LAURENCE MACKINreviews London Belongs to Me and England
London Belongs to Me
Norman CollinsPenguin, £10.99
London is a city that teems with people and stories, framed in a vast expanse of concrete and austere history. This book brings together the tribulations of several of its denizens in all their ordinary glory. This is a reissue of a substantial book first published in 1945, but the stories are set in 1938, with the second World War gradually unveiling its terrible form in the shadowy background. This, though, is an aside to the real meat of the book: the characters that inhabit 10 Dulcimer Street, equal parts eccentricity and shabby originality. The stories are about living and drinking, loving and struggling through a city that is more than the sum of its parts. The action takes place in somnambulant sitting rooms, shadowy snugs of run-down pubs and dusty offices staffed by nervous clerks. This is a London far from the glamour the modern city has come to personify. The detail is astounding, and the humour crackles beneath the paragraphs like dead leaves underfoot. Pay attention, or its pleasure will pass you by.
England
Rough Guides, £15.99
This is an astonishing country to travel around, at least on the evidence of this book. This Rough Guide puts the pleasures of England in proper context, and its highlights are surprisingly offbeat. Cities and towns do all the swaggering through these pages, but the grandeur of the coast and England’s stunning national parks take pride of place, from Dartmoor and Durdle Door to Newquay and the Scilly Isles. The context section will help you separate your Tudors from your Stuarts, and historical nuggets stud the text rather than being hemmed into a separate section.
lmackin@irishtimes.com