The Shrew's Tale

I am currently wading my way through Peter Ackroyd's prose 'translation' of the Canterbury Tales. I haven't got very far, mainly because stuff keeps happening in Real Life, but also because it is not a work to be rushed, but sipped and savoured in small doses. It may not be 'verse' but it is still poetry.

Because I want to enjoy every moment of it, I started with the introduction (I'm normally very bad for skipping introductions)and I was very surprised to discover that it's likely that a good part of Chaucer's masterwork was written in Greenwich or Deptford.

Though the Tabard Inn, where the pilgrims set out on their journey, is in Southwark, the merry band passes through Deptford on their way to Beckett's shrine, and Chaucer's own hostelry is mentioned by the host - as 'an inne of shrews.'

Looks like we're back to the Greenwich Birds again - I'm beginning to get quite an image of the female population of Greenwich in medieval times. Or maybe it was the entire population, full stop - apparently, Chaucer was mugged twice in the same day (though other accounts I've read have placed him in Westminster and Hatcham for his total of three robberies) Being mugged seems a bit ironic since he was a Justice of the Peace at the time(annoyingly all the books I can find just say 'in Kent' so I don't know if it was actually at Greenwich.)

One of the reasons he was living in Greenwich seems to have been financial. When his wife died, he was sued for debt - the days when he was granted a daily pitcher of wine by the king must have seemed very distant - and presumably innes of shrews in Greenwich were cheaper than nice houses in the City of London.

In 1390, while he was writing the Canterbury Tales (though he never really actively 'started' them - or indeed, finished them - they were more organic than that - he wrote short stories that he later assigned to sundry pilgrims when he had the portmanteau-volume idea for bringing them together. Some were specifically written for characters; others were just doled out to the boring characters that were left, which is why some really suit the teller and others really don't...) he was doing all manner of odd jobs.

He arranged for scaffolding to be built for jousts at Smithfield, and landed himself the job of Commissioner of Walls and Ditches - with special responsibility for the Thames wall between Woolwich and Greenwich.

But Chaucer's real job was entertaining - in English. I didn't know that the Tales were written here, but I'm delighted that they were, even if Chaucer had a bit of a rough time with the Greenwich shrews whilst composing them. So we can claim the father of the English Novel for our own, too (sort of...)

Now all I have to do is work out why there used to be a banner with a picture of Sir Walter Scott hanging in the old Visitor Centre. As far as I can see, the most we can boast of him is a couple of brief mentions in The Adventures of Nigel, one of the minor Waverley Novels and the worst book I have ever read by a long chalk...

A 200 Year-Old Bibliography

Over the weekend I acquired a book that is exactly 200 years old this year. I'm always shocked at how cheaply it's possible to buy literary antiques if you keep an eye peeled - I mean I have been known to send my credit card into a spin in an antiquarian book shop, but some of my favourite purchases have been less than a tenner - I mean - what other 200 year-old objects would fetch such low prices?

It baffles me why these beautiful artifacts are so little prized - so little so that if you go to ebay, there are pages and pages of 'original prints' - which are where people have wantonly vandalised books to strip them of the illustrations - the only parts that seem to command any kind of cash these days. In the process, huge amounts of knowledge are lost.

I never buy loose prints.

My particular find was cheap because it was a single volume from a long-lost set - the London part from the Middlesex Survey, 1810. Presumably it's survived intact because it has no line drawings. It's beautifully bound, in immaculate condition and every page is filled with charming facts - did you know, for instance, that "the richest grassland in the whole county is that of the Isle of Dogs, which has been lately reduced to 500 acres by the West India Docks"? The book spends three pages on haymaking in London, describing the embankments that were built up around the Isle to prevent the tide overflowing the grass - "it is kept sufficiently dry by sluices, which empty themselves into the Thames at low water."

But the bit that has fascinated my most so far (I'm not very far into the book-proper yet) is the bibliography at the end. I have no idea if these volumes still exist - but some of the titles alone are precious.

Some are still widely used today - Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year, for example. But whatever happened to Certaine Rules, Directions or Advertisements for this time of Pesitlential Contagion (which, apparently, contained a very useful caveat warning "those that weare about their neckes impoisoned Amulets")? Or, indeed, Certain necessary Directions as well for the Cure of the Plague, as for preventing the Infection, with many easie Medicines of small charge, very profitable to His Majesty's Subjects?

The Fire of London is a large subject. The History of the Damnable Popish Plot, in its various Branches and Progress, published for the Satisfaction of the present and future ages," by the author of the Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome, for example, is, I am sure, a very balanced account. Or how about Jesuites Fire-Works; The Burning of London? And don't you just love the irony of a book titled A narrative and Impartial Discovery of the Horrid Popish Plot? You could have also read Trap ad Crucem; or The Papists' Watch-Word.

Natural disasters are well-covered. An Account of a Strange and Prodigious Storm of Thunder, Lightning and Hail, which happened in and about London on Friday, May 18, 1680, perhaps? Or A Short and pithie Discours concerning the engendering, tokens and effects of Earthquakes in general, (by Stukely, for all you Druids out there...) or another, rather more eclectically titled book about the London earthquake of 6th April, 1580, A Warning for the Wise, A Feare to the Fond, a Bridle to the Lewde, and a Glasse to the Good.

I find it hard to work out what else might be left to include in a book with a title as all-encompassing as A Full and True revelation of a dreadful Hurricane that happened on Saturday last, giving a true Revelation of several Houses that were blown down in and about the City of London, and Persons killed, besides several Trees blown up by the roots, and off in the middle; like wise of several Ships that were cast away at Seas&c. and of much Riches found near Deptford, with an Account of the Arches of London Bridge being Dry. (1701)

Ahem. Moving on, another book I would have loved to read is A Catalogue of most of the memorable Tombs and Gravestones, Plates, Escucheons or Achievements in the Demolished or yet extant Churches in London.

All London life is represented. Another candidate for the bestseller lists is Wonderful and strange Sights in the Element over the Citie of London and other places on Monday, being the seconde day of September, beginning betweene eight and nine of the clocke at night: increasing and continuing till after midnight, most straunge and fearfull to the beholders, and though I'm less sure about A Protestant Monument Erected to the immortal Glory of the Whiggs and the Dutch, if nothing else, I bet it's a curious read.

Good Lord, I could go on for ages about those pages at the back of the Middlesex Survey. Perhaps a little investigative journalism - A Short and True Relation concerning the Soap Business? Or a whodunnit - Murder will out; or a clear and full Discovery that the Earl of Essex did not feloniously murder himself; but was barbarously Murthered by others, both by undeiable Circumstances and positive Proofs. Some reportage, maybe - An Account of the great Mischiefs done by the Mob on Tuesday 28th and Wednesday the 29th of May 1717, with a list of the killed and wounded.

Of course the chances of me actually tracking down many of these volumes is slim - not least because the bibliography doesn't often mention who wrote them, or, indeed, when - but happily the titles are enough to make me thrill to the visceral nature of life 400-200 years ago.

Things weren't so different then either. Another, undated, but at least 200 year-old book in the list bemoans the way everything's changed for the worse round these parts - London, what it is, not what it was, or the Citizens' Complaint against Public Measures, including A Remonstrance against the great Numbers of Shops &c. that sell Geneva and other drams to the Poor and the evil Consequences thereof.

Plus ca change.

John Townsend. MP. Actor. Auctioneer. Radical. Emigrant

While the snow has been falling and I've not wanted to venture out for more than a pint of milk, I've been amusing myself with the shamefully-out-of-print Greenwich and Blackheath Past by Felix Barker, and found myself fascinated by a chameleon-like character of the sort you just don't get to see these days. John Major famously ran away from the circus to join another one but he was such a grey character that he was probably a changeling anyway. John Townsend, on the other hand, ran away from the theatre to become an MP but was a character so full of life and colour that the House was never going to keep him completely amused.

Townsend may not have been born in a trunk in 1819 but I'll wager his dad sold a few. If my experiences down at Greenwich Auctions are anything to go by, you need to be a bit of an actor to do that kind of work and although barking out prices on secondhand furniture wasn't for Townsend Jr, he would have learned projection from his old dad, if nothing else.

The lure of the greasepaint touched him even as a lad, and he appeared on stage from a very early age. He went on to lease the Theatre Royal Richmond straight after Edmund Kean had vacated the premises, then went on the road with his own company. His forte was Shakespearean tragedies, which somehow makes his brush with politics even more surreal.

