I find filming on the street with a tripod extremely awkward. I am not by nature a particularly confident person. I imagine some people could have a loose script prepared, turn up to a spot, plonk down their tripod and start filming, hey ho, away we go. This video took me at least 12 minutes of mental preparation not least because there were a number of large pubmen at the Lady Ottoline across the road surveying me warily. I could tell they thought me a TikTok fiend and were ready to hound me unrelentingly as soon as I started filming.

Unsurprisingly, not so. I set up the tripod, began talking, did two takes, finished, a nice woman from the pub came over and chatted to me about what I was filming and was genuinely quite interested to hear it was about Hafez, a poet of whom she had not heard but would look up.

It transpires that people in general, especially in London, do not really give a f*** what you’re up to. And often, they’re pleasantly interested.

So, to Hafez. I love the walls in London that are daubed with poetry or some borderline poetic language. There are more than you would expect. Some of the poems that they have on the tube leave me a bit cold, forced pseudo-earnestness comparable to the very worst on Instapoetry.

But on many backstreets are actual bits of poetic language, crafted and refined.

This great mural by Seb Lester is a beautiful addition to a Holborn backstreet and he has used the widely-disseminated interpretation of the Hafez original by American poet, Daniel Ladinsky.

However, there is likely something lost in translation from the ancient poem. This simple verse is more of an adaptation of the vibes of Hafez - there is no Farsi original of the above. This begs a question that I have discussed on my tours before.

Can you truly translate a poem?

I met a translator of poetry on my London Poetry Tour last year and I asked her the above question in slightly less aggressive language. Her answer surprised me…

She said no. It is impossible to truly translate a poem. She laughed as she said this as she appreciated that this somewhat undermined the project of her entire career.

Of course, one can translate the literal, physical, practical words and find a meter and a rhythm that matches, almost, possibly, replicates the feel and the texture and the tone of the poem in its original language. But how much inevitably becomes interpretation, the translator offering their perspective of what the original poet was getting at, vibes-wise, rhythm-wise. Perhaps all the translator can do is hold up a mirror to the source text and cast it into a legible form in their own tongue.

This, I should say, is not to undermine the work of translators. Translation is its own artform, and the process of making art is its own form of translation, feeling something and attempting to translate that into a form that may be understandable by the other.

This idea of human translation is gaining more importance in the age of rampant AI slop. AI tools are becoming increasingly sophisticated and thereby able to translate the practical meaning of the words with increasing accuracy. Google Translate is now almost worryingly good.

But, can an AI tool gaze deep into the eyes of a poet, pore over their work, examine their souls, and attempt, clumsily, indelicately, and imperfectly to translate whatever lies there into their own language?

The answer is of course no. Poetry, music, all forms of art are soulful media. An LLM may be able to produce a polished equivalent and capture meaning but only a human, the hard-working love-labourer that is a translator, can see it and channel it through the warping prism of their own consciousness.

This is why we will still need human translators. Existence cannot and should not be automated.

QQ #107 next Monday. See you then.

Subscribe now

Sources

Elegant Calligraphy Mural Greets Passersby With an Uplifting Quote From a 14th Century Poet. Article here.

Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) by Dick Davis.

A Year with Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky.

Script

Who wrote this poem?

I’m glad you asked.

Yes, here on John Street in Holborn is a beautiful mural by calligraphy master Seb Lester that reads:

I wish I could show you

When you are lonely or in darkness

The astonishing light of your own being

The poem was written by the Persian poet and mystic, Hafez or Hafiz, back in the 1300s.

Hafez might well be the greatest Persian poet - he is still beloved in Iran and 12 October is still celebrated as Hafez Day.

Hafez is actually a title for someone who has memorised the Qu’ran - which the poet is said to have done as a young boy.

And he also inspired Seb Lester - who told me that there is no special significance to John Street, but that the aesthetic is meant to be an uplifting surprise.

So down a small London side street - the words of one of the greatest poets to ever live adorn the wall.

A reminder that in darkness, your own being - is a truly astonishing thing.

Yes, poetry is everywhere in London - you just need to know where to look.

Now turn off this godforsaken app and go and read a book.

Subscribe now

The above picture was taken on 6 November 2023. I am therefore unsure of the exact date upon which someone viciously defaced this Shakespeare information board. But it must have been at some point in the last (almost) three years. As depicted in the below video, the sign now crassly, crudely, and borderline outrageously does not bear Shakespeare’s birth year and death year at all.

Instead, it bears the birth year and death year of another man.

I summate this in the punchy video below - oo, yeah, multiple different visuals in the first 2 seconds, click on me, please click on me.

But now we’re here on the safe space of Substack where people remain in possession of some of their attention span, I continue.

I maintain that this is certainly the nerdiest and potentially most conspiratorial graffiti in London. I skim over the evidence in the video in an attempt to make it as punchy as possible (oo, yeah, fun music, rapid change subtitles, oo, yeah) but the case for Oxford is thin.

The originator of the Oxford theory was a man by the name of J. Thomas Looney. I must admit, I would struggle to believe any notions espoused by a man with such a name. Perhaps this is judgmental and horribly discriminatory of me towards people with names that are bywords for insanity. I confess I would feel similarly about academics with names such as Dr. I. M. A. Crackpot or Ms. Maxine Madhead. If that makes me a bigot, so be it. I just could not imagine convincing my hypothetical wife of the merits of the thinking of a man named Looney.

Moving on from his name…

Subscribe now

…Looney was effective in establishing Edward de Vere as the key contender if Shakespeare was in fact not Shakespeare. Or, more correctly, if William Shakespeare from Stratford was in fact not the man who wrote all of the plays we now attribute to Shakespeare (whoever or whatever he was). You can read the full text of Shakespeare Identified here if you wish.

