Book Clubs

Esther asks:

I was wondering if you knew of any book clubs in Greenwich?

The Phantom replies:

I just did a quick google and could only find messages from people looking to join one... I suspect that your best bet will be taking a quick look around the libraries - maybe on the noticeboards - or perhaps Greenwich Community College. But I bet that this is just the sort of thing you lovely folks will know about. Can anyone help Esther?

If you're going to one, make sure you choose a nice Greenwich-related book - I've reviewed a few in the books section...

Halcyon Books

1, Greenwich South St, SE10

You know, sometimes a place is so obvious to write about that in my increasingly muddled mind, I think I've already done it. I could have sworn I covered Halcyon Books bloomin' months ago but since I can't find it anywhere, presumably I didn't...

A dying breed, secondhand book shops in Greenwich. We seem to be losing them all, one by one (most recently Marcet Books in the little passageway between Nelson Rd and the market) but one that is clinging on - and still seemingly doing pretty well, is Halcyon in that little row of stores in Greenwich South St that includes Stitches & Daughters (or whatever it turns out to be next) and the Junk Shop.

Handily, whilst googling Halcyon for the exact address, I found a fun competition from abebooks where the prize was visiting 10 booksellers around the world, including Halcyon - my kind of competition. Shame it's finished...

Apparently the owner, Matthew Hubbard, started the business as a stall in the market in 1988, moving to an actual shop in 1995. So it's 20 years old this year. Nice one. Congratulations, Matthew.

I'm always rather suspicious of neat second-hand book shops, but that's not something you can level at Halcyon. While the shelves themselves are pretty well-ordered, there seem to be veritable landslides of volumes at the foot of each section, more than ever just now, waiting, tantalisingly, for space on the racks themselves.

It's bigger than it looks from the outside, going right back into the recesses of the shop, but I'm yet to see a good secondhand bookstore that had enough room for all its stock (at one I know on the south coast you literally climb up piles of books to get to the shelves) and Halcyon, happily, is no exception, bulging at every seam. There's a small local section, a lot of geographical stuff and an enormous amount of military books - hardly surprising, given the history of the area. The classics shelves probably have a little more room now after my own last visit where I cleared them of Trollope. Sorry chaps - but I guess you probably have more. I still need The Warden, btw...

Much of the bog-standard stuff is 'priced to sell,' but very little costs huge amounts (well, not that I've seen.) Staff are friendly and helpful - on my last request they double-checked and then cross-referenced my query. No luck - but that's not the point. They made the effort and believe me, I ask obscure...

From a vibrant selection of secondhand bookshops in Greenwich we have gone to a paltry couple plus a remainder shop and a mega-chain. I did wonder whether Halcyon keep afloat by selling on the internet, but although the domain name is taken, I can't find any website, save a rather obscure bit on abebooks. So for now it's still a proper, hands-on vistors' bookshop. We need to keep visiting to keep it that way...

The Blackheath Poisonings

Julian Symons, 1978

I'll get onto the TV miniseries of this another day - I've only managed one episode so far; the rest of it sits forlornly on top of the DVD player waiting its turn for a digital-spin.

What that one episode did though, was kick-start my reading of the book, which I'd bought from Amazon marketplace for 49p (it's been deleted for years) and found virtually impenetrable on first perusal.

It's an Edwardian murder-mystery -written in the 1970s. I should have seen a clue in that, but I didn't. Set in two fictitious houses on Blackheath, it follows the fortunes (and weedkiller-fuelled misfortunes) of a sprawling family that would today be labelled 'disfunctional.' Their fragile veneer of respectability is shattered when the first of a series of mysterious deaths is revealed as not necessarily having been from natural causes. As the young, politicised son of the family starts to suspect an arsenic-fest, he turns over a veritable "vipers' nest of secret vice" (not my words - it's from the jacket-blurb.)

The Seventies enjoyed a bit of an Edwardian revival. The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady sold by the wheelbarrow-load and Upstairs Downstairs was a national phenomenon (I'm guessing the televisation of The Blackheath Poisonings was a direct result of UD's success.) Holly Hobbie was a major fashion statement (thankfully neglected in the recent 70s revival) and Laura Ashley was at her peak. So I can understand why Julian Symons thought this was a good idea. That he turned that cosy, lacy-dress, formal-attire, old-colonial 'Teatime of the Empire' image on its beam-end is to his credit.

And, once you get past the first few chapters, it does rattle along. Symons was clearly an expert plotter, skilled at drawing character-sketches with few words and deft at seeding earlier chapters with important information the unsuspecting reader will need later to have any kind of chance of guessing whodunnit. Which is why I was puzzled at those first few chapters - an information-dump of backstory which today would be a little more subtley included in the main body of the work.