Perhaps seeing Britain with a jobbing actor's eye gave him his compassion because when his father died and the 33 year-old had to give up acting to take over the family business, Townsend became a Poor Law Guardian and the next thing he knew he was fighting for dockers' rights. I get the feeling that he was elected MP for Greenwich almost by accident.

But once the limelight is in your blood, it's hard to give it up, and John Towsnend MP, even whilst sitting at Westminster, couldn't resist treading the boards. He played Shylock at Marylebone Theatre "to deafening applause" and received "long and prolonged cheers" when he gave his Richard III at Rochester. Ever the showman, he went one better at Astley's Royal Amphitheatre by being the last actor ever to play the doomed king on horseback (presumably not whilst speaking the line about being willing to part with his kingdom for a steed...)

Can you even imagine Nick Raynsford as a Shakespearean character? I'll look forward to hearing your suggestions for parts he might be suitable for. I guess today we're not completely without parliamentary clowns appearing on inappropriate media vehicles - witness George Galloway making an arse of himself on Celebrity Big Brother for that one - but actors?

Trouble was, poor old Townsend was a dreadful businessman and I can't imagine he'd made himself very popular with the local businesses he wanted to make pay their workers decent wages. He was forced into bankruptcy and had to give up his seat. He went back to acting full time and seems to have been much better loved as an actor than an MP, which, I suppose, is hardly surprising.

When he was 40, his health started to deteriorate, and he decided to emigrate. In order to get enough cash to make the crossing, he announced that he would give one last performance, at the Royal Hill Lecture Hall in 1866.

All 900 seats for the evening of "Dramatic Entertainment" had been snapped up faster than a Julie Andrews night at the O2, landing Townsend the princely sum of £200. He, along with his wife and fourteen year-old son ('unanimously pronounced the most accomplished junior swordsman of the day'), performed for his ex-constituents one last time, then boarded a boat for Canada.

Of course, once he was there, he couldn't resist acting any more than he could here. He continued until he retired in 1877, and I'm sure he stayed performing for family friends until his death in 1892. If it's in your blood...

Greenwich Barbers

I was given a copy of Brewers Dictionary of London Phrase and Fable for Christmas, after seeing and not-very-subtly coveting it in Waterstones. It's a great book - one of those lovely 'dipper' volumes that you don't read from cover to cover but return to every so often for a new nugget of curious knowledge.

I didn't expect to find much about Greenwich that I hadn't heard of before in a book that was London-wide; but I hadn't come across the term "Greenwich Barber" before. Greenwich Geese, yes, Barbers, no.

According to the book, it's "an 18th and 19th Century slang term applied to the people who obtained and sold sand from the Greenwich sandpits." It would seem that it derived from the idea of their 'shaving' the sand away from the seams.

I confess the etymology of this feels a bit weird. I tried googling it and found very few references to the term among all the adverts for hairdressers in Connecticut. Most of the references I did find come from people referencing Brewers; Websters claims the original source to be the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. I have no doubt it actually was a phrase then, but how widespread it would have been, I have no idea.

If memory serves, the Greenwich sand pits focused around the Diamond Terrace area (I'm still waiting for my invite to one of those fabled cocktail parties in a back garden 'grotto' made from an old sandmine, hint, hint...) though I'm sure the splendid fellows at Subterranean Greenwich will be tacking the subject of sand mines soon.

The sand went to make Greenwich Glass - which, depending on which account you read, was very fine or absolutely awful. Since I have never seen a single example of Greenwich Glass, I have no opinion on the matter, but I did discover that the Duke of Buckingham, who was Charles I's favourite, was a bit of a science-buff (they called them 'chymists' in those days) and got into glass making. His nice-little-earner monopoly ran out when Oliver Cromwell came to power, but Buckingham managed to persuade the Lord Protector to ban foreign imports, which had much the same effect. The duke's glassworks in Vauxhall and Greenwich thrived.

The death-knell for Greenwich Glass sounded with the invention of lead crystal (or 'flint glass') in the 1670s by George Ravenscroft (not that I can find any link with today's Ravenscroft Glass company.) Suddenly no one wanted boring old normal glass any more, they wanted the funky new stuff made with lead oxide instead of potash, and Buckingham's Greenwich glassworks had to close (although he continued to make mirrors in Vauxhall.)

Perhaps from the point of view of Greenwich's health, the closure wasn't such a bad thing. Apparently glassmaking is a very nasty business - creating toxic black fumes and lots of pollution. In fact I'm surprised that it was allowed at all near a Royal palace - though I guess the smoke could have been a contributing factor to the royals moving out for good around that time...

Certainly Buckingham himself wasn't daft enough to live anywhere near either of his factories. He lived at York House, on the Strand, and although his son sold it off to developers in the 1670s, the main Water Gate entrance (designed by none other than Inigo Jones) survives. Thanks to Victorian engineering (the Embankment) it's now nowhere near any water - but if you fancy a little trip, take a right out of Embankment tube into Embankment Gardens. Just past the concert stage and deckchairs, the Water Gate still sits, somewhat stranded (no pun intended) but surrounded by some rather pretty flower beds...

Hmm. I appear to have waffled a bit this morning. That's what comes from dipping into a book of curious facts about London. Somehow, everything eventually connects.

Festive Frightners

Guys - I know I promised to give you the creepy tale of the day all the way up to Christmas, but I've had a lot of trouble opening the window in my browser. I think it's a problem with my computer rather than the site, but I'm fed up with it crashing every time I try to open a virtual book so I'll give you the link to the main site so you can get a spooky Christmas tale of the day for yourself. Let me know if they're good!

Find them here.

Nightmares Before Christmas

Years ago, it was Christmas associated with ghost stories, not the silicone-pumped, apostrophe-free Halloween. It still is - in some ways - not a year goes by there isn't a new version of Dickens's A Christmas Carol (this year's Jim Carrey offering is, apparently, as unappealing as it looks - give me the Muppets any day...) but let's face it, thanks largely to Hollywood, festive fare is more fairies than scaries these days.

But at last the creepy side of Christmas is being explored once more, by those denizens of dire London, One Eye Grey and the Liars League . In an antidote to advent calendars, starting today, there will be a free, downloadable London ghost story for every day leading to Christmas Eve.

I'll be telling you about them as they come up - so each day you can get yourself thoroughly chilled by a nasty horror story, then gladden that frozen heart by seeking out a nice Greenwich advent window. Phantom for all seasons, me...

Today's horrid tale is Getting a Taste For It by Chris Roberts (of F&M publications, not our beloved leader...) It's nine minutes long - easily fitting into a tea break, non?

"This fusion of Sweeney Todd, Dennis Nilson might make you consider the vegetarian option this Christmas time, though at least at your work's do the punch is unlikely to be mixed by a mass murderer."

More where that comes from folks. In the meanwhile, thanks to Rich for the creepy pic of me in Charlton cemetery...

Gay Furbishings And Quaint Conceits

"The romantic and beautiful side of history is perhaps too much forgotten today in the very proper desire to reach accuracy of detail and the security of the historical basis of things."

So writes the great Greenwich antiquarian Professor J.E.G Montmorency in his introduction to a very wonderful book written in 1925 by Gerald Baker, Blackheath - The Story of the Royal Hundred.

The professor's right, of course, and I confess that I find myself rather more in the Baker camp than the Montmorency - it's much more fun to take the wildly romantic view of things, and write sentences such as "passing over many scenes of less importance" about the boring bits of Greenwich history than to do actual original research. Of course when it comes to books I use, I'd turn to Montmorency every time - but for the look, you can't beat the spiffing 1920s visions of Gerald Baker's slim volume.

Take that lovely picture of Nelson Road at the top of this post, for example - complete with ladies in cloche hats and fur stoles. Or this leafy vision of the Paragon, which I understand wasn't all that well at the time after WWI - though of course worse was to come before it finally reached - well, much the same view as in the drawing here - a few decades ago.

But the most fabulous thing about Blackheath... has to be the very telling advertisements inside the covers - and I thought today I'd share a few with you. They range from ads for hairdressers offering "Permanent Waving - by the best processes with the most up-to-date apparatus (fourteen separate cubicles)" through to F.A. Roberts who declare "here you will always find an attractive hat or toque suitable for any occasion..."

Some were enterprising individuals:

And some local eateries:

Sadly, I'm pretty sure that Alderton's restful cafe doesn't exist any more - but the gas showroom in Nelson Road is still here - even if it's not quite what it was:

Not sure where to see a little bit of Greenwich's early 20th Century hidden history? Try Joy - in Nelson Road. In between the saucy hen-night accouterments and sparkly gee-jaws, look for the old gas taps, the two beautiful remaining fireplaces - and, best of all, the mosaic-floored, stained glass windowed changing rooms with their wonderful, faded grandeur:

It's worth trying something on just to get a closer look...