Oxfordians really seem to have an issue with the possibility of Shakespeare the man as Shakespeare the playwright. A glover’s boy from Stratford-upon-Avon cannot possibly have had access to the information and insights that were deployed with such emotional intelligence by the author of the plays under Shakespeare’s name.

Conspiracy theories and contradictory thinking are important ways of attacking the prevailing monoculture and accepted truths. Shakespeare is one of the totems of our culture and anyone seeking (justifiably) to subvert the culture sometimes likes to use Shakespeare as their target. We do have a lot of younger folks on our tours who are keen to test my view on whether Shakespeare was Shakespeare, or whether he was a collective of different writers, Christopher Marlowe, his own wife/cat/child etc., etc…

There are most certainly gaps in the documentary record of Shakespeare’s life. Bill Bryson admits this from the outset of his fun but admittedly light biography of Shakespeare and says that we don’t really know that much about him or who he was. We have records certainly, but some of these are patchy.

Most of my thoughts on this are informed by the writings of James Shapiro, a fantastic scholar of Shakespeare and a brilliant writer. I encourage you to immediately stop reading this short post and turn to the works of James Shapiro. Contested Will especially is an excellent exploration of the conspiracy theories themselves but also of the sociological and psychological factors that underpin such theories taking root.

However, there is something quite understandable about the conspiracies. Shakespeare is magic. And magic isn’t real.

So, there must be another more rational explanation, which is what the Oxfordians and all others of their ilk seek.

See you tomorrow for another quick question.

Sources

Contested Will by James Shapiro

1599 by James Shapiro

1606 by James Shapiro

Shakespeare by Bill Bryson

Review of Contested Will by Hilary Mantel. Link here.

Top 18 Reasons Why Edward de Vere (Oxford) Was Shakespeare. Link here.

Full Video Script

What is this graffiti all about?

I’m glad you asked.

Yes, here at the Old Globe in London some impudent scamp has changed Shakespeare’s birth year from 1564 to 1550.

his death year from 1616 to 1604.

Why?

Well, there are some folks who think that Shakespeare was not actually Shakespeare.

And that all of his plays were actually written by Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, who was born in 1550 and died - yep - in 1604.

De Vere is remembered today for farting in front of Queen Elizabeth and exiling himself for 7 years out of shame.

So - was he Shakespeare?

The “evidence” is all pretty circumstantial - it focusses on Oxford’s social connections and also passages of his bible that he underlined being vaguely similar to some of Shakespeare’s work.

The main hole in the theory is that Oxford definitely died in 1604 - before King Lear, Macbeth, and many other plays were written.

But - like all conspiracy theories - absence of evidence has become evidence of absence for the true believers,

and one of them was clearly committed enough to the theory to deface this here sign.

What do you reckon? Let me know in the comments, then turn off this godforsaken app and go and read a book.

Shakespeare, in common with several other writers and theatre-makers of his day, was not particularly good at paying his taxes. This is very useful for anyone with a passing interest in his life as it means we have a good idea of two of his addresses in London:

• One in St Helen’s Bishopsgate, as he appears on the roll of tax defaulters from 1597. Have a look here.

• One in the Borough of Southwark, as he appears on another list of debts owed to the Crown from 1600. Have a look here.

This means we think Shakespeare could well have been living in Southwark, very close to the Globe and the Old Clink Prison, in the late 1500s or early 1600s.

However, this is not why the mural at Clink Street is on that particular wall. Artist Jimmy himself says of the railway arch: “We're in the heart of Shakespeare territory right here. The Globe is nearby, the Rose Theatre was nearby and his brother is buried in Southwark Cathedral so this is the ideal spot."

Perhaps, then, the mural’s presence on this exact arch is something of a coincidence.

More thoughts on the mural and our desires to prettify Shakespeare behind the paywall.

Subscribe now

Read more

Subscribe now

Read more

How did Keats save a life?

I’m glad you asked.

Yes, John Keats (lovely statue of him here) is remembered today as one of our most beloved romantic poets.

But before that he was training as a Doctor here at the old Guy’s Hospital.

Today it’s part of King’s College - which is why this statue is here in the courtyard.

People often wonder on our tours if Keats - as something as a sensitive little softboy - would have been any good in a doctors surgery in a time before anaesthetic.

But we know for sure that he was.

Because in March 1816 a woman named Jane Hull was brought to Keats’ surgery with bullet wounds to her head and neck.

She had been shot by her husband - a brutish and controlling man.

And Young John Keats, at the humble age of 20, was the one who extracted the pistol ball from Jane Hull’s neck - saving her life.

So we can say young Master Keats had a very steady hand - both with the pen and the scalpel.

Now turn off this godforsaken app and go and read a book.

Read more

Last year, I posted a series of 99 daily videos I referred to as the Quizzical Questions of Literary London (QQs of LL).

It was a fun project and greatly expanded my own knowledge of London’s literary heritage. It got me a few new followers on social media, but that boost was mainly traceable to one single video about Rabindranath Thakur where I used the anglicised form of his surname (Tagore).

There is still a great deal of debate about his name in Bengal, across India and more widely around the world, so my own ignorance was enough to catalyse an extensive debate in the comments which led to that video’s semi-virality.

You can watch that video and engage with the comments here if you feel so inclined (as Substack is not allowing me to embed it).

Virality, though, was not the aim of the videos. The occasional viral video will probably be useful as I look to build Bookmarked, but the main point is to deliver concise, informative and entertaining answers to occasionally provocative and (hopefully) always interesting questions. A catalogue of these videos on social media will hopefully get a wider group of people who are very interested in our work on London’s literary history.

