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March 2024
Finsbury in Print: From Black Dwarf to Spare Rib
Finsbury’s narrow streets and courts provide the setting for many novels. We pass by novelist Arnold Bennetts’s Riceyman Steps, through George Gissing’s Nether World, see where Dickens’ Oliver Twist first met Mr Brownlow and meet the inspiration for Miss Haversham.
Sunday 24th March 2pm
Guide – Sue
Dorothy L Sayers’ Bloomsbury
Dorothy L Sayers, one of the “golden age” crime writers between the first and second world wars, lived and worked in Holborn and Bloomsbury – as did her alter ego, Harriet Vane and other familiar characters from the novels and short stories.
See places from which she took inspiration for her detective fiction; find out more about Sayers’ characters and about the woman who brought them all to life.
Friday 29th March 11am
Guide – Sue
Dorothy L Sayers’ Bloomsbury
Dorothy L Sayers, one of the “golden age” crime writers between the first and second world wars, lived and worked in Holborn and Bloomsbury – as did her alter ego, Harriet Vane and other familiar characters from the novels and short stories.
See places from which she took inspiration for her detective fiction; find out more about Sayers’ characters and about the woman who brought them all to life.
Saturday 30th March 2pm
Guide – Sue
April 2024
Mary Wollstonecraft and Newington Green
A statue in honour of Mary Wollstonecraft is now a feature of Newington Green but there’s a long history of radical thought in the area, explored on this walk. The Unitarian Chapel is the oldest nonconformist chapel still in use, and the original China Inland Mission still stands next to the Green. The walk will also explore connections to the New River and find evidence of a demolished Jewish synagogue, as well as exploring the beautiful Canonbury villas nearby.
Saturday 20th April 2pm
Guide – Oonagh
May 2024
Rebels and Blue Stockings
Free-spirited and independent, educated and uninterested in marriage and children, the figure of the New Woman threatened conventional ideas about ideal Victorian womanhood. On this walk we will discover how Kate Greenaway, a female artist from a working class background, Eleanor Marx, a regular at the British Library Reading Room and the archeologist Mary Brodrick found a life outside conventional Victorian norms. The founding of Bedford College, led to higher education for women, and the creation of College Hall enabled women students to study independently. A lovely Bloomsbury stroll!
Sunday 19 May 2pm
Guide – Oonagh
June 2024
Waterloo in Fiction
This walk explores the Waterloo of historical fiction. Tracy Chevalier’s Burning Bright brings William Blake’s Lambeth to life, Michael Sadleir’s Forlorn Sunset and Renton Nicholson’s Dombey and Daughter explore its seamier side in Victorian times, while for Sam Selvon’s Lonely Londoners of the 1940s, the station is a place of nostalgia. Above all, it is a place of arrival and departure.
Wednesday 5th June 6pm
Guide- Sue
Capital Walks in London 