Another survivor is the old Heathview Hotel - now the Clarendon, which, this advert implies, has stones from the old London Bridge incorporated into its walls:

I'm pretty sure Chappells are still going too, though I'd hazard a guess they wouldn't use a picture quite as - creepy - as this any more:

And what of those Quaint Conceits? Just take a look at this gay blade from Royal Parade.
Don't you just yearn for a new New Argosy that sells rhyme sheets, Viennese ceramics and Russian dolls?

Our Mutual Friend

Has anyone here ever managed to battle their way through this? I bought it some time ago, really, really meaning to read it and have, so far been thwarted. It just seems so disjointed - much more so than other Dickens works. Maybe that's because the choppiness didn't show when it was in the Victorian newspapers in serial form, but I'm having problems with it now. I know that Bella Wilfer gets married at the Trafalgar Tavern blah-de-blah, but I just can't get into it.

Radio Four is coming to my rescue though. They've adapted it to a drama serial, and it's on Woman's Hour (and 7.45pm for those of us who are out)every day this week. If you miss any of it you'll be able to find it here, but don't hang about - it only lasts for seven days after broadcast date.

I really hope I'll manage to last the course this time. Otherwise I'll just have to give up, as I confess I have done with Sir Walter Scott's execrable Fortunes of Nigel, (yes, it's really called that) which is, apparently, partially set in Greenwich, but, with large sections of it written phonetically in faux Scots 'braw-bricht-moonlicht-nicht-the-nicht' brogue is, IMHO, unreadable, even if it does have a pretty cover...

Greenwich Book Place At Last

Remember the long saga of 258 Creek Road? We visited it again and again and again and again and once again. In fact I'm quite surprised at myself - I thought I'd only talked about it once or twice.

Well, after yesterday's moan about the possible loss of a truly historic and curious building, I bring you the good news that another - well, at least old-ish - building has been saved. It may not have even the beginnings of the kind of importance that the Rotunda has but it's David Herbert's home and he's finally had the right thing done by him.

I've been watching the scaffolding turn into proper, standing-up walls over the past few months and now Sridevi tells me:

"I was walking home today from Cutty Sark DLR station today, when I noticed that the Greenwich Books and Gallery was open! It's been shuttered for so long and it used to have the scaffolding all around it, that I thought it was abandoned."

Sridevi went in and was impressed with the selection (the last time I went in, I got the feeling that things were definitely being run-down, so it sounds like it's now worth a peek...) Sridevi tells me "they now plan to keep the shop open regularly from mid-day onwards till 6-7pm, no fixed hours yet. They want to see if they get any customers, if its worth opening the shop.

I do think people should go and check it out- they had such lovely looking really-old books and prints, many first-editions, the kind of hard-back books that look so gorgeous on the bookcase and give the thrill of reading once more a treasured book that has passed through many gentle hands over time!"

I couldn't have put it better myself, Sridevi. Sounds like we have a 'new' Greenwich secondhand bookshop - and that can never be a bad thing.

Incidentally - in case you haven't been following yesterday's post about the Rotunda, it's occurred to me that we could possibly suggest that its preservation be part of the Woolwich Olympics legacy (seems as good as any...) - there is a list of useful people to pester on the comments section...

David Herbert, triumphant at last...

Goddesses, Guardians And Groves

Goddesses, Guardians and Groves - The Awakening Spirit of the Land

Jack Gale, Capall Bann, 1996, £10.95

Continuing with my week of alternatively-spiritual Greenwich, I bring you what is without doubt the oddest book about the town I have ever read.

It's so odd, in fact, that I haven't really worked out how to approach it. Written by Jack Gale, member of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, the Pagan Federation and the Fellowship of Isis, the book is a guide to the Pagan spiritual sites of Greenwich, and its alternative history, as discovered by decidedly alternative methods - dowsing, rituals, visions and psychometric readings. Gale's findings have been verified by at least two independent psychics.

Most of the sites, for fairly obvious reasons, hover around the park, heath, cavern and the Point and they're populated by a whole pantheon of deities and ancient figures, from a selection of alternative religions.

Everyone from Diana to Odin, Anubis to Cernunnos, Merlin to the Snow Queen, congregates around Greenwich, especially in winter, around wintry-named sacred places like the Snow Well and Plum Pudding Hill. Holda (aka The Snow Queen) was welcomed psychically by Gale himself, in his mind later, after a ritual held to reintroduce her to Greenwich Park, where they were having such a great time they forgot to do the deed itself.

Every page of this book carries some new fascinating concept - Did you know that William Boreman's 1662 design (sic) for the layout of Greenwich Park is based on the Qabalistic Tree of Life? Perhaps you will be terrified the grisly tale of Jumping Jack Black, a young man who fell victim to mob justice for a trivial crime of which he was actually innocent. Black revealed to a psychic friend of Gale's that he was hanged from an oak in Greenwich Park during the late Victorian/Edwardian period. Gale has done his homework and looked for this story in The Times of the period and, creepily, can find no reference whatsoever to the incident. He concludes that "likely it was hushed up and swept under the carpet" by the authorities.

The book is illustrated throughout with psychically-received portraits of gods, goddesses and mythological figures, and squirly automatic drawings made by psychics at the various sacred sites.

I have no idea what to make of this book - and yet I highly recommend it to all. It is utterly fascinating. You will never be stuck for topics of conversation after reading it. Buy it here

The London Blue Plaque Guide

Nick Rennison, The History Press

Spotting blue plaques on the walls of (sometimes very unassuming) buildings is one of the great joys of walking round London. Most of them are at least partly self-explanatory, but others can be quite obscure.

We have a fair few of them in and around Greenwich and Blackheath (and one lonely plaque in Charlton) even if there aren't as many round our neck of the woods as, say, Chelsea, finding one still brings that little frisson of excitement for me.

I've never actually had a guide to them before. There are a couple on the market, including a very sumptuous-looking hardback, which, presumably, is for armchair perusal, but Nick Rennison's paperback is one for the back pocket as you walk around.

Each blue-plaque recipient is listed alphabetically and gets a paragraph or so, with a short potted history, plenty for a day-walk - if you're that interested you can look 'em up when you get home.

At the back, there are several ways of looking up plaques, the most useful of which, for me, is the plaque-by-postcode list (which does flag-up the paucity of plaques in SE London as opposed to elsewhere...) It unfortunately helped me find the Greenwich omission - poor old Viscount Wolseley, whose plaque is on Ranger's House, is listed in the index, but he doesn't get a paragraph in the main book. The rest of the local guys do get their full measure.

The 2009 edition is as complete (with that one omission) as Rennison could make it as of January this year. English Heritage adds one or two plaques per month, so a guide can never be completely up to date, but he's done his best and has included a few unofficial plaques too - there are other schemes where individuals or groups erect plaques to people, often where the very strict rules of Blue Plaques don't allow an official one.

An obvious example of this is the stone plaque to Ignatius Sancho on the wall of Greenwich Park, unveiled a couple of years ago, a fascinating character whom I'll get around to talking about some time, but unable to have a blue plaque because the house where he lived doesn't exist any more (no excuse for a similar eminent black Greenwichian, Olaudah Equiano - the house he lived in does still exist...) Sancho's plaque isn't included in Rennison's guide and I really think there is a gap in the market for those unofficial plaques.

Some are blue, some are china, some are square (often in the City) some are octagonal. Some were erected by the council like the green plaques in Westminster, some (like the mysterious Helena Pare Lydia Mott ) are rococo stone plaques, others are home-made wooden ones. I don't know of any guide to them all. Maybe there's a blog waiting for some doughty individual...

Generally, The Blue Plaque Guide is a useful buy - it fits in a (large) pocket and has just enough info to pique the interest for research back home. As usual, Waterstones ever-expanding London section has it in stock...

London's Strangest Tales

Tom Quinn, Portico, 2008

This book is what I call a 'dipper.' It's the sort of book I keep by the bed for little nuggets of information when I'm sleepy but not sleepy enough.

And very neatly-filleted the nuggets are too. It's the sort of history book that makes serious historian splutter and spluff, as it leaves out all the boring bits and just lists the quirky, puerile, scatological, trivial and downright weird stuff that stands out in a thousand years of London Life (there is a whole series of similar books, ranging from Science's Strangest Inventions, through Poker's Strangest Hands to Golf's Strangest Rounds - a slim volume, I suspect...)

