The London Reading List No.2: Great Expectations

The Great London Reading List! Essential London books that Londoners should take away on holiday to remind them of home… books visitors should read before arriving in London… fact, fiction, poetry, all genres welcome. If you’re in the mood to recommend a great London bookshop, too, we’d love to hear it!  All suggestions to the usual address, please, or leave a comment below or get in touch via Twitter @londonwalks.


Isobel brings in Great Expectations…
I know Charles Dickens is going to come up all over London in this series, so here is my favourite, Great Expectations, which coincidentally features Walworth where I lead the Chaplin, Cricket and Artists walk. It is where Sam Wemmick''s little house can be found, complete with gothic details, bridge and flag.


Adam adds:
“Orwell wrote in 1940: ‘When Dickens has once described something you see it for the rest of your life.’ I first read Great Expectations more than two decades ago and still ‘see’ almost all of it vividly in my mind’s eye.”

Our late colleague Jean also held Great Expectations dear to her heart. Writing for this blog last year she described it as:
“A rite of passage narrative, great characters and set in the landscape and time where my great great great grandfather was surgeon on the hulks.”
Isobel Isobel is an artist, journalist, linguist, prize-winning Blue Badge Guide and London Walks' token aristocrat. One of her ancestors introduced the waltz to this country.
Adam
Leads the Rock'n'Roll London Walk on Fridays and Wednesday nights. He acquired his first 7" 45 – which dates him a little! – when he was two-years-old (you can read about it on his music blog The Devil Take Your Stereo) his first album when he was a veteran of five-years-old (again, more on his blog) and has listened to, played, recorded, strummed, sung, written and talked about music every day ever since. He is a strict adherent of Frank Zappa's maxim: "Without music to decorate it, life is merely a collection of dates by which bills must be paid." 
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