Best books about London? Fiction or non-fiction

[BansheeofInisherin]

Would love your suggestions.

I'm a bit of a history junkie so... Boswell's London Journal and Pepys' diary (the abridged version or you'll go insane).

Both give a first hand account of life as a man in London. It's harder to find written histories by women.

Liza Picard's social histories of London are also excellent.

A Week in December -Sebastian Faulks; Capital - John Lanchester; London Belongs to Me- Norman Collins

Elizabeth Bowen The Death of the Heart and The Heat of the Day.
Second Graham Greene The End of the Affair.

Thanks again, everyone. This is for my book club. However, the ones that aren't quite suitable for that purpose, I might read on my own. Like Peter Ackroyd.

The Shardlake novels are great for Tudor London, and you get a lot in Hilary Mantel.

Matt Haig’s How to stop Time is a lovely time travelling novel that takes you from around then to around now.

Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet Chronicles are good for middle class 1930s to 50s london life.

Francesca Segal’s The Innocents is great and a great guide to early Noughties Jewish North London

People have mentioned Hallie Reubenhold’s The Five, but she also wrote the Covent Garden Ladies which is a good Georgian underbelly history - the series Harlots was loosely based on it.

Michael Faber’s the Crimson Petal and the White is a really immersive novel into the dark just beneath the surface of Victorian london

I haven’t read this myself so I can’t vouch for it, but Mrs P's Journey, by Sarah Hartley, is a non-fiction book about Phyllis Pearsall, who had a major role in creating the London A-Z (though how she actually did it is disputed).

My absolute favourite books about London are the non-fiction ones by the historian Gillian Tindall. The House by the Thames - about the house on Bankside where Christopher Wren was said to have lived while rebuilding St Paul's, although actually he didn’t - is wonderful. The Fields Beneath is about Kentish Town. Another very good one is The Tunnel Through Time, where she traces the route of Crossrail and the ancient streets it passes through.

Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem and Hawksmoor, both Peter Ackroyd I think

Tunnel Vision. An easy but fun read.

Ives just read Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson which is does a brilliant job of bringing to life London nightlife of the 1920s and the hedonism of the bright young things.

Room of Lost Things by Stella Duffy, set around Cold Harbour Lane / Tulse Hill. It's a brilliant book, and also fun to read if you're familiar with the area of London

Dark Earth by Rebecca Stott was a hit with my book group. Unusually, it's set in Londinium around 300 years after the Romans left. It mentions the Mithraeum, which you can visit today.

Agree with PP on Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman.
It's wonderful.

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
London Belongs to Me by Norman Collins
The Heart of London by Monica Dickens
Some of my favourite books. Sarah Waters is wonderful too.

Was coming her to suggest this! It's a bit marmite as well (although I loved it) so might be ideal for a book club read.

Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, Little Dorrit and Iain Sinclair’s London Orbital.

Daniel O'Thunder by Ian Weir is good too, Victorian era fiction.

A Dance to the Music of Time, series of 12 novels by Anthony Powell, with lots of London scenes.

Many of the Sherlock Holmes stories are set in London.

Quincunx, Charles Palliser. Modern version of a 19th century novel. Not wholly set in London but large chunks are.

I second the recommendation for Dickens. Our Mutual Friend, Little Dorrit, Bleak House, Oliver Twist.

Vanity Fair includes many London scenes too.

Fiction
Danny Boy by Barry Walsh, also The Pimlico Kid is excellent

I love Kate Atkinson. Missed that she had a new book out. Love all the other suggestions too. Especially keen on The Five and I think I have never read Mrs Dalloway either.

Patrick Hamilton, if you’re feeling brave enough! Earl’s Court in all its grimy awfulness is like a character in itself in Hangover Square. And Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (great title) is set around Fitzrovia pubs in the 1930s - it’s a trilogy, though, so maybe a bit long.

Peter Ackroyd, both the non-fiction biography and lots of his fiction (don't think anyone's mentioned Hawksmoor yet, another good'un).

Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year is grim but fascinating about the mean streets of the worst-hit parishes.

Dickens obviously, and also the less well known but excellent George Gissing for Victorian London.

Michael Moorcroft's Mother London, not sure if it's still in print.

I've been meaning to borrow dd2's Rivers of London books and I'm inspired to finally get round to it now.

Oh! and (I've read so many London books, sorry), Colin Macinnes' London Trilogy is great about the Windrush generation's experience and dodgy goings on in post war Soho.

Diary of Samuel Pepys is good, lots of London life and often laugh out loud funny.

Lots of good suggestions so far.

I would strongly recommend Happiness by Aminatta Forna, and A Stranger City by Linda Grant. They are both very readable novels with an element of mystery/detection, but they are both much more than that: about the way lives intersect in a city full of immigrants and movement, and how easy it is for people to become lost (or lose themselves) in a place like London.