For hardened Londonphiles, many of these stories will be familiar, but most of them stand being told again and again and I have to say that much as I'd like to be snooty and say 'This is not serious history so it must be bad for you,' in the same way as sweeties rot your teeth, they also taste very good - and once you start scoffing 'em you just can't stop.

I find myself dipping into London's Strangest Tales more often than I care to admit. I never use a bookmark - I just plough in and see what I can find, be it Bumper Harris, Shiteburn Lane or Napoleon's Soap.

The top of the cover says 'For your reading pleasure...' You know, I do find myself pleasured by this. But that probably says more about me than I'd like...

The Phantom Book Club

OMG - I have a group of people meeting in my name! That is True Fame! My head's so big I'm having trouble getting the old tricorn on today...

If you recall, Kirstie contacted me back in July, hoping to set up a book club. She had a massive response and now The Phantom Book Club is meeting on a monthly(?) basis at the Cutty Sark pub. The last meeting, on Thursday night, based around A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, was some night - Kirstie herself left at 10.00pm and the discussions were still going strong (Photo by Simon, who I assume isn't in the pic...)

The group's quite full now, but I'm sure they could squeeze the odd extra reader in. They have quite a few girls, so they'll appreciate a couple more chaps. They'll be setting up a Facebook-y blog-y type page soon, which I'll put on the links section, but in the meanwhile, email me and I'll pass you onto Kirstie.

Blimey. Whatever next? The Phantom Knitting Circle? The Phantom Pachinko Players? The Phantom Sheep Fanciers of Olde Greenwich Towne? Bring 'em my way, baby...

Secret London- An Unusual Guide

Rachel Howard and Bill Nash, Jonglez, 2009

Hands up. I am not insusceptible to flattery. So I guess it's going to be an uphill struggle to persuade you that I had already decided that this book is a must-have for every curious Londoner BEFORE I noticed that I had been both name and web-checked by the authors.

Most kind, guys - I'm aware that once stuff goes up on the net it's public property - fair game, if you like - but it's flattering indeed to be namechecked when I wasn't even aware I'd 'helped.'

Of course, now I have to 'fess up and admit that it was actually long-term 'Friend of the Phantom' (sounds like a euphemism, doesn't it...) Benedict who introduced me to the fabulous comedy ads in the window of Sabo the newsagents and took the great pics of the 'lucky' Gnomes of Greenwich Park, not my own discovery - so I've been erroneously plauded - but hey, these things happen ;-)

But onto the book. I know it looks like I'm only being nice about it because it's nice about me - but even flicking through this slim volume in Waterstones, long before I'd actually read it, I knew I wanted it. It was the book I'd always wanted to write myself, with entries about curiosities around the whole of London clearly and entertainingly covered, including details on how to see them and other things to look for in the area.

And, unlike many 'oddities of London' books, this one isn't afraid to find fault with sacred cows. Dennis Sever's House, for example, which is one of the very, very, very best sights to see in all of London Town, has just one irritating thing - those patronising notes left all around it telling you how to 'appreciate' it. ("Do you get it yet?" Well, I did until your sodding sign broke the spell...) Rachel Howard and Bill Nash are in accord with myself on that one.

They also hate that awful public art that's springing up all over London. They are right that the very worst statue of all is the soul-free The Meeting Place by Paul Day in St Pancras Station, described by the authors as "an aesthetic hybrid of Stalin and Barbara Cartland." I wouldn't have been so generous myself. Sadly they miss out our own local bad art, Nelson.

Seriously, folks. I'm sure many of you will have bought this already - but it is absolutely essential reading. The Greenwich section won't tell you anything you don't know already, but the rest is gold dust. Nip down to Greenwich Waterstones immediately, and snap up a copy in their ever-expanding (thanks to staff who actually give a damn) London section...

A Find...

I've never really had much luck with the 'antiques' bit of Greenwich Market. I'm convinced that most of the stuff I see on display was in a job lot at the auction the week before for a fraction of the price, and although I always have a poke about, generally I come to the conclusion that much of it's just (whispers) tat.

But then I made that one find that negates all the times I've come away with nothing, and my interest has been rekindled.

The sweet old gent who sold me The Queen's London - a massively heavy souvenir book of 434 giant photographic plates, a pictorial record of London life at the time of Victoria's death, told me he was delighted to be selling something that was actually older than he was, and we spent a good 15 minutes flipping through the pictures together before he'd part with it.

It must have cost a fortune when it came out - every page is a full size photograph. It wasn't dirt cheap now (fifteen quid) but it will keep me happy for hours. That's the kind of tragic Phantom I am...

It covers all of London, so most of it's not Greenwich-y, though there are the obligatory pics of the park, the ORNC and a splendidly robust picture of the Royal Gun Factory at Woolwich Arsenal...



...but I love it all, whether it's "Luncheon at Ascot," "Morning Assembly at a Board School," "Teaching Boys to Swim at Kensington Public Baths" or the rustic charm of Mile End Road.

I particularly like the bits where the photograph didn't come out very well or there was a boring section, so they just got an artist to pencil-in figures, such as this dapper chap outside the Military Academy at Woolwich:



The picture at the top of this post was taken in May 1897, when the Prince of Wales ("accompanied by his beautiful wife") arrived at the Northern end of the newly-built Blackwall tunnel, on its official opening day. If you look carefully at the bottom of the photo, the book's publishers clearly didn't think the original picture was festive enough, so they've got their pet artist to draw some extra bunting and another policeman on horseback for good measure...

Just out of interest, the plate facing this scene in the book is ( off-topic, I know, but you've got to see this...) the Field Lane refuge in Clerkenwell, showing a couple of hundred derelicts in flat caps and shaggy beards being doled out mugs of something from a watering can, the poor sods' only solace being quotes from the Scriptures. The Queen's London is impressed - "there are no forms of philanthropy more admirable," it gushes.

Eeek.

So - don't give up on Greenwich Market's 'antique' days. There are gems to be found. It just takes some dedication - and patience...

The Jolly Pauper

Thomas Creevey, 1768-1838

Had it not been for the efforts of several gentlemen who seriously feared what might be contained within it, the diary of Thomas Creevey might well have been as famous as that of Sam Pepys. Judging from his letters, which didn't get destroyed, it's likely that his journal would have been just as candid as Pepys's - and equally entertaining.

As it was, the very fact that Creevey left the diary in the possession of his mistress, (with whom he lived openly for four years before his death in 1838) and the knowledge that he was one of the most notorious gossips of the Regency period, made several good men sweat.

Lord Brougham was sweating most. 'Bruff' had done some really interesting stuff in his life - not least defending Queen Caroline at her trial, as well as 'discovering' Cannes and inventing the Brougham Carriage - but he'd also done other 'interesting' stuff.

While the Duke of Wellington just said "publish and be damned" to courtesan Harriet Wilson when she tried to blackmail him about their 'arrangement', Brougham coughed up the cash. He wasn't about to let another call-girl do the same thing. Creevey's pal, Charles Fulke-Greville couldn't help but snigger at the efforts of Brougham and other notables to suppress the diary, but it doesn't change the fact that Bruff was ultimately successful.

What survives is a bunch of correspondence that Brougham's gang didn't manage to snaffle.

There must be a whole slew of worthy titles that spend their days alternating between charity shops and people's bookshelves. I found a Penguin edition of Creevey's papers in a charity shop some years ago, with every intention of reading it 'some day.' It was only when clearing my shelves of all the books I'd bought at charity shops to read 'some day,' so that they could - well - go back to where they came from so someone else could buy them to read 'some day,' that I actually looked at it again and discovered a curious thing.

Phantom's Law dictates all interesting people end up in Greenwich at some point. Thomas Creevey did just that - end up here.

Creevey is immediately endearing - not least because he was a truly happy soul. He was a dreadful tittle-tattle - he couldn't help himself - but he meant well.

"...The Duke of York was so tipsy that he fell down and was blooded immediately, and whilst the Queen was delivering her warlike manifesto, the little Pss was making game and turning her back upon her. Poor Courtney has had a paralytic stroke and Nollekens the sculptor..."

After his wife died, the cash ran out. But because of his sunny nature, he was still accepted in Society, even if he didn't have two farthings to rub together.

Fulkes-Greville noted "old Creevey is a living proof that a man may be perfectly happy and exceedingly poor. I think he is the only man I know in Society who possesses nothing."


He refused to take the money left to his stepchildren (his wife had been married before) and instead led a nomadic life between friends and family. His step daughter is the one to thank for keeping the correspondence we have left - she and he were close to the end.

