The George Inn

The George Inn is one of my favourite pubs in London and it's not hard to explain why. Built during the medieval period in a courtyard just off Borough High Street in Southwark, South London, The George Inn (or the George and Dragon as it was once known) is the only remaining galleried London coaching inn left in the city.

During the medieval times, The George was one of many public houses of its kind, The Tabard being arguably the most famous as it was where Chaucer began the Canterbury Tales in 1338. The George itself, now a National Trust building, was no stranger to literary names though, with the likes of Shakespeare (The Globe is just a short walk down the river) and Charles Dickens frequenting the inn when its Middle Room was used as a coffee house. Dickens actually referred to The George in his novel, Little Dorritt. Dickensian drawings now hang on the wall so that, together with the charmingly wonky galleried wooden front, you really feel you have stepped back in time.

You would have thought that The Great Fire of London in 1666 would have made the people of Southwark south of the Thames rethink things a little but in 1676 a small fire in an oil painting shop spread fast and wide, destroying much of Southwark. The George and the Tabard were both severely damaged in the blaze and were subsequently renovated. The Tabard unfortunately does not still stand today, though, as it was pulled down in the 19th Century, and others of its kind fell victim to the Blitz.

Part of the inn's charm is the way it is made up of lots of little rooms, narrow staircases and wooden balcony's that look over the courtyard. The Old Bar on the ground floor was used as a waiting room for passengers on coaches, the Middle Bar as I explained before was a Coffee Room and upstairs, which is now a restaurant, would have had bedrooms to let.

You really have to visit this place if you get the chance. You'd be forgiven for getting carried away with the atmosphere and thinking you are a writer yourself after you've had a drink here...

The George Inn Yard

77 Borough High Street

Southwark

London

SE1 1NH

RSC to stage Wolf Hall

"From the moment I started writing Wolf Hall the characters were fighting to be off the page." ~ Hilary Mantel

I think I may have more posts about Hilary Mantel than any other author... except maybe my fav, Ginny Woolf... but Mantel really is continuing to take the literary world by storm. Not only has it today been announced that she has become the first person to win both the Costa AND the Booker in the same year. The other news? Her Booker-winning Tudor trilogy is to be transformed for the stage by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

The books, which will be performed in two parts, will take to the stage as part of the RSC's 2013 Winter season at The Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. Londoners don't worry, though, it looks likely that the plays, if successful, will most likely come to London eventually.

We have been promised some extra material that did not originally feature in the books. Seriously, how is that possible? The books are humungous! Is it just me or do you think that Hilary Mantel's head should be a lot bigger? Like Noddy or something so that all this info that she has researched can fit... what an intellectual force she is.

Mantel has been working closely with RSC artistic director, Gregory Duncan, so that the theatrical language of the time is captured successfully. See how she feels about her books making the leap to the stage in the video above.

Tolkein's Towers

You needn't have read Tolkien's famous Lord of the Rings trilogy, or perhaps even have seen the films, to know who he is and to have heard of the famous Two Towers that overlook his fictional Middle Earth: Minas Morgul and Orthanc.

Tolkien spent much of his childhood in Birmingham and it is thought that the two towers were inspired by two buildings that he would have been landmarks in his childhood memories of Stirling Road: Perrott's Folly and Edgbaston Waterworks Tower.

Built in 1758, Perrott's Folly is a 96 ft tall Georgian tower and Edgbaston Waterworks Tower, which stands close by, a grand Victorian building with distinct Gothic architecture. You can see why both towers would have caught any one's imagination. 

Perrott's Folly that once towered magnificently 139 narrow steps above a large park is now said to sway in strong winds and has rarely been opened since it was closed in 1979, has just been bought... for £1. Yup, no missing zeros - one single pound.

It's been bought by Trident Reach, The People Charity, who have reopened the tower for Birmingham's citizens and Tolkien pilgrims the world over after raising a million pounds to restore the historic landmark. The mastermind behind this project, Ben Bradley, is hoping that it will eventually be more than just a pit-stop on the tourist trail and instead grow into a place for people of all ages and backgrounds.

Charing Cross Road

I've lived in London since I was born, so I'm reasonably well-accustomed with the places to go when shopping for specific things. If I was a musician and wanted to buy a new guitar or saxophone, I'm pretty sure Denmark Street would sort me out. If I wanted to buy a tailored man's suit.. which, you know.. I might want to do, I'd probably head over to Saville Row. As with any modern city, you can probably find most of these things in lots of places but, for me, if you're on the lookout for second hand books in Central London, it's got to be, and has been for generations, Charing Cross Road. At the north end you will find the Foyles flagship store and one of the few remaining Blackwells. South of Shaftesbury Avenue, though, you will walk past bookshop after bookshop filled to the brim with second-hand reads.

I went for a walk along Charing Cross Road this weekend. There's something really lovely about walking down a street filled with shops that have been trading for years and years but in any other case, the stock will have changed significantly. With books, second hand ones in particular, new ones may come in and old ones may be bought, but there will still be books, whether the originals or new editions of old titles, that are still filling the same shelves and will, hopefully, continue to do so.

Everyone is guilty of buying a book online instead of in the shop, but a trip down Charing Cross Road is all you need to remind yourself that bookshops are just way more fun than amazon. You can browse easier and they smell. so. good. I did learn recently that some people don't smell books. I found it odd to find that I myself was the unusual person, but if you don't smell books, I recommend you start doing it. That's my weird tip of the day...

