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Original poster

Books set in London

115 replies

argyllherewecome · 25/02/2025 20:08

Needing a bit of a London fix, any suggestions for books set in London? Doesn't have to be a major part, just small references. Bonus points if it's a mews setting or somewhere quite nice.

OP posts:
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jazzybelle · 15/03/2025 15:53

Dragonstar · 07/03/2025 22:12

Nicki French - especially the Frieda Klein series, the first one is Blue Monday. I really enjoyed the references to unknown or unusual places in London.

Loved these books!

user9876543211 · 11/03/2025 12:02

Free Love by Tessa Hadley
Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason

London isn't the only setting in either, but features prominently in both. Plus, they're great reads.

hoopyvest · 11/03/2025 11:39

Another recommendation for Mick Herron's Slow Horses series. His fictional Slough House is a few doors away from Barbican Station, so the the Apple TV adaptation is spot on.

Mick is actually from Newcastle and lives in Oxford, but he used to get off the tube at Barbican every day on his way to work.

Original poster
argyllherewecome · 10/03/2025 10:42

Loving all of these, thank you.

OP posts:
JulesJules · 09/03/2025 16:23

@Terpsichore I've just put all those on my wishlist!

Terpsichore · 09/03/2025 10:54

SheilaFentiman · 09/03/2025 09:52

@Terpsichore that author sounds great, I am going to look her up!

I absolutely love her books Sheila, she lived in Kentish Town for many years and wrote a fascinating book about that area too (The Fields Beneath) - her book Célestine, about the tiny French village where her family had a holiday home, is one of my top reads ever. If you like books where authors delve into archives and winkle out all sorts of arcane details, she’s your woman!

SheilaFentiman · 09/03/2025 09:52

@Terpsichore that author sounds great, I am going to look her up!

Terpsichore · 09/03/2025 08:01

JulesJules · 09/03/2025 05:07

Oh and I loved this - non fiction, Square Haunting by Francesca Wade. It's a fascinating biography/social history of several remarkable women who all lived at one time or another around this square in Bloomsbury.

amzn.eu/d/c3i6EwZ

Square Haunting is a great book, agreed.

If we're going down the non-fiction road then the sky's the limit, but in that case I have to mention the writer Gillian Tindall. She's a historian who knows London intimately and writes about it superbly. The House by the Thames is absolutely gripping - all about the little house on Bankside (just down the road from Tate Modern) where Christopher Wren is said to have lived when St Paul’s was being rebuilt after the Great Fire. Spoiler - he probably didn’t, but she reveals the whole history of that area which obviously includes a lot about Shakespeare and his theatre troupe.

howrudeforme · 09/03/2025 06:28

Just finished Caledonian Road. Very enjoyable.

JulesJules · 09/03/2025 05:07

Oh and I loved this - non fiction, Square Haunting by Francesca Wade. It's a fascinating biography/social history of several remarkable women who all lived at one time or another around this square in Bloomsbury.

amzn.eu/d/c3i6EwZ

orlandob · 08/03/2025 09:47

MarjorieDanvers · 07/03/2025 23:26

@orlandob my pleasure - I love William Boyd too (my favourite is Any Human Heart, which only occasionally has London in it!).

Also wishing you better times 💐

Thank you 🙏

Terpsichore · 07/03/2025 23:54

musicalfrog · 07/03/2025 23:39

I wonder if they ever crossed paths.

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I do wonder!

musicalfrog · 07/03/2025 23:39

Terpsichore · 07/03/2025 23:32

I really enjoyed those Joan Wyndham books too.

Similarly, it's a memoir, not a novel, but Frances Faviell's Chelsea Concerto is very evocative of London in wartime….she lived in Chelsea when it was still a proper, everyday neighbourhood rather than the haunt of the super-rich.

Show quote history

I wonder if they ever crossed paths.

Terpsichore · 07/03/2025 23:32

mum2jakie · 07/03/2025 22:07

Love this book! Haven't heard it mentioned by anybody else ever!

Show quote history

I really enjoyed those Joan Wyndham books too.

Similarly, it's a memoir, not a novel, but Frances Faviell's Chelsea Concerto is very evocative of London in wartime….she lived in Chelsea when it was still a proper, everyday neighbourhood rather than the haunt of the super-rich.

MarjorieDanvers · 07/03/2025 23:26

@orlandob my pleasure - I love William Boyd too (my favourite is Any Human Heart, which only occasionally has London in it!).

Also wishing you better times 💐

musicalfrog · 07/03/2025 23:11

I need to read that one, can't believe I haven't got around to it yet.

mum2jakie · 07/03/2025 22:24

musicalfrog · 07/03/2025 22:20

When I first read it in my early 20s I was obsessed! I actually went to London to find all the streets and houses mentioned.

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I really like Love is Blue too but don't have my own copy any more

musicalfrog · 07/03/2025 22:20

mum2jakie · 07/03/2025 22:07

Love this book! Haven't heard it mentioned by anybody else ever!

Show quote history

When I first read it in my early 20s I was obsessed! I actually went to London to find all the streets and houses mentioned.

Dragonstar · 07/03/2025 22:12

Nicki French - especially the Frieda Klein series, the first one is Blue Monday. I really enjoyed the references to unknown or unusual places in London.

Londinimum · 07/03/2025 22:10

throwaway25 · 26/02/2025 13:59

London by Edward Rutherford

Came here to say this.

My favourite book, and possibly my favourite author.

mum2jakie · 07/03/2025 22:07

musicalfrog · 26/02/2025 00:18

Love Lessons by Joan Wyndham. A real life wartime diary set in Chelsea.

It's so easy to lose yourself in that world, with all the evocative descriptions of the places and people in her life at that time. Really recommend.

Love this book! Haven't heard it mentioned by anybody else ever!

BaMamma · 07/03/2025 20:07

Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere is set in London and an alternate underground London.

Michael Moorcock's Mother London is fascinating

Choconuttolata · 07/03/2025 19:57

Peter Ackroyd - Hawksmoor

"It tells the parallel stories of Nicholas Dyer, who builds seven churches in 18th-century London for which he needs human sacrifices, and Nicholas Hawksmoor, detective in the 1980s, who investigates murders committed in the same churches."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawksmoor_(novel)

Hawksmoor (novel) - Wikipedia

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawksmoor_(novel)

jazzybelle · 07/03/2025 19:49

Greg Keen

Soho Ghosts
Soho Dead
Solo Angels

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