That's not to say there wasn't a mischievous streak in him. A glance at the nicknames he uses in his diaries for various worthies of the day provides some insight into his naughty-boy humour. Here are a few examples:

Comical Bob - The Duke of Marlborough

The Frog - William of Orange

Niffy-Naffy - Lord Darlington

Prinny and Mrs P - Prince Regent and Princess Caroline

Squire Stiffrump - C. Western

Widow's Mite - Lord Russell

And Brougham himself? Alternately Wickedshifts and Beelzebub.

Creevey was a Whig, a political advisor to various politicians of the day, but frankly, that's not what he's known for. Much like Pepys, he was a relatively minor character in a time of world events - but with an excellent front seat view of things such as the death of Nelson, Princess Caroline's scandalous life, the amours of Lord Byron and the ascent to the throne of 'Viccy.'

Although much of his correspondence tends to be more interesting to political historians as he discusses issues of the day, he was also just one of those guys that just happened to be around when the day's celebrities were doing outrageous things, and he just couldn't help telling the world about it.

In 1834, Creevey finally found some stability when he was offered the job of Commissioner of Greenwich Hospital, with a salary of £600 per year and a nice house - I don't know where that would have been. The next year his sister's death ensured his income almost doubled and he decided to find himself a mistress "from the nocturnal pavement."

Some people couldn't be seen to be socialising with Creevey once he'd done such a socially unacceptable thing as finding himself a nice Greenwich hooker, but Emma Murray, in a wonderfully anti-stereotypical fashion, doesn't seem to have latched onto an old man for his cash. She was liked by his step daughters and when he died (in 1838, in Greenwich, from a chill after staying out too late gossiping with Admiral Hardy's daughters) and she was made sole executrix of his will, she took advice on what to do with the diaries, believed to contain 'revelations,' rather than immediately flogging them off to the highest bidder. The diaries did get destroyed - but it doesn't seem to have been because of any gold-digging on Emma's part.

"Old Creevey" loved Greenwich "Oh - that you could have seen the beauty of Greenwich Park and everything about it yesterday," he wrote in 1835. And of the town itself "I have the best victuals London can afford of all kinds within ten yards of me." He never gave up trying to get his mates over to visit him - "you know as well as I do that my apartments are yours" - though he does admit "I am afraid you will find Greenwich at this season a very inconvenient distance from your dentist."

His body, as far as I know, still rests in the grounds of Davenport House. Certainly he is listed on the large monument erected when many of the bodies were exhumed for moving to East Greenwich Pleasaunce. But for a true memorial of the man, try his papers. They don't appear to be in print just now, but they turn up in charity and secondhand shops on a regular basis. Hell - you might even end up with my old copy...

Short Spins Round London South

Arthur C. Armstrong & Harry R. G. Inglis

Oh, the joys of scrubbing around the cheap sections of dusty old bookshops. The pickings may not always be in top condition, but what they lack in bookshelf glitz they make up for in charm and quirk.

I got this fire-damaged, spineless 1907 cycling guide to South London for 50p. Admittedly it has to be tied up with a ribbon to prevent its spilling its guts all over my desk, but I was as excited by discovering this as any of the glossier bling-books on my shelf.

It's clearly spent some time in the back pocket of an intrepid early bicyclist as he discovered the joys of a twenty mile radius of Charing Cross, his tough tweed trousers tucked into thick woollen socks, deerstalker-peak tipped jauntily towards the horizon. Or maybe it spent sunny Sundays nestled in the basket of a doughty Edwardian traveller in her Jaeger 'health corset' and stout wasp-waist skirt, leg o' mutton sleeves billowing and the cherries on her straw boater nodding in the headwind as she pedalled furiously up Shooters Hill.

It is an intensely practical guide, warning that "the small portion of Kent included in the eastern boundary of this volume is the hilliest section described in it, but at the same time its scenery is the finest."

It's also 'of its time' - "a revolution of vital importance to cyclists is the conversion of the metropolitan tramway systems to electric traction" including a stiff warning to look out for "electric wires carried in a slotted groove." But some things never change: "The approaches either side of the Woolwich free ferry are bumpy, with some traffic; the Blackwall Tunnel is very rough."

The gentlemen who wrote this book, like myself, are obsessed by gradient. I hate anything steeper than the Thames Path, and can't even begin to imagine what those old butcher-boy bikes of 1907 must have been like to ride up Maze Hill...

Woolwich Road is described as "uninviting at first, then hilly," the Dover Road merely as "very steep." Greenwich Park is "exceedingly beautiful, and much frequented by cyclists, who are, however, permitted to ride only on certain roads." Reading the slightly complex instructions about what's allowed and what's not, I gather there was some kind of one-way system.

Route One goes from the General Post Office in the centre of London, via Greenwich, out to Dartford. One of these days I'll give it a try, so I won't go too much into the detail for now - I wouldn't want to peak too soon on the tram lines and rough paving, Greenwich's grimy suburbs and ugly brick buildings - and Blackwall Tunnel's greasiness.

In case anyone fancies a historic jaunt before I get round to it, though, here it is:

I've noticed a couple of old London tour guide reprints in Waterstones recently. I could see a market for Short Spins Around London. In the meanwhile, though, the best I can suggest is fighting me for pole position rootling round the 'everything 50p' boxes in dusty secondhand bookshops...

Joy Or Sacrilege?

Joe Orton got banged up for doing it. But then it was the 1960s - there were rules. Conventions. Things you just didn't do - or at least not in public. And you'd certainly never admit to committing such a socially unacceptable act.

Orton's parents were never told he'd been arrested. They had to find out from the pages of the Daily Mirror. Heaven Only knows what the neighbours thought...

I am, of course, talking about the defacement of library books. Scribbling in the margins, putting your own slant on things. To be honest, from what I've seen of Orton's handiwork it was often a bit on the puerile side - but he had a point to make and Islington Library Service, once so keen to hunt him down, now regard the books he and his mate Kenneth Halliwell defaced as some of the gems of their collection.

I have just added a gem to my own collection, unearthed in a secondhand bookshop in Shropshire at the weekend - and, though I have no idea who scrawled so intensely over virtually every page of Harold P. Clunn's The Face of London - the only thing the scribbler didn't write was his or her name - I am overjoyed at finding such a wonderfully-annotated volume.

References, extras, amendments and even a few outright disagreements with Mr Clunn make it a slow read - but infinitely fascinating. Hell - even the index is annotated. It's made even better by the addition of dozens of 1950s newspaper cuttings slipped between the pages, causing the book to bulge in a most appealing way.

The reason I'm writing about this (apart from the obvious bibliophile's pleasure in gloating over a particularly fat-find) is to remind you folks who are interested in such things that the best places to find books about Greenwich and London are often the provinces.

The guy in the bookshop told me that he has loads of London books in his warehouse; he just can't shift 'em. So he only ever keeps a small section on display and he sells them cheap (I paid just over a fiver for The Face of London and all its yummy extras.) He offered to let me see the Warehouse of Wonder, but I was only there for the day - next time, I'll call ahead.

Of course if you're not into obscure volumes about our fair capitol, my fingers itching at the thought of a defaced book full of bits of old newspaper are not going to be something you either get or care about. But if you are, remember - wherever you're off to on your holidays this year - check out the secondhand bookshops and remember to ask the bookseller. They, too, may have the keys to their own particular Warehouse of Wonder.

So - would I write all over a book? Hmm. Tough one. I was brought up never to do such a philistine thing. And I certainly wouldn't do it to anything 'important.' Or, indeed, public property. My parents don't read the Mirror, so they'd never know I'd been arrested in Blackheath Library.

But given how much fun I'm getting from my anonymous fellow-Londonphile's scribblings, yes - maybe in future I'll be writing the odd pithy observation in the margins of Clive Aslet...

A Lady's Captivity Among Chinese Pirates

Fanny Loviot, 1858/ 2008, NMM Publishing £8.99

So - I was just about to review Paul and suddenly realised I had no book to read. A cardinal sin, that needed immediate rectification.

The volume I chose has only the slenderest connection with Greenwich - its only link is that it was discovered among the archives of the Caird Library and republished by the NMM, but it's fun and I liked it. So shoot me.

I confess I only bought it for the cover. Production values are a big thing for me, shallow Phantom as I am, and I really liked its small sized, heavy papered, hardback-with-dustjacket presence. Oh - and it fitted in my pocket for the walk home...

Our heroine Fanny Loviot, the far-too-brief introduction tells us, was, despite the book's title, no lady. Sadly the annoyingly short intro is too coy to tell us what she actually was, but she 'won' her passage to America in the French Lottery set up to rid the country of 'undesirables' and made her way to California in the 1850s.

