening in July 2012 it contains an outstanding collection of textiles, wallpapers, ceramics, furniture, stained glass, books and fine arts. www.walthamforest.gov.uk/william-morris

The Sherlock Holmes Museum, Baker Street Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson lived at 221b Baker Street which is now a museum dedicated to the Victorian detectives. Includes a re-creation of the famous first floor study, life-size wax works and other visitor attractions.

www.sherlock-holmes.co.uk

Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey Nearly every famous writer in English Literature is either buried or commemorated in Westminster Abbey. Geoffrey Chaucer, John Dryden, Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy are some of the writers buried here while memorials include those to Shakespeare, Emily Bronte, Henry James and John Betjeman.www.westminster-abbey.org

Carlyle’s House, Chelsea Thomas Carlyle was one of the nineteenth century’s best known historians and philosophers and lived with his wife Jane in this fine 1708 Queen Anne terraced house from 1834 – 1881 in an area rich with literary associations. Left very much as it was during Carlyle’s lifetime, it contains a wide range of books, pictures, furniture and personal possessions.

www.nationaltrust.org.uk/carlyleshouse

The British Library, St Pancras The national library of the UK has a collection of over 14 million books and moved into its impressive modern building in 1997. Fascinating themed exhibitions – currently on illustrated manuscripts – and displays. The Sir John Ritlbat Gallery has a permanent exhibition of books and manuscripts from Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales to the Magna Carta and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. www.bl.uk

The Freud Museum, Camden The London family home of Sigmund Freud and later his daughter Anna following their exile from Austria in 1938. Contains a brilliant collection of Freud memorabilia, antiquities and furniture, together with exhibitions, and includes Freud’s study and sofa, the scene of his most famous psycho-analytic investigations. www.freud.org.uk

Best bookshops:

London Review of Books Bookshop, 14 Bury Place, WC1A2JL www.lrbshop.co.uk

Foyles Bookshop, 113-119 Charing Cross Road, WC2H OEB, St Pancras International, Euston Road, N1C4QL, Festival Hall, South Bank SE1 8XX, Westfield White City, W12 7GE, Westfield Stratford City, E20 1EH www.foyles.co.uk

Waterstone’s Piccadilly, 203 – 206 Piccadilly, W1J9LE The largest bookshop in Europe!

Daunt Books, 83 Marylebone High Street, W1U 4QW, 158 – 164 Fulham Road, SW109PR, 112-114 Holland Park Avenue, W11 4VA, 51 South End Road, NW3 2QB, 193 Haverstock Hill, NW3 4QL, 61 Cheapside EC2U 6AX

Check these out for regular readings too.

Nicest literary cafes:

London Review of Books Bookshop Cafe, 14 Bury Place, WC1A2JL www.lrbshop.co.uk

Foyles Bookshop Ray’s Cafe, 113-119 Charing Cross Road, WC2H OEB, www.foyles.co.uk

The Poetry Café, 22 Betterton Street, Wc2H 9BX www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/cafe

Inspiring literary walks: www.walks.com Literary Bloomsbury and the Old Museum Quarter, Shakespeare’s and Dickens’s London

Useful apps: Get London Reading - wherever you are in London find out a book that’s set there - and Literary London. Both available on iTunes (Get London Reading is free)

Most interesting websites and blogs: www.londonfictions.com , www.fictionalcities.co.uk passionate enthusiasts on London writing. www.spreadtheword.org.uk for up-to-date London writing news and resources

 Live events and festivals:

• South Bank Centre, Riverside www.southbankcentre.co.uk includes the summer’s London Literature Festival
• The Poetry Café, 22 Betterton Street, WC2H 9BX. Regular poetry readings www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/cafe
• The Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, EC1R 3GA Focuses on translated writing www.freewordonline.com

 Many bookshops and libraries also hold events throughout the year. For the latest literary listings information  www.timeout.com/london (click books and poetry)

 Short writing courses and workshops:

• Faber Academy Writing Courses with visiting writer tutors www.faber.co.uk
• Urban Arvon summer three day course in association with Birkbeck College www.arvonfoundation.org
• Groucho Club, Soho week long summer workshop, plus other longer courses www.writingcourses.org.uk
• City Lit weekend creative writing courses www.citylit.ac.uk

 Also available in this series: Reading the City: Paris

Malcolm Burgess is the publisher of Oxygen Books’ city-lit London (£8.99, paperback) www.oxygenbooks.co.uk