| Forget the A to Z. Leave the guides and maps and travel books on the shelf. To gain a real sense of what a place is like, turn to the truth that is fiction. Nowhere proves the importance of imagination in evoking a spirit of place more conclusively than London, the city that has inspired writers from Thackeray to Ackroyd, from Dickens to Martin Amis. This collection, by the writers of the City of Westminster Writers' Group, provides images, voices, scenes and incidents from the great cultural melting-pot that is London in 1999. Different national traditions are portrayed, different ages and varieties of experience are represented. Falling in of love or out of it, visiting, passing through, trapped by violence or poverty or simply living the everyday existence of a Londoner: the intensity of individual lives caught up in the swirl of the metropolis, today and in the past, is reflected in these stories and poems. And, from their variety and colour, a picture of the city begins to emerge. Terence Blacker. |
(c) 1999 Westminster Writers' Group. Last updated 02/07/99.