In this section you will find photos and links to some of our favourite writers. Many of them have links to London although some, like John Clare, lived outside London while maintaining links with patrons and benefactors in the city.
We have moving photos of the simple grave of Edward Thomas in a Commonwealth War Graves cemetery at Agny in France, close to where he fell in WW1 on 9 April 1917. Agny is around 3 miles from Arras.
London and the River are central to many novels of Dickens and we have photos of some of the places that featured in his work or his life, such as Marshalsea Prison.
We have been part of the crowd that flows over London Bridge, certainly in pre-Pandemic times. No doubt the flow of City workers will resume and once again we will strain our ears to hear “a dead sound on the final stroke of nine” from St Mary Woolnoth’s.
We have stood on Westminster Bridge on a crisp winter morning, on our way to meetings in Parliament or Portcullis House, and prompted to think of Wordsworth and “the beauty of the morning”.
We are allowed to bring in some contemporary writers, of course. We thought we would start with Karis Williamson, a gifted young writer who lives in Inverness. Her work touches us and she has a growing audience (including Sir David Attenborough). Her poem “Vendange” is set in Chartrons in Bordeaux although it reaches a number of places.