I stalled at those chapters, The Blackheath Posonings gathering dust at my bedside for several weeks as other stuff piled up around it. It was only when the DVD arrived (a typically pompous American syndication entitled Masterpiece Theater Presents... somewhat over-egging a rather thin pudding on first-viewing at least) that I thought I'd better give it another go.

The second time, having already ploughed through the backstory, it was all much easier. The Blackheath Posionings is not un-put-downable, but it is diverting and, unless you know the story before you start, I'll eat my spectral hat if you guess the culprit before the bitter end, though it will help if you start thinking with a 1970s mind rather than an Edwardian one.

In fact, it was getting perilously near to that end when I started to worry that it was going to be one of those infuriating mysteries where you're never told what went on or you're told some character who's never appeared before did it (yes Edgar-sodding-Allen-sodding-Poe, I mean you...) The eye-popping truth finally revealed in the very last pages is strangely satisfying, perhaps because it was, just about, hinted at earlier on, even if I didn't spot it.

So is it any good? Well, the references to Greenwich and Blackheath are always enjoyable, as is the story itself, if a little dated, but unless you see it in Halcyon Books for 49p I wouldn't suggest going out of your way to track it down. It is of its time. There are better mysteries written about this area.

Phantom Webmaster, P.I.

It was a January afternoon so cold it would knock the scroll out of William IV's hand. I'd been hanging around the offices of the local beak, hoping to get a tip-off that would pay the rent for the next seven days. It had been a tough week. Georgie the Ice Cream Vendor was looking at 15 years in the cooler. My best stoolie had taken a ride to Belmarsh, Shiny-Boy Stone had taken a ride to Charlton Cemetery and Yours Truly was taking a ride up Deptford Creek without a clue.

I remember the dame as if it were yesterday. I arrived back at the office soaked to the skin and shivering, my battered Homburg wetter than a Greenwich Council lapdancer-club rejection. She was silhouetted against the broken Venetian blind, all sharp suit and peek-a-boo hair. Suddenly it was August. I swallowed.

"Take a seat, Miss, er-"

"No names, Mr Webmaster. It's safer that way." Her steady gaze travelled down my kipper tie and fixed itself on the soup stain I'd hoped was hidden by the jazzy pin Johnny Rocket told me was in that season. "Tomato?"

"Mock Turtle," I brazened.

"How would you like to make it real turtle, Mr Webmaster?"

"Would you be serving it?"

Her look was ice. Back to January again. "I need to find a man, Mr Webmaster."

I ignored the obvious double entendre and cut to the chase. "Where did you last see him?"

"In a bookshop in Canterbury He wasn't looking so good."

"So. You go there, pick him up and cart him to QEH emergency room. I don't see where I come-"

"He's dead, Mr Webmaster."

Things were looking up. I smelled a job. "So you want me to find the hood who did it? I don't come cheap, I'll tell you now."

"Mr Webmaster - I've seen your tie. If you came any cheaper you'd be the architect for the Heart of East Greenwich. I need to know when he died. My associate will be pleased to pay the going rate for the information."

"And who exactly is your associate?"

"Oh Mr Webmaster, I'm sure you understand I can't reveal such -" she slipped her hand inside her purse, looked me in the eye and purred "-such sensitive information. Maybe this will help you come to a decision..."

My jaded eye scanned the wedge of notes she had pulled from the handbag, lingered momentarily on the M1911 nestled between the scarlet lipstick and powder compact, then travelled back to the cash. Enough dough for a slap-up and a marguerita at The Alamo. With a paper umbrella. And a cherry.

"You've got yourself a deal, Lady."

*

While The Phantom's gadding about Greenwich in swirling cape and mask, The Phantom Webmaster is far more likely to be spotted in a dirty mac and gum shoes, talking in pithy, hard-bolied Chandler-esque. All I did was mention I was trying to find John M. Stone, to see if I was ok to reprint his wonderful lecture notes so it would be available again, and wham. Within a couple of hours, the PW had found pretty much everything there was to know about the guy.

Scary stalker/sniffer-dog qualities aside, I'm seriously impressed. And have ascertained, thanks to TPW, that, in copyright-years at least, I'm safe to reprint. I have to do a little more sleuthing to just make sure, but in the meanwhile, both I and TPW are on the case....

The Underground Passages, Caverns &c., of Greenwich and Blackheath could well be available again soon...

Underground Greenwich (5) The Stock Well

I am probably disproportionally excited today, folks, as one particular Very Long Search has ended for me. A tiny pamphlet has just arrived by registered mail, from an obscure bookshop in god-knows-where, stiffened by a piece of broken board from some long-dead hardback, and it has quickened my heart.

Perhaps one or two of you will already have this slim volume, but judging from the fun and games I had trying to get hold of a copy, the chances are it won't be on many people's bookshelves.

The Underground Passages, Caverns &c., of Greenwich and Blackheath, is the lecture notes from a talk given by John M Stone, MA, before The Greenwich Antiquarian Society on the 26th February 1914." No prizes for guessing the content.