Series 2 of these questions will now be re-branded the QQs (Quick Questions). Quizzical was probably always an unnecessary adjective… are all questions not by their very nature quizzical?

But they are a means to an end rather than an end in itself.

I have two specific ends (or “goals” would probably be a more normal word for them…) in mind for Bookmarked.

Subscribe now

The first is to get consistently higher numbers of people booking on our tours. At the moment, I am just about scraping a living off the tours. It’s a fun job and I get to meet brilliant new people every day. But at the age of 34, and surrounded by friends who have children, spouses, and houses, I need to be able to do more than just survive now. I will need to be more practical about whether this is a sufficiently sustainable enough business for me to live off if the business continues at its current level.

The second (and longer-term) goal is to produce a book about London’s literary history. These posts are going to be the first draft of that book.

To find a publisher, my following will need to grow. And that is what the social media content and these posts will be all about. You can help with both of these ends - by spreading the word, sharing my social media content and Substack posts, and telling your friends and family (and any other associates and acquaintances) about our work.

Each Substack post will have the freely available social media video at the top. Then, below the paywall (for £5 a month) will be a more extensive written piece with footnotes and sources used to make the video. There will be 4-5 of these published per week.

By subscribing, you help me keep doing this work. Thanks for reading. Spread the word.

Now turn off this godforsaken app and go and read a book.

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

Hello dear friends,

I want to do more online that is more substantial and in-depth than our social media videos. The videos are fun to make and good for reaching people, but part of the mission of Bookmarked is to guide people away from social media and towards experiences (and books!) in the real world.

Therefore and forthwith, I will be posting a lot more on here with additional stories, footnotes and sources for our 4-5 times weekly quick questions that we’re sharing on social media. This is to give you, our beloved subscribers, more insight into our research process and get some more interesting stories about the writers and poets of London.

So… these longer posts will hopefully go some way towards that. And perhaps they will form the basis of my future magnum opus non-fiction work that details the literary history of London.

Also, on a practical note, tour guiding is a highly seasonal business and even within those seasonal spikes, there are quite acute highs and lows. We have struggled at various points over the last year to make this a sustainable business and while things are steadier now, it is an ongoing challenge.

So to support the Bookmarked work, all these extra stories and sources will be for paid subscribers for £5 a month.

As a first special treat, paying subscribers can below access a short story about Oscar Wilde coming back to life.

Now get off this godforsaken app and go and read a book (after you’ve subscribed and read the story below).

Subscribe now

Read more

Hello dear friends,

I have been asked many times over the years whether I have a reading list for my main literary walking tour (now called Shakespeare, Dickens and London’s Greatest Stories Walking Tour and bookable and recommended on GuruWalk).

My response has either been a rueful shake of the head or a nod and an acceptance that it would be a very good idea but no, no, I haven’t got one yet and I’m truly, very, deeply sorry or simply to ignore the question entirely and launch into a tangentially related fact.

I should say - those were my responses… until now.

Below, you can find my reading list. Thanks to all those who have continued to politely encourage me to put this together.

This contains key sources I used when preparing the tour itself, my favourite works by the writers discussed on the tour, a few useful web links, and some film, TV and podcast recommendations. I have structured the reading list in order of their mention on the tour so it is a bit illogical in any other sense. The actual reading list is far, far longer than the below but this is for those of you who want an achievable way of getting into the deeper stories.

If you’re looking for a full list of just texts, you’ll find it at the bottom. The article below is a more meandering exploration of the books and sources used and my thoughts and notes on many of them. I hope you enjoy and please do reach out if you want to discuss any of the below in more depth.

This list is rather long so for those of you who lack the time and inclination, here’s my starter pack of 5 books (with a bonus 6th for larks):

• London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd

• The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (Peter Ackroyd version)

• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

• 1599 by James Shapiro

• Poems by John Keats (selected by Andrew Motion)

• BONUS: The Fraud by Zadie Smith

For a full annotated version of the tour script (along with recordings of the stories from each stop), you can subscribe to this Substack. That will be published behind the paywall in the coming days.

A Walking/Reading Journey

General Research

The true OG of historians of London (and much of English literature) is Peter Ackroyd and his London: The Biography was invaluable in preparing the wider framework of the tour. I also referred to Margaret Willes’ Liberty Over London Bridge: A History of the People of Southwark for a more in-depth look at the history of Southwark specifically.

Georgian London by Lucy Inglis is great and Liza Picard is another brilliant historian of London: her three respective works Victorian London, Restoration London and Elizabeth’s London are all useful primers.

For concise and fact-packed literary histories of London, Ed Glinert’s Literary London is invaluable. Terry Philpot’s 111 Literary Places in London That You Shouldn’t Miss is also very useful, as is Writers’ London by Carrie Kania & Alan Oliver.

Stop 1. The George, Borough High Street

We begin the tour at The George, a mighty fine pub dating to 1676. Shakespeare’s Local by Pete Brown is excellent on the history of the pub and Southwark more widely.

The Dickens novels mentioned at this stop are The Pickwick Papers, Little Dorrit and Our Mutual Friend. A passage in The Pickwick Papers strongly alludes to The George, while a short scene in Little Dorrit actually takes place in the pub when Tip Dorrit goes to the pub to write begging letters.

Some guides will also tell you that Dickens mentions The George in Our Mutual Friend (Dickens’ final completed novel) but that’s not quite true. The passage cited is as follows:

“The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters, already mentioned as a tavern of a dropsical appearance, had long settled down into a state of hale infirmity. In its whole constitution it had not a straight floor, and hardly a straight line; but it had outlasted, and clearly would yet outlast, many a better-trimmed building, many a sprucer public-house. Externally, it was a narrow lopsided wooden jumble of corpulent windows heaped one upon another as you might heap as many toppling oranges, with a crazy wooden verandah impending over the water; indeed the whole house, inclusive of the complaining flag-staff on the roof, impended over the water, but seemed to have got into the condition of a faint-hearted diver who has paused so long on the brink that he will never go in at all.”