It's a surprisingly easy read, considering the stilted 19th Century style, and full of swashbuckling fun. The introduction, as I've mentioned is fine - but far too flimsy - it poses more questions than it answers - not least how Fanny actually got into her adventures in the first place, and what happened to her in the long run.

Half the book is a description of Gold Rush San Francisco and her exploits there with her 'sister,' who may or may not have existed (it's suggested the publisher made her invent a female companion for chaperoneage-purposes.)

Gunfights and fistfights, arson and greed, Fanny describes it all in high-falutin' Victorian prose, including descriptions of her own life, disguised as a man and travelling for her business - never actually spelled out.

When her lodgings and business were razed by fire, she decided to go to Hong Kong, and it was on her journey back that her ship was captured by junkfuls of Chinese pirates, straight out of Central Casting. The Pirate Captain is in the Chow Yun Fat mode, complete with shaved-head-and-ponytail ensemble and his crew are enjoyably dastardly. The adventures of Fanny and her companions really are just waiting to be made into a Hollywood movie.

All that's needed is to innocent-her up, have her fall in love with the captain of the ship that's captured and make the French Vice Consul of Hong Kong corrupt instead of nice and, bish-bosh - you got a script.

You read it here first, folks. A Lady's Captivity Among Chinese Pirates has just GOT to be turned into a blockbuster - it needs so little to be done to it to make it classic Joseph Campbell stuff.

Of course, one of the very few things it does need is a name change. Not nearly lurid enough for today's tastes...

Derelict London

Paul Talling, Random House, £9.99

Compelling and depressing in equal quantities, Derelict London is a must-own for any fan of London Now - and downright hardcore pornography for salivating developers.

A wonderful example of a print publication coming out of a website, if you don't already know http://www.derelictlondon.com/ then you need to aquaint yourself with it pronto. A fabulous portrait of the capital's underbelly, an seamy universe of abandoned hope, waiting joylessly to be populated by Neil Gaiman characters. And I've never been sure whether to be pleased or miserable at the amount of Greenwich-related material Paul Talling has found.

It's not a book (or indeed a website) to be read in one hit - unless you're already on a downer and you want to really depress yourself (or you're one of the aforementioned salivating developers, in which case GET OFF MY BLOG) - but somehow you can't help but turn over page upon page of beautiful (and some slightly less than beautiful) buildings, let down badly by Posterity.

It was only published in 2008 - but already it's a history book. Here you can find the Ferrier Estate before it was flattened and Lovell's Wharf before it was flat-tened, for example, but other stories have a slightly more upbeat feel to them - I was reminded that I really need to visit the Royal Garrison Church of St George in Wolwich soon. I'll report back on that one.

This is an important work. It made me sad - but that's not to say I didn't enjoy it hugely.

Greenwich

Barbara Ludlow, Images of England 1998, reprinted 2008. £12.99

I have been a big fan of Barbara Ludlow ever since a lovely reader photocopied an entire booklet of hers and sent it to me. It's a real shame that virtually nothing she's written seems to be easily available (it's usually in dog-eared, typewritten mimeograph format - which, if you ever see a copy, you should fall on it with gratitude...) which is why I'm particularly pleased that Greenwich was reprinted on its tenth anniversary.

Greenwich follows in the footsteps (or perhaps sets the pace) of the recent fashion for 90% pictures, 10% text, and as long as this fashion doesn't become a habit, I'll go along with it for now, if only because Ludlow's picked some winners here.

This is a book that people who don't live in Central Greenwich will welcome. There are plenty of town centre shots, most of which are of things that haven't existed for years and well-warrant close scrutiny (even if one or two of the captions should have been tweaked for the reprint - it has to be a good five years since the Gipsy Moth IV was taken away from us for not looking after it properly...)

But where this book really wins through is in the pictures Ludlow has found of the less glamorous - but equally fascinating - parts of Greenwich, town and borough - that usually get left out of the tourist guides. East Greenwich. West Greenwich. Plumstead. Woolwich. Charlton. Westcombe Park. Shooters Hill (which looks like a Dorset country lane.)

Being a tourist destination can be a double-edged sword. There are loads of books and histories written about the glamorous bits of Greenwich, which are all very welcome of course.) But it also means that our 'real' history tends to get sidelined. And the outlying towns often get a raw deal, coverage-wise (yes, from me too - sorry guys...)

Barbara Ludlow can't rectify the shortfall in one book. But she makes a fine fist at it and these pictures are, without exception, fascinating.

My hope, though is that Ludlow's next book will allow her to spread her wings and actually write. She has a huge wealth of knowledge and captions, however apt, pithy or timely, can only ever be the tip of a historical iceberg.

Medical London

Richard Barrett/Mike Jay, Wellcome Collection £15.99

I went to listen to Richard Barrett as part of a day of London lectures at the Bishopsgate Institute on Saturday. Looking as though he was only just out of short trousers, this jolly young cove entertained and fascinated, inspired me and made me laugh. A lot. It was only at the end of his talk I realised I didn't really know what he'd been saying.

Perhaps that's why I never got to go to Cambridge, which is where Barrett's a lecturer. But I'd enjoyed his talk so much (yes - I know that sounds mad - but it really does seem possible to enjoy something hugely and only realise later that although it made sense at the time, it remains a mystery to a tiny Phantom brain...) that I really wanted to get to grips with his subject - London Bodies.

So I headed for the groaning stall of London books lurking at the back of the conference room in search of his newly published magnum opus, Sick City.

My decision to spend £15.99 was helped by the fact that his book has to be one of the most handsomely-produced volumes published in a long, long while. And yes - I was seduced by its sheer gorgeousness. The Wellcome Trust, a very wealthy organisation, has clearly poured cash into this project and the result is sumptuous.

Its cloth-bound hard case contains no less than eight items. Barnett's paperback Sick City, of course, which I'm currently enjoying a lot (and understanding, btw), despite its being perfect-bound (I hate perfect-bound books), a hardback gazetteer, Anatomy of the City, which contains medical gems to visit in London, from museums to blue plaques, statues to curiosities and things that just aren't there any more, and six fold-out walking tours complete with funkily-drawn maps (by the excellent Strange Attractor guys), links back to Sick City for extra information and instructions for easy use.

What clinched the deal was the medical walking tour of Greenwich, which meant I couldn't leave the set behind.

It's a very do-able tour and although a couple of the landmarks seem - well - a little spurious, considering the medical bent the walk's supposed to be taking (I'm guessing that Barrett also included a couple of things that tickled him, for the sheer joy that he could - something of which I approve of course), it contains enough stuff that most local people wouldn't know to make it a good Sunny Sunday Afternoon jaunt.

It takes you from Deptford to Blackheath via Greenwich town centre and highlights for me included the Dreadnaught Hospital and the birthplace of Sir John Simon (though I'm still looking for the "excellent" visitor centre at the Cutty Sark - the book presumably went to press before they replaced it with that tiny gift shop...)

I don't know whether Waterstones have got this yet, but I thoroughly recommend it. Apart from being excellent value for money, it's a thoroughly enjoyable read, full of facts and visual interest - and it will look great on your bookshelf.

Maritime Greenwich

David Ramzan, The History Press, £12.99

I like a picture of a boat as much as the next Phantom. And I am happy to study one for a nice amount of time. So when I saw David Ramzan had come out with another book, hot on the heels of his splendid Greenwich, Centre of the World, I was very pleased indeed.


In many respects Maritime Greenwich follows on quite neatly from his 2007 treasure. It has the same chatty captions to the illustrations, (his publishers clearly acknowledging the fact that many people don't actually bother with text any more, prefering to look at the pictures and read the labels.) They're well-researched little nuggets of info, and Ramzan's chosen some really excellent photographs, most of which I'd never seen before. Some of the modern ones I could have handled in colour, but I guess that's down to economics, rather than personal choice...


But this differs in one large respect from Greenwich, Centre of the World. It's a far less personal book. In his earlier work, I felt that Ramzan had poured his very soul into the pages. There were snippets about himself and his family, expertly woven into the fabric of Greenwich's history.


To me, Maritime Greenwich, just doesn't feel as 'connected', which is mad - I mean - if I knew nothing about him, and this was just presented as a stand-alone, I'd be perfectly happy. I wouldn't miss his recollections and personal links. But I have read his earlier stuff. And I do sort of miss his personality here.


I guess what I love about Greenwich's history, when it comes down to it, is the humans that made it. Maritime Greenwich, perhaps, by its very nature, is more about how Greenwich made the humans. We have to wait until chapter four to actually get anything concrete about people, and although when we get there, it's very nice stuff (I particularly like the Greenwich Pensioners' cricket match between 11 men with one arm and 11 men with one leg...) I could have handled a hell of a lot more of it.