Other second hand bookshops you may wants to try:

Blackheath Bookshop, Blackheath, London

Waterloo Bridge Book Market, London's Southbank

The London Bookbarge, Regents Canal

Shakespeare & Company, Vienna

The Great American Novel: First Round

You may remember that back in the summer I came across a competition started by Guardian journalist and blogger, Matthew Spencer, to find out which is the greatest 'Great American Novel'. The first round has taken place now, setting duals up between several top notch candidates. Some great arguments were made and information taken from numerous sources in this highly anticipated first round draw. The results are as follows:

Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner (W)
vs

JR by William Gaddis – The Battle of the "Difficults"

That Old Ace in the Hole by Annie Proulx (W)
vs

Naked Lunch by William S Burroughs

The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton (W)vs

Something Happened by Joseph Heller

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (W)
vs

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

Rabbit, Run by John Updike (W)
vs

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K Le Guin

Billy Bathgate by EL Doctorow (W)
vs

We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates

Libra by Don DeLillo (W)
vs

42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos 

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (W)
vs

The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster

Now I don't know about you, but I would say that although there are some top authors on both sides of the drawer, this seems like some authors didn't have a chance. By that I mean that I know every single one of the winners and only three of the losing novelists... So perhaps I am not as well-read in this department as I hoped... oh well!

Anyway, in summary, there don't seem to be any particularly controversial decisions I think you'll agree, but there were some definite contests - namely Steinbeck vs. Auster and Wharton vs. Heller. Although the winners aren't hard to guess, each author has a big and long-standing following. Luckily, though, I am yet to hear of any violent fights breaking out in libraries... but, saying that, I'd pay good money to see book geeks flapping bookmarks and library cards at each other...

In the second half of the drawer we are expecting to see the likes of Fitzgerald, Nabokov, Chandler, Toni Morrison and post-modernist Pynchon who my brain will never ever understand. Ever.

You can follow Matthew's blog via the Guardian website here.

What to read when it's snowing?

There are plenty of stereotypes about the Brits - I'm sure we don't know most of them - but one that I am particularly fond of is our complete and utter obsession with the weather. We can't have a conversation without mentioning it, we are the first to jump out into the parks and onto the beaches as soon as it gets over 15 degrees, we deny profusely that it rains all year round (particularly when it's raining) and by God do we love talking about snow.Well, as it's been snowing quite a lot more than we are normally used to in London, I thought we needed a suitably snowy post. Here are three books that we should all get off the shelves when everything goes white and all we can do is snuggle down and read:

The Classic:

Dracula by Bram Stoker

"We are in Transylvania, and Transylvania is not England. Our ways are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things. Nay, from what you have told me of your experiences already, you know something of what strange things there may be."

Collected inside this book are diary entries, letters and newspaper clippings that piece together the depraved story of the ultimate predator. A young lawyer on an assignment finds himself imprisoned in a Transylvanian castle by his mysterious host. Back at home his fiancée and friends are menaced by a malevolent force which seems intent on imposing suffering and destruction. Can the devil really have arrived on England's shores? And what is it that he hungers for so desperately?

I'm a big fan of this book. It's a bit long but it really is all it's cracked up to be. For me, it is one of the few old fashioned scary books that is actually pretty scary. Oh, and it's absolutely swelling with innuendo...

The Costa:

The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penny

“Clearly the secret of happiness...is a variation on the general principle of banging your head against a wall, and then stopping.” 

1867, Canada: as winter tightens its grip on the isolated settlement of Dove River, a man is brutally murdered and a 17-year old boy disappears. Tracks leaving the dead man's cabin head north towards the forest and the tundra beyond. In the wake of such violence, people are drawn to the township - journalists, Hudson's Bay Company men, trappers, traders - but do they want to solve the crime or exploit it? One-by-one the assembled searchers set out from Dove River, pursuing the tracks across a desolate landscape home only to wild animals, madmen and fugitives, variously seeking a murderer, a son, two sisters missing for 17 years, a Native American culture, and a fortune in stolen furs before the snows settle and cover the tracks of the past for good.

I absolutely loved this book. So much so that there is already a review of it on this blog! It's a real quiet, un-wordy book, which is sometimes just what you need - especially when it's snowing. It's also set in a very wintery landscape in northern Ontario. Read my review here.

The Children's Book:

Northern Lights by Philip Pullman

"You are so young, Lyra, too young to understand this, but I shall tell you anyway and you'll understand it later: men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain."

Lyra Belacqua and her animal daemon live half-wild and carefree among scholars of Jordan College, Oxford. The destiny that awaits her will take her to the frozen lands of the Arctic, where witch-clans reign and ice-bears fight. Her extraordinary journey will have immeasurable consequnces far beyond her own world...

You can't get more snowy than the Arctic and that's exactly where you're taken in this absolute classic. I don't know anyone who has read this book and hasn't fallen completely in love with Lyra's world. It is simultaneously one of the most exciting, terrifying, emotionally testing and beautiful worlds you could come to in a book. I feel these kinds of worlds are reserved just for children but really we should all be reading them if we ever missed them as a child. Just to put a stop to all that squishiness, this trilogy is also flipping brutal. Perhaps that's why only kids should read it...

Got It Covered?

Thanks to magazine, We Love This Book, we have probably the best literary quiz of 2012 and that's saying a lot considering how amazing my Harry Potter Christmas quiz was. Anyway, after guessing embarrassingly few answers in the quiz at our work Christmas 'do', I have now been through the answers kindly provided by the magazine and think you should all have a go! Click here to see a bigger version (that you can print if you're really keen) and then once you've had a go, have a look at the answers. Just to clarify, these books were all published in 2012 and are a mixture of fiction and non-fiction. Good luck!