However, the fictional The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters is much more likely to have been based on The Grapes in Limehouse… not The George.

We have a short bit on Dickens’ biography and also on Shakespeare here, but I’ll talk in more detail about the sources I used for both of those chaps later on at the more in-depth author-focussed sections.

Stops 2-3. The Old Tabard Inn, Talbot Yard and Hidden Park (Canterbury Tales)

This commences the Canterbury Tales section of the tour. The only place to begin reading here is with the original text of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. The most useful version for a modern reader is the translation into modern prose by Peter Ackroyd. I would also refer to a side-by-side translation of the Middle English into modern (1960s language) of some of the most famous tales in the Canterbury Tales edited by A. Kent Hieatt & Constance B. Hieatt. The Riverside Chaucer is a somewhat hilarious tome to grapple with as it literally contains the complete works of Chaucer and is therefore 1,300 pages long. If you want to look cool and impressive reading a book in public, select that one.

The best books about Chaucer are Chaucer: A European Life by Marion Turner, Chaucer’s Tale: 1386 and the Road to Canterbury by Paul Strohm and Chaucer: Brief Lives by Peter Ackroyd (again… and not for the last time on this list).

If you’re interested in Chaucer being inspired by The Decameron, this is a good article entitled Chaucer’s Italian Inheritance by David Wallace. The Decameron itself by Giovanni Boccaccio is good fun - though it is also 900 pages long. So perhaps take your time with that one, and enjoy the Netflix series alongside it.

Stop 4. Keats Statue, King’s College

There are many excellent collections of Keats’ poetry. My favourite is the edition selected by Andrew Motion in the Faber Nature Poets series primarily because it is such a lovely volume. However, it is not exhaustive, so I’d recommend having a good old go over the Oxford World Classics John Keats: The Major Works.

My favourite biography of Keats is Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph by Lucasta Miller. Miller writes brilliantly and uses one of Keats’ poems as a jumping off point for another section of his life: a very simple and effective structure. Keats by Andrew Motion and John Keats by Nicholas Roe are similarly informative and entertaining in equal measure.

And here is quite a fun essay about his visit to John Keats’ grave by a 22-year-old Oscar Wilde.

On the Romantic Poets and the Cockney School more widely, I recommend reading Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives by Daisy Hay, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature by M. H. Abrams and The Wit In The Dungeon: The Life of Leigh Hunt by Anthony Holden.

Stop 5. Marshalsea Prison South Wall

We come on to where Dickens’ father was imprisoned when young Charles was only 12 years old.

The main novels I refer to here are The Pickwick Papers, Little Dorrit, Oliver Twist and David Copperfield (and occasional A Tale of Two Cities if the mood takes me).

My personal favourite biography of Dickens is a somewhat archaic choice written by his friend John Forster entitled The Life of Charles Dickens just because there are so many personal letters in there. The actual best one is probably Charles Dickens by Michael Slater. Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin is also very good but there is a key caveat that she includes as fact the hoax story that Dickens and Dostoevsky met each other in 1862. This is not true.

And Dickens by… yes, that man again, Peter Ackroyd.

For insights into Dickens’ relationship with Nelly Ternan (his purported lover), have a read of The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens by Claire Tomalin.

On the history of the Marshalsea Prison, Mansions of Misery by Jerry White was invaluable while The Devil in the Marshalsea by Antonia Hodgson is both set in 1727 and fictional… but still fun and informative.

Stop 5b. Little Dorrit Court

This is a little mini-stop and some of the theories about the naming of streets after Dickens’ characters are unsubstantiated. However, there are some fun blogs about the streets named after the characters: here’s one in Londonist and this one from Homegirl London.

My working assumption is that the characters selected were those from novels most based in Southwark while Quilp was perhaps selected as a mean and nasty money-lender (which the Marshalsea Debtors’ Prison is obviously closely acquainted with).

Here is the full list of Dickens-inspired streets:

Copperfield Street named after David Copperfield

Sawyer Street named after Bob Sawyer from The Pickwick Papers

Trundle Street named after Mr. Trundle from The Pickwick Papers

Weller Street named after Sam Weller from The Pickwick Papers

Pickwick Street named after… yes, Samuel Pickwick from The Pickwick Papers

Quilp Street named after Daniel Quilp from The Old Curiosity Shop

Clennam Street named after Arthur Clennam from Little Dorrit

Little Dorrit Court named after Lil’ D herself

And here’s a little local news article about the misspelt street sign in 2013.

Subscribe now

Stop 6. Red Cross Garden

Now, we come to Octavia Hill’s garden and meditate on Dickens’ overwhelming influence a little bit more.

On Hill’s life and work, Octavia Hill: Social Reformer and Founder of the National Trust by Gillian Darley seems to be the only comprehensive biography of her (a bit of an oversight considering her importance… apologies to any lesser known biographers of Octavia).

There is a nice memorial tablet to Octavia Hill in Westminster Abbey and some information on that can be found here. There is also an interesting article in History Today here on Dickens’ influence on Octavia Hill.

And here is a brilliant video from the marvellous John Rogers on Octavia Hill’s influence in Southwark. This goes into greater detail about Dickens’ and Hill’s overlap and also contains the following brilliant quote from Octavia Hill:

“We all need space; unless we have it we cannot reach that sense of quiet in which whispers of better things come to us”.

The article by Zadie Smith that I refer to extensively is in the New Yorker here. And I do recommend Zadie’s The Fraud - it’s rollicking fun.