Instead we have a lot of pictures of ships. Now - as I've said, I like a nice boat. And each of these pictures IS interesting and DOES warrant being in a book. But all together they're - well - a bit overwhelming. I found myself skipping through pages, when normally, if I was just shown one or two boats, I'd be really interested.


Don't get me wrong - there is definitely enough in this book to well-warrant twelve-ninety-nine of your English pounds.

It is a volume to keep going back to rather than guzzle in one hit, which is my usual wont with books. It is for keeping close by and dipping into every so often. A good addition to your bulging Greenwich bookshelf. It's just that if you only going to get one of David Ramzan's books - I'd have to suggest the excellent Greenwich - Centre of the World.

A Year In The Life Of Greenwich Park

Anthony Quiney, (Frances Lincoln, £16.99)

I have been waiting for this book to come out. I first noticed it slated for publishing something like 18 months ago - and eventually got so sick waiting I called round some likely bookshops, and got one of them to call the publisher. I believed it had been cancelled. I am delighted to see I was wrong.

Firstly, a couple of things this book is not. It is not the much-needed serious history and exploration of the park that would be the natural child of A. D. Webster's seminal 1902 Greenwich Park, shamefully long out of print before a successor has come into place. The text in A Year In The Life of Greenwich Park is interesting enough, but not the primary function of the book (a shame since Quiney is an architectural historian who has been both Professor of Architectural History and President of the Royal Archaeological Institute - I would have placed him in pole-position to write the Park version of John Bold's definitive Greenwich.) It gives the barest overview of the park's history - nicely written and entertaining, but not deep enough to present any real analysis.

The other thing this book is not, is a year 'behind the scenes' at Greenwich Park. Again, I am mildly surprised that with a commission like this, Quiney didn't collaborate with Royal Parks to give us a keepers-eye view of what has to be a rarified world, part-way between royal straitjacket and real life; to show us what needs to be done to keep a place like that going, and to give us a glimpse into the 'secret' world of Greenwich Park. I can't sneak around the deer enclosure, behind the potting sheds, on top of the reservoir, inside Hawksmoor's Standard Reservoir or even poke around in the bowels of the Royal Observatory, but I sure as hell would have liked Quiney to have done so for me - to have given me a vicarious tour of the bits of Greenwich Park I don't get to see.

So. If that's what A Year in the Life of Greenwich Park isn't, then what actually is it?

It's the book you turn to when the skies are black with rainclouds, the temperature's below zero and the winds are howling louder than the dog.

It's the book you carry with you, (despite its size and shape) wherever you go in the world, to remind you why Greenwich is fantastic and its Park is the most beautiful you'll find anywhere.

It's the book that gives you confidence that Spring's low sun will bring the flowers again, that Summer will fill your heart with heady, sunshiny days, that crisp Autumn mornings will remind you you're alive and that Winter has a crystalline beauty of its own. Oh - and that there are parrots in them thar trees...

Anthony Quiney's photographs are staggeringly lovely. Now - I know that Greenwich Park is hardly a difficult place to make look stunning, but to make it look different - to surprise a seasoned park-goer into reassessing much-loved areas, to force a casual reader to stop flicking-through and to take a long look at each picture - that's a skill.

I keep going back to it, looking again, pausing, thinking. What I particularly like about the collection is that it is bang-up-to-date modern. The photographs themselves are of timeless subjects, but the way they are taken (and treated - there appears to have been some fun had with the Hue/Saturation button in places, an effect of which I heartily approve) is pure 21st Century.

My favourites currently include the 'spider' tree, the petal-strewn grass, the post-downpour tennis courts and Princess Caroline's Bath (the last because it made me stop and really think why it had been cropped the way it had. I think I get it now.) But I change my mind every time I look at it. It's lovely.

As I started out, this is not a substitute for a proper, in-depth study of the park - both its history and what it is now. That is a book long overdue. But as a companion volume to such a work, it is outstanding.

Oh, and don't miss the parrots.

The Phantom Recommends

If you don't have a lovely, cuddly independent bookshop in your area, like The London Review Bookshop (good cakes if you're ever in the Bloomsbury area) West End Lane Books (good contacts) or the very wonderful Daunts (fab selection and lovely architecture) - and let's face it, it's unlikely we'll ever get another one now - what with the way modern publishing works, the internet and supermarkets - then what's the next best thing?

Someone at the local Waterstones that actually gives a damn, that's what.

Jayson has just started as the assistant manager at Greenwich Waterstones and, as a Greenwich resident, has started beefing-up the Greenwich and London section and making it much more prominent in the shop. He even tells me he's had one book reprinted because he saw it was going out of print. He's keen to stock excellent books about the area, and happy to hear suggestions.

I'm delighted to see this. Of course I'd like to see a lovely independent bookshop and before you remind me, yes, Maritime Books on Royal Hill is lovely - but it's specialised - which is slightly different. So, too, are Greenwich Book Time which sells remainders and the second-hand guys at Halcyon.

Let's get realistic here. We have someone - with clout - who's prepared to go that extra mile for local people - and that counts for a lot in a world where chains usually just plough-along-quite-nicely-thank-you.

Now. Here's the bit where The Phantom's tricorn starts to strain at the band. In places where you sometimes see staff recommendations on postcards dotted around the shop, you may well start to see little "The Phantom Recommends..." postcards on some of the books - they will look like this:

They will be culled from the The Phantom Bookshelf initially (and yes, I AM slowly adding to that - but I'm doing it very unscientifically, working my way along the shelf, and it's taking aaaages...) but I may well be doing a few specific reviews for Jayson. Needless to say, I'm not going to say I love a book if I don't - the same rigorous Phantom standards will be applied to any reviews I write.

In the meanwhile, keep an eye out at Waterstones for a slowly-growing Greenwich section. Of course it can only ever be as large as there are books in print - and there are never enough of those, thanks to the economics of publishing (otherwise Olde Phantome's Greenwich Almanack would have been out by now) but maybe, if a major chain is interested in stocking local books, more publishers will be prepared to take a punt at printing them.

I can only see this as a good thing. Here's something I never thought I'd say. Go Waterstones...

Greenwich

An Architectural History of the Royal Hospital for Seamen and the Queen's House

John Bold, 2000

Do you ever plough along happily, doing whatever you do, and then suddenly get such a jolt that you wonder what the hell you're doing and why you even bother?

This happens with me most times I pick up an Iain Sinclair book. His icy, passionate prose (yes, the two do go together in this instance) his outrage and anger, his love and humanity just floor me every time. But I tell myself that that's okay - he writes about north London on the whole, reserving his comments about Greenwich largely to digs at the Millennium Dome.

But now, in a totally different vein, I've found another book that staggers me in its detail and depth. It's not written with Sinclair's deliberately understated/flamboyant style; indeed it's far more formal and even 'official,' but neither is it a stand-back toe-the-party-line look at Greenwich's architectural history.

John Bold is cool and methodical, and has clearly had the kind of access to records and photographs that the rest of us can only dream of - but he shares it with us (at an admittedly squeakingly-expensive price) in page after page of readable prose, peppered with little details that, even if Bold doesn't elaborate on them in these pages, make the reader's imagination swing off on tangents - by my reckoning a good thing indeed.

He's best when it comes to original plans and designs - for everything from the grotto originally designed to go at the top of the giant steps (where General Wolfe is now) to stage-by-stage drawings of how the Queen's House and ORNC were built.

The photographs are incredible - loads of pics I'd never seen before. The one that stands out in my memory as I write this, is of the conduit head in the north east of the park (just above the kiddies' playground) before it was unimaginatively bricked up. The picture, an antique postcard, shows the end of the tunnel opening out onto a pond in a most romantic fashion. Why they had to brick it up and lose the pond can only be down to Health & Safety nonsense - why they couldn't have just put an iron grille over the entrance and kept the pond is beyond me.

Much of what I like about Bold's book is what he doesn't write - he gives us huge amounts of historical detail and explores ideas behind what has happened to the place over the centuries (his analysis of the 1980s incarnation of the Queen's House is interesting indeed - something so recent, yet already historic and controversial. Sadly, he refrains from comment on the current incarnation...) but many of the little anecdotes and incidents that make Greenwich so immediate are tantalisingly mentioned, not enlarged upon. I like that. It leaves something to ponder upon at leisure...

If I have any criticism, it's beyond the perameters of the book. There is virtually nothing about the earlier history of Greenwich - he says that other people have already covered it. I guess he has a point, but I would have valued his methodical approach to Bella Court or Placentia.