Stop 7. Crossbones Graveyard

We stop briefly outside the Crossbones Graveyard. There is a brilliant modern anthropology about Crossbones entitled The Spirits of Crossbones Graveyard: Time, Ritual, and Sexual Commerce in London by Sondra L. Hausner. Another interesting text is The Outcast Dead by Paul Slade.

A key source is of course The Southwark Mysteries by John Constable. There is also a good little magazine article about Crossbones in the Smithsonian Magazine here.

There is an episode of Frank Turner’s podcast about Crossbones here.

And somewhat obvious, but the Crossbones website itself is handy.

Stop 8. Shakespeare Mural, Clink Street

Thus begins the Shakespeare leg of the tour and also the home straight. There is an abundance of literature on Shakespeare’s life so it’s often hard to know where to begin. A strong choice for a very high-level look at the Bard’s life is Shakespeare by Bill Bryson: a slim and good introductory volume. Bryson begins this short book by explaining why we don’t actually know that much about Shakespeare. Useful as an overview - but not especially in-depth.

For deeper reading on Shakespeare’s life and times, I would recommend Will in the World – How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt, The Genius of Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate, and Shakespeare by…. that man again… Peter Ackroyd.

I’d also recommend Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. As you can tell from title, Bloom’s thesis is quite bold but it is an interesting take.

For reviews of the work, I’d recommend the brilliantly punchy This Is Shakespeare: How to Read the World’s Greatest Playwright by Emma Smith and Shakespeare After All by Marjorie Garber. The great Isaac Asimov also wrote the wonderful Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare which is a play-by-play analysis of Shakespeare’s repertoire.

Slightly more academic but quite illuminating (and based on a series of lectures) is A.C. Bradley’s Shakespearean Tragedy which you can read online here.

On the subject of Shakespeare conspiracy theories, have a read of Contested Will by James Shapiro and Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature by Elizabeth Winkler. I’m less interested in the conspiracy theories themselves but am fascinated by the anthropological and social psychological factors that underlie much conspiratorial thought.

Finally, Judi Dench’s Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent is a lovely read about the great Dame’s intimate relationship with the Bard.

Stop 9. The site of the old Globe Theatre

1599 by James Shapiro was my main source for this stop. He begins that book with an in-depth description of the deconstruction of The Theatre and the subsequent building of the Globe. 1599 is probably one of the best non-fiction books ever written (certainly one of the best I’ve ever read). Bizarrely for a book about one specific year in Shakespeare’s life, it is a real page-turner and I hoovered it up when I first read it. I also heartily recommend 1606 by James Shapiro which adopts the same structure in focussing on one specific year in Shakespeare’s life.

Stop 10. Shakespeare’s Globe, South Bank

And so, we come to our final stop… and now my charms are all o’erthrown.

There are a few good books about the construction of the new Globe (I still find its official name of Shakespeare’s Globe a bit misleading).

This Wooden O: Shakespeare’s Globe Reborn: Achieving an American’s Dream by Barry Day has an introduction from the venerable John Gielgud and provides a great overview of quite how challenging it was for Sam Wanamaker to see this project through to completion. You used to be able to buy this in the shop at the Globe.

There is another interesting book about the building of the new Globe which is entitled Shakespeare’s Globe Rebuilt by J. R. Mulryne & Margaret Shewring. It is quite hard to find a physical copy but sections of it are here on Google Books.

The Globe website has some fun little articles too: here is one about building the Globe and here is the story of the Globe. And here is the source for a few of the fun facts that I end the tour with.

I close the tour with a passage from The Tempest here and the full speech is below:

Now my charms are all o’erthrown,
And what strength I have ’s mine own,
Which is most faint. Now ’tis true
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardoned the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell,
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands.
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,

And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself, and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardoned be,
Let your indulgence set me free.

Thanks for reading! Below you can find the full list of texts referred to. More London literary goodness to come.

Subscribe now

Reading List (Texts Only)

🏛️ General London & Literary Context

• London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd

• Shakespeare’s Local by Pete Brown

• Literary London by Ed Glinert

• Georgian London by Lucy Inglis

• Writers’ London by Carrie Kania & Alan Oliver

• Victorian London by Liza Picard

• Restoration London by Liza Picard

• Elizabeth’s London by Liza Picard

• 111 Literary Places in London That You Shouldn’t Miss by Terry Philpot

• Liberty Over London Bridge by Margaret Willes

📜 Chaucer & Medieval Literature

• Chaucer: Brief Lives by Peter Ackroyd

• The Canterbury Tales (Modern Prose Translation) by Peter Ackroyd

• The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio

• The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

• The Riverside Chaucer by Geoffrey Chaucer

• The Canterbury Tales (Translation) by A. Kent Hieatt & Constance B. Hieatt

• Chaucer’s Tale: 1386 and the Road to Canterbury by Paul Strohm

• Chaucer: A European Life by Marion Turner

🌿 Romantic Poets (Keats & Circle)

• Natural Supernaturalism by M. H. Abrams

• Young Romantics by Daisy Hay

• The Wit in the Dungeon by Anthony Holden

• John Keats: The Major Works by John Keats

• Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph by Lucasta Miller

• Keats by Andrew Motion

• John Keats by Nicholas Roe

🏚️ Charles Dickens

• Dickens by Peter Ackroyd

• The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

• Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens

• Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

• Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

• The Life of Charles Dickens by John Forster

• The Devil in the Marshalsea by Antonia Hodgson

• Charles Dickens by Michael Slater

• Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin

• The Invisible Woman by Claire Tomalin

• Mansions of Misery by Jerry White

🌳 Social Reform & Victorian London

• Octavia Hill by Gillian Darley

• The Fraud by Zadie Smith

⚰️ Crossbones & Southwark Underworld

• The Spirits of Crossbones Graveyard by Sondra L. Hausner

• The Southwark Mysteries by John Constable

• The Outcast Dead by Paul Slade

🎭 Shakespeare

Biography & Context

• Shakespeare by Peter Ackroyd

• The Genius of Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate

• Shakespeare by Bill Bryson

• Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt

Criticism & Interpretation

• Shakespearean Tragedy by A. C. Bradley

• Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom

• Shakespeare After All by Marjorie Garber

• Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare by Isaac Asimov

• This Is Shakespeare by Emma Smith

Authorship Debate

• Contested Will by James Shapiro

• Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies by Elizabeth Winkler

🎭 Shakespeare’s World (Focused Studies)

• 1599 by James Shapiro

• 1606 by James Shapiro

🏗️ The Globe Theatre

• This Wooden O by Barry Day

• Shakespeare’s Globe Rebuilt by J. R. Mulryne & Margaret Shewring

Subscribe now

Thank you for joining our reading this week!

We will be starting Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck on Monday.

And we will be starting our next book, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men on Monday.

Today has gotten away from me slightly so I won’t be able to do a full audio post - but please enjoy Chapters 1-3 of The Bookshop this evening and let me know what you think tomorrow…

Tracing the similarities and differences between Small Things Like These, and another Christmas classic, A Christmas Carol… More discussions of Bill Furlong’s parentage and the meaning of the box of shoes in the pod.

Thanks for being part of the Daily Book Club this week - we’ll be watching the film of Small Things Like These tomorrow and I’ll do a short post on that.

We’ll be getting into a new book from next Monday. Very delighted to announce that it will be The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald.

Have a lovely weekend in the meantime - and see you next week if I don’t see you tomorrow.

And a short audio introduction to today’s chapters for free subscribers. For the more in-depth analysis behind the paywall, upgrade to paid.

Subscribe now

Read more

Read more

So we reach the final chapter of this short but very lovely little book. There is uncertainty and slight frustration at this stage - is Nenna really going to move back to Canada with her daughters? What about the possible relationship with Richard and some prospective happiness?

The chapter begins with reflections on this and a classic Fitzgeraldian one-liner:

All distances are the same to those who do not meet.

There is some hint of resolution for Nenna with the conclusion of the internal trial that perpetually rages in her head, suggesting that the guilt stemmed in part from her relationship with Edward.

Nenna goes to meet Louise at the hotel they are staying in and the plans are laid out for the return to Canada. Fitzgerald is sometimes amusingly economical with her language and characterisation. For example, Louise’s husband is introduced as such:

Mr Swanson came in, greeted everybody, and ordered a rye.

There is something comically blunt and to-the-point about this language - and part of why I love Fitzgerald. It appears the girls are fairly resolved to the prospect of the move to Canada. We also quickly learn that Stripey has thankfully survived.

And then, the storm, and the conclusion of the book.

The weather is almost a character in itself in Offshore, occupying a particularly prominent place in the lives of the people of the Reach. They are exposed to the idiosyncrasies of the British climate more than most. But we have not seen a storm, really, in Offshore. Fitzgerald notes:

A storm always seems a strange thing in a great city, where there are so many immovables.

And as we leave Nenna, Martha and Tilda for the last time, we return for the final action of the book to the Reach and to Maurice on Maurice. Everyone else has abandoned the Reach (Tilda is unhappy about this - she thought them all cowards) but Maurice remains, drunk and alone.

It is at this moment, as winds whip the Reach and the full power of the storm is made clear, that Edward arrives. He introduces himself by the surname he shares with Nenna and Maurice welcomes him aboard. An excellent line here on Maurice’s state of drunkenness:

Maurice was still sober enough to know that he was drunk.

Edward and Maurice drink together then decide to go to Grace. They do not make it. The book ends:

It was in this way that Maurice, with the two of them clinging on for dear life, put out on the tide.

What does this mean? Why does the book end this way? With two secondary characters left to an uncertain fate amidst a howling storm on the River Thames? I have a few interpretations. I think Fitzgerald is generally reticent to give her protagonists (or any characters for that matter) neatly packaged conclusions. Her writing is of life, the whole sheer muddy mess of it. Edward has come to the Reach it seems to reconcile with his wife (he brings perfume as a gift - suggested by irritating Gordon’s irritating mother). But Fitzgerald doesn’t let him get there. Perhaps there is something here about delay and equivocation - making the most of the people who care about you when you can. Edward has failed to do that until now - and then the storm (the great unpredictable) comes. Perhaps he should have cherished and loved Nenna (and his daughters) when he had the chance.

And where is Maurice (and Maurice) in all of this? Throughout the text, he seems to be something of a tragic hero - entertaining, charming, charismatic, possibly alcoholic, lonely. He remains on the Reach until the end after everyone else has abandoned it in the face of the storm. A captain’s noble commitment to his ship or an apathy about being anywhere else - it is difficult to say.

I do think as readers we have no option other than to care deeply for Maurice:

Even like that, hopelessly drunk and quite tired out, there was about him an appealing look of promise, of everything that can be meant by friendship.

He is a generous and almost naively optimistic person whose good nature has been abused by Harry and potentially by many of the men he has seen in his professional life. But still, he retains his positivity and hope. And this has left him where he is.

So, we leave Edward and Maurice on the river. Their fate is left unclear - they are left dangling from the boat as the storm bears them into the River Thames.

A classic Fitzgerald ending and perhaps there is something universal in that - all of us are in our own way clinging on for dear life amidst the chops and churns of the wider storm.

See you tomorrow as we begin book #2 - Small Island by Andrea Levy.