All in all, thank you to all of you who told me to forego the curries for a while and invest in this instead. I was getting fat anyway. It's a pricey, pricey buy but - frankly - if you get this book, it's unlikely you'll ever need to read this blog ever again...

South London

"Few places in the world which were once the scene of pageantry, glory and decisive events have received such scurvy treatment at the hands of time as South London..."

Harry Williams, author of the 1949 gem South London, published by County Books and the first of my lovely finds at the charity booksale last week, doesn't pull any punches. He's an angry man. He's angry at the clumsy development of the boroughs south of the river as opposed to the fragile treatment of the north London villages. He's furious at the way South London's glorious past has played second fiddle to its sumptuous northern neighbour. And he's positively apoplectic at the state in which German bombers have just left the whole sorry mess.

But he has a soft spot for Greenwich. He admits that her charms, though "not immediately apparent" - with her "garish main thoroughfare, most depressing where most pretentious...shoddy little shops,...all-pervading atmosphere of dirt, tiredness and weary resignation...lumbering trams," when the brittle carapace of post-war filth is broken through, "bursts upon the astonished vision with magical effect after an approach of the kind so prevalent in the southern half of the London tangle."

There isn't enough of this sort of stuff about. Well ok, the superlative Iain Sinclair makes a fine fist of London polemic - but he's a Hackney man.

Harry Williams's impassioned prose is a joy to read - even if he is, on occasion, a little slipshod with facts (hell - aren't we all...) describing St Alphege's Church as "a fine example of Wren's genius," for example, or telling us that there's "nothing of exceptional interest" in the Maryon parks. Indeed, a previous owner of my copy has gone through making pencilled amendments and correctly re-labelling several of the pictures, one of which is printed upside down.

But this is fabulous stuff. Williams riffs happily on Greenwich's many charms (I love the phrase "umbrageous dells," and shall use it constantly now I know it means 'shady'...) before moving reluctantly on to the rest of the borough - "an anticlimax, but we must not shirk it, for we are in search of the soul of this part of London and we cannot tell where it may be found" - as well as other more westerly places, with a style that I would expect of a much more modern author.

All the way through, it's illustrated with some wonderful photographs (as aforementioned, slightly hap-hazardly labelled - and all the sweeter for it.) Since they really are great fun and I haven't a hope in hell's chance of ever finding the photographer, I'll reproduce one or two of them over the next few months until I get a cease-and-desist... ;-)

I'd like you to take a look at the pic at the top. Yeah, yeah, I know it's of Trinity Almshouses. But just take a peek at what's behind them. Look at the chimneys on that. I can't find out when these beautiful things were torn down for the frankly utilitarian versions we have today, but it had better have been for a good reason.

For a different view of those chimneys - and not merely because I want to share this lovely aerial pic of Greenwich, see below (as usual, click on the image to make it bigger.) Things that I especially like about it are the little paddle steamer in the Thames, the flatness of the Isle of Dogs - and the patchwork effect of what I can only assume was the last knockings of the allotments allowed on Greenwich Park during the war.

There are some other crackers, but I'll leave them for another day, leaving you with the immortal words of Harry Williams:

"For this one moment, in Greenwich, beauty is revealed fully, and within limits completely, making nonsense of the jumble of architecture passing as commercial efficiency which is the norm of the London Scene."

Paperboy

Christopher Fowler, Doubleday, £16.99

Remember not so long ago when we were discussing the groovy plans drawn up by the GLC for the Blackwall Tunnel Southern Approach in the early seventies? Those full-of-optimism brown and orange hopes and dreams, with little cardboard models and artists impressions of what it was all going to be like?

Dazza wondered at the time if there were any protests or petitions from the people being hoiked out of their homes to make way for Progress.

Apparently not. It would seem that the residents looked at the grand new plans with puzzlement before meekly saying "Oh, okay. I'll be on me way then..."

I can now reveal that the protests amounted to one small boy running away from his family's dodgy new location in Abbey Wood, arriving at his old house in Westerdale Road just in time to see the wrecking ball in full swing. That small boy was Christopher Fowler...

I bought Fowler's (of the Bryant & May mysteries) memoir Paperboy last Friday. By Saturday evening I'd gobbled up the lot. In an age where everyone can be a TV star, a micro-celebrity or a self-published writer(ahem) it's great to sit back and enjoy an autobiography written by a professional.

Even if it hadn't been about the 'wrong' end of Greenwich, for which I have a particular soft spot, or about a white collar working class world that I recognise only too painfully (Fowler may be writing about the sixties - but this stuff was going on well into the seventies and even eighties. Hell - I bet it still goes on in pockets all over Britain...) and even if it hadn't discussed my favourite kids' TV shows and games (though I disagree with him over Noggin the Nog - that prog rocked...) I would have still enjoyed Paperboy for its sheer joy of narrative, fun with words - and sarky footnotes.

As it is, it's a tender, unsentimental part of Greenwich's history that's never going to make it to the Pepys Centre or into most conventional history books, but which is just as real as any tale I'll happily recount for the nth time about Sir Walter Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth I. The characters of Christopher Fowler's childhood might be working class, but stereotypes they're not. They're real people - which makes a fair few of them all the scarier.

Fowler himself, a speccy, bookworm of a child, was as much of a puzzle to his parents as they were to him. As is customary in such tales, true understanding came all too late. To avoid the fights and arguments, he hid himself in East Greenwich Library, immersed in whatever reading matter came to hand until one day when - well, I'll let him tell you about that.

This is a book intended for a market beyond Greenwich, unlike most local memoirs, which although often sweet - and, of course, important documents in their own right, can tend towards the "After blacking the fireplace, we always used to go down the Co-op of a Friday, before we sat in the sixpenny stalls at the Regal. That was how it was done in those days...." method of storytelling. Therefore, when Fowler does move onto the cinema (of which there were a fair few in Greenwich) his concern is more with entertaining the reader and building a picture of childhood than namechecking as many locations as possible. He no longer lives around here - and hasn't for many years.

Nevertheless, this is still a local book - to be cherished by local people. Don't be put off by the lukewarm quote by Joanne Harris on the front cover (was that really the best he could get?) I recommend it with all my spectral heart. It's funny and touching - and beautifully written.

Taking a quick break from my almost one-sitting Paperboy readathon, (and in the same trip that I visited Lauren's bench) I took a little pilgrimage over to what's left of Westerdale Road (see top) on Saturday, as well as the hallowed - if a bit battered - East Greenwich library, which, despite the best efforts of several generations of town planners, still stands (just about.)

I daresay that the young Christopher Fowler would have gobbled up the meagre selection of kiddie-fare and large-print romances purveyed there, but the poor old place has really seen better days. Reading Paperboy, I just struggle to work out when those better days actually were...

Oh - The Guilt. But Oh - The Pleasure.

Oooooh. Ouch - and - Mmmm.

Last night I allowed myself to be fiendishly led astray by The Phantom Webmaster, way down in leafy Surrey which is TPW's stomping ground. The pair of us sneaked into the dealers' preview for the (gigantic) local charity booksale and ended up spending Far Too Much Cash for these financially-embarrassed times.

I ended up with all sorts of goodies - from which I shall be sharing nuggets of curious content with you over the coming months.

A blustering, furious account of the shabby treatment South London has received at the hands of Time, written in 1949 where the author's tack-spitting can be felt almost physically 60 years on.

A book of London ghosts which includes some characters I've never heard of or read about despite owning several books on the subject. A first-edition copy of a Victorian book about London's riverside churches, with some great pics of what St Alfege used to look like before the aforesaid shabby treatment by naughty Time. A 1937 collection of grainy photos of "the London we're just about to lose."

And a scarily expensive, even given it was a charity booksale, set of Victorian illustrated volumes which I bought under the flimsy excuse of "saving them from the fate of being stripped of their illustrations by greedy Ebayers selling them as 'original engravings' and chucking away the written bits, losing us chunks of history in the process."

Yeah. even as I write it it feels the flakiest of flaky excuses.

Oh boy. Oh boy. I can't wait to get down to devouring all this, and sharing the best bits with you. I can wait for my next bank statement which will probably mean that Phantom restaurant reviews might be thin on the ground for the foreseeable future.

I tell myself the following:

• It was for charity.
• Which is always good.
• It was 'research.'
• Therefore I can share it with you folks.
• Money spent on books is never wasted.
• So it's a good investment for cold winter nights when I can't afford to go out.
• I will send an equal number of books to a charity booksale to save shelf space.
• Honest.
• The Phantom Webmaster spent more than me.
• Marginally.