Subscribe now

Chapter 9

Did Richard and Nenna sleep together? Fitzgerald does not state this explicitly but the implication is clear. The chapter begins:

Nenna’s children neither showed any interest in where she had been nor in why she did not come back until next morning.

This reveal, if you can call it that, is swept up quite quickly by Fitzgerald as Heinrich, an elegant and tall 16-year-old Austrian boy and the family friend of Nenna’s sister, has arrived. He seems a vaguely eccentric and pleasant fellow and it emerges that his mother is a countess.

An interesting flourish from Fitzgerald as she almost corrects herself in the writing: …while some colour stealed, stole, back into his pale cheeks.

I am a big fan of these little style points from Fitzgerald.

Then, Fitzgerald demonstrates the newfound intimacy between Richard and Nenna - entering Nenna’s thoughts:

…if he doesn’t look my way I’ll never speak to him again, and in fact I’ll never speak to any man again, except Maurice. But as he drew level with Grace Richard gave her a smile which melted her heart.

I feel we really want these two kind, gentle and slightly lost characters to find themselves together. This for me is a really heart-warming passage as a result - notwithstanding some possible questions about infidelity.

Now, we learn Louise (Nenna’s sister) and her husband have made it to London and they arrange to have lunch. And there is a quite charming interjection about Stripey - who is being chased by a rat.

As Martha, Tilda and Heinrich make plans for the day, we have what is probably the most quotable bit of dialogue in the book from Martha:

“Didn’t you know that everything you learn, and everything you suffer, will come in useful at some time in your life?”

Martha subtly asks Tilda to leave so she and Heinrich can go to the King’s Road alone together. They browse and chat in what seems to be a mildly flirtatious way (slightly questionable - Heinrich is 16, Martha 12). Heinrich namechecks the poet Heinrich Heine in a way that suggests he has been named after him.

Sidenote - Heine was a German poet who lived in London for a short time in the 1800s and absolutely hated it (“send no poet to London!”). You need to sign up but his article about London (A German Poet’s View of London) is here and it is hilarious.

Back to the action and a shift. We return to the Reach and to Tilda who sees Harry, making his first proper appearance, aboard Maurice.

This is quite an exceptional chapter in the book as the tone of the piece is disrupted by Harry. He threatens Tilda in a genuinely unpleasant way and then attacks Richard with a wrench. He also seems to kill Stripey! This is certainly a deviation from the previously quite pleasant and eccentric tone of the novel. He has been present in the background, lurking with intent, and now we see him as the book’s primary antagonist (other than the weather).

Martha and Heinrich return at an opportune time to call the river police boat to take Richard to hospital. He has survived. We then have some insight into thoughts as he reflects on the night spent with Nenna:

About the whole incident Richard felt no dissatisfaction and certainly no regret. He could truly reflect that he had done not only the best, but the only thing possible.

Martha and Tilda come and visit and it is revealed that they are moving back to Canada. Laura arrives and makes plans to sell the boat.

So it seems as we reach the final two chapters of the book (which will be covered tomorrow) that everything is being tied up and concluded in an actually quite unsatisfactory manner. Out of circumstance and obligation, both Nenna and Richard are fated for lives that might not fulfil them.

But this is Penelope Fitzgerald - unsparing and unsentimental in her depictions of the crushingly beautiful mundanity of life.

See you tomorrow as we finish Book #1.

Chapter 8

This is a chapter about two very different types of men.

As Nenna boards the first of many buses it will take her to get from Chelsea to Stoke Newington (no overground in those days), we have a split sense of trepidation but optimism for her. This is an action that has been carefully built up to throughout the book so far. Nenna has delayed going to see Edward, as noted in the last chapter, because it is the last option available to her to maintain the relationship.

If this fails, then she has nothing else.

The reader likely has a somewhat sceptical view of Edward by this stage - his absence and distance from his young family unexplained and uncommunicated. This is the chapter in which he has an opportunity to explain himself.

The anticipation is quelled somewhat as Nenna has an interaction with a man named Gordon Hodge on the doorstep. We find him quite irritating immediately as he presents a humdrum, jobsworthy type obstruction to Nenna.

As Edward’s situation is made clear to Nenna, there is a sort of tragedy of realisation:

Abyss after abyss of respectability was opening up beneath her.

He is living with Gordon (an annoying man) and his mother.

Finally, Gordon lets her in but insists on being even more aggravatingly irritating by putting himself in a role of proxy marriage counsellor between Edward and Nenna. Edward is unsurprised to see Nenna.

They argue, Gordon is sent away by Nenna (Edward: “you’ve always known how to get rid of my friends”) and now we have insights into quite how lonely and lost Nenna feels.

It was the sensation of being given to. She was homesick for that.

I won’t vivisect the dialogue unduly - because I think you can enjoy it for yourself - but this is another section where we appreciate Fitzgerald’s genius as a writer. For this is ultimately a break-up conversation with a hard core of sadness while still managing to feel witty and vaguely absurd (Gordon’s attempts to play the piano on the floor below) at the same time.

We also learn that Edward is actually quite an unkind man:

He went on to tell her that she didn’t really care for the children, she only liked to think she did, to make herself feel good.

Their inauspicious reunion concludes with Edward telling Nenna that she is “not a woman” and she is deposited by Fitzgerald on the street (passing Gordon’s eavesdropping mother outside).

This is a critical passage in their relationship and the whole book. There is a role Edward expects Nenna to play, or a way she is expected to behave. She does not conform to this, so in his mind, she is not a woman. Fitzgerald, Nenna and all her female protagonists rage against this - and for me this is one of the reasons Fitzgerald is so important and as a writer (and potentially why she is rather overlooked - the condescending debate about this being all the judges’ second choice to win the Booker…)

Nenna realises she has left her purse behind so is adrift - no money, no bus ticket to return home. There is a brief moment of violence where a man throws her shoe into the road but Nenna is then collected by a taxi driver who turns out to be the second type of man in this chapter - a kind one. She sleeps in the backseat and the taxi driver leaves her back at the Reach without accepting payment.

There is one other man who fits into this second (rather broad and hastily devised) category of men - Richard.

They collide, as they have done a few times at the Reach. Richard, as hinted quite strongly through the text, is a gentle man of obligation and duty - stated explicitly here:

“That made me just seventeen when the war broke out.” Richard only estimated his age in relationship to his duties.

He struggles to communicate - similarly to Edward - but seemingly with more goodwill and kindness:

I can’t for the life of me see why, if you really feel something, it’s got to be talked about.

And he is focussed on the practical side of things:

On the whole, he disliked comparisons, because they made you think about more than one thing at a time.

Re-reading the part about Richard’s outboard makes me think Fitzgerald is going for (on the nose) innuendo here:

Richard’s Johnson, obedient to the pressed button, came to life at once, and she saw that it had never occurred that it mightn’t. Small boats develop emotions to a fine pitch, and she felt that she would go with him to the end of the world, if his outboard was always going to start like that.

I’m not going to lie - I find this little passage a smidgen clunky. The slightly obvious innuendo doesn’t do it for me - but perhaps Fitzgerald is trying to prepare the ground for romantic/sexual possibility between them (which has been hinted at more subtly earlier on).

I think as the chapter concludes though, there is a reassuring return to how the characters are - Richard weighed with obligation, Nenna simultaneously confident yet unsure.

The hatch is locked. But Richard has the key.

See you tomorrow for chapter 9 (and our penultimate day of Offshore!)

Chapter 6

This chapter focusses almost exclusively on Martha and Tilda’s relationship as the two young girls go “bricking” together (not dissimilar to mudlarking but for… bricks). There are insights into their shared concerns for their mother and into the genuinely quite sweet relationship between the two sisters.

Martha, contemplating her younger sister’s somewhat bedraggled form, thinks:

“Whatever happens, I must never leave her behind”.

As the two girls dig around on the shore, they chat about their mother and the other people on the Reach. I love this line from Martha:

“Ma is much too dependent on Maurice, or on anyone sympathetic. She ought to avoid these people”.

And young Tilda locates two tiles which we quickly learn are actually quite a significant find.

There is some brilliant dialogue here between the two girls as they try and attract Woodie’s attention in order to get a lift:

Tilda: “It’s his own fault if he’s kind. It’s not the kind who inherit the earth, it’s the poor, the humble, and the meek.”

Martha: “What do you think happens to the kind then?”

Tilda: “They get kicked in the teeth”.

The two girls do seem to be almost the children of the whole collective rather than just Nenna as Woodie obliges in giving them a lift.

Tilda does give the vibe of being an almost belligerently cheeky but loveable 6-year-old, asking Woodie very bluntly of his wife “has she left you then?”

Now, in three short pages, comes almost the centrepiece of Martha’s character in the book. The girls are dropped by Woodie at The Bourgeois Gentilhomme, an antiques dealer on the King’s Road, and ask for Mr Stephen. Martha announces to Mr Stephen that the two tiles discovered by Tilda are de Morgan tiles and that they are therefore very valuable. Stephen effectively tries to dupe the girls, by obfuscating the location of de Morgan’s potteries, but unfortunately for him (and fortunately for Martha… and the reader), Martha is fully aware of where all de Morgan’s potteries were. She haggles, negotiates and is able to secure the princely sum of £3 for the tiles.

In this moment, there is a lovely reflection on the sibling relationship and Tilda’s respect for her older sister:

“Tilda’s respect for her sister, whom she had never seen before in the possession of so much money, reduced her almost to silence.”

A lovely and quietly triumphant point in the book.

Chapter 7

Many of the Reach’s inhabitants assemble on the Dreadnought to celebrate Willis successfully selling the boat. This is another charming scene and there is a jolly and borderline uproarious mood among the party-goers. Sadly, the merriment is quite literally doused as Willis discovers that the hold is almost completely flooded. There is tragedy to this scene but also the classic Fitzgeraldian gentle absurdity as Willis is attacked by an object that turns out to be his bedframe:

“That, for some reason, almost made him give up, not the pain, but the familiar bit of furniture, the bed he had slept in for fifteen years, now hopelessly astray and as it seemed attacking him. Everything that should have stood by him had become hostile”.

Upstairs, his guests are unawares, making merry and enjoying the conversation, Maurice displaying his social “genius”.

Willis emerges, “like a drowned man risen from the dead”, and his guests are made safe while Dreadnought sinks very quickly.

There is, of course, a tragedy to this moment. But Fitzgerald is such a wise and careful writer that this whole scene is crafted with love and humour.

Then Nenna takes a call from her sister Louise who asks if a young German boy named Heinrich can come and stay with Nenna.

All this is preamble to the quite poignant end of the chapter, as Nenna concludes she must finally go and visit Edward in Stoke Newington. Nenna admits to herself why she has not done this yet and there is a very powerful and relatable observation about why we delay doing things we know we must:

“It’s because it’s my last chance. While I’ve still got it I can take it out and look at it and know I still have it. If that goes, I’ve got nothing left to try”.

There is a sort of heartbreaking simplicity to this internal logic and perhaps something everyone can recognise in relationships.

General Thoughts

Hope you’re all getting on well with the reading.

If there’s anything you’d like me to focus on more in these short blogs, please do let me know - this is the first week of course and I’m keen to develop it as we go along.

See you tomorrow for chapter 8.