I'm only a few pages in but already I'm learning fabulous new stuff. Not least that it was more or less a jolly jaunt for people to ramble in and around the various conduits of Crooms Hill, Greenwich Park and pretty much everywhere else in Edwardian times - albeit coupled with an "unpleasant feeling of going down into a grave as you descend through a hole in the grass" where "many ladies visiting the place for the first time have to repress an inclination to scream..."

Oooooerrr.

I'm learning about all kinds of underground places in the area I didn't even know about but the most pressing so far ( just 7 pages in), given the imminent development in the area, is the old Stock Well. It was, of course, given the name, at the bottom of Crooms Hill, around the end of Nevada St, where it becomes Stockwell St.

This ancient well was already established in Duke Humphrey's time. Humph had to get a Royal Licence in 1434 to run a conduit from there to his new gaff in the park because it would cross under the King's Highway and there weren't any statutory rights for utilities companies to dig up roads whenever they liked in those days.

The well was, by all accounts, the principle source of water for Greenwich - it seems The Point was honeycombed with little springs which filtered down towards the river. The water was helped on its way by a conduit which twists and turns underground - but which, if you lay a plan of it on top of an Ordnance Survey map, makes sense - it follows the ancient road. (It's not, apparently, the oldest conduit in Greenwich, but I haven't read that bit properly yet. I'm like a kid in Mr Humbug's shop right now...)

There exists a rather indistinct map from 1777 that implies the position "within a foot" of a pump which was probably the Stock Well, and what John Stone says next is, I think, quite pertinent to the major development to come. He writes:

"I trust that should opportunity occur it may some day be opened up. Think what archaeological treasures may there be reposing at the bottom of the well, dropped down from the earliest days of Greenwich in the daily and hourly user of the inhabitants through many centuries, and what chapters of local history might be opened up, could they be recovered."

Now, I don't know. Nearly 100 years have elapsed since this was written - and it's possible that this has already been done. If so I haven't heard of it. Maybe someone can set me right. But if it hasn't, surely the new building around there that's just about to come would provide an excellent excuse for a dig? And I'm sure, given the amount of times Thames Water have dug and re dug that bloomin' road recently, could there be a little extra excavation next time there's a suitable hole? A Section 106 project for the new developers, perhaps?

Actually, reading on, it's possible that the pump is underneath the theatre (called The Hippodrome in 1914.) I can't quite tell. That would make it next to the old Rose & Crown and almost opposite the Spread Eagle, slightly away from where the development is due to take place. But even so, it would be worth the developers being made aware that there is a possible ancient tunnel, maybe paved and walled in brick to look out for. Since this is such an old, old part of Greenwich, perhaps they should be employing an archaeologist on site anyway.

But I digress. I am a giddy Phantom today, hardly able to concentrate for all the goodies to discover in this floppy little pamphlet.

I'm reading on with a greedy eye. Some of this stuff is eye-popping (a comment I made in jest a few weeks ago, enjoying a flippant flight of fancy, seems to be rather nearer the truth than I had originally thought...) More gems from this fantastic new (old) source another day...

A Year in the Life of Greenwich Park

There's been a story here - I just don't know it.

Whilst browsing for that little extra thing that would tip my Amazon order over the price that gets you free delivery, cheapskate Phantom that I am, noticed this intriguing-looking book.

A Year in the Life of Greenwich Park.
Anthony Quiney, 112 pages, 150 col photos. Pub Oct 2007

London's oldest enclosed Royal Park, first established in 1433, Greenwich Park includes several notable buildings and offers some of the finest views of London and the River Thames. This work presents a collection of photographs that intends to capture the magic of the park through the year.

Suddenly I was very interested. It sounded great. Why hadn't I heard of this? Especially since I've been specifically looking for books about Greenwich Park recently? Amazon listed it as unavailable and they didn't know when it would be in. So I did a spot of scouting around. I found myself onto the website of NHBS Environment bookstore. It listed it as available, but I thought I'd call first to make sure it was in stock.

I got an incredibly helpful lady who confirmed that it wasn't in stock, but said she'd call the suppliers and find out for me. A few minutes later she called back to say that the project had been dropped indefinitely.

I would love to know the story behind this. Anthony Quiney, from the long list of books he's already published, is an established author. They must have got pretty far down the line - the number of pages, the size, the format and even the cover were already fixed. What prevented this book from being published? Does anyone out there know? I've checked out the publisher http://www.francislincoln.com/ and they seem to be thriving. I know there's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip, but most of the books I know of that have been ditched have been somehow contentious. How could a book about a park be controversial?

In the meanwhile, I have discovered a lovely new place to buy books that isn't one of the corporate giants. For all your environment reading needs, check out http://www.nhbs.com/index.html

Remember Greenwich

Iris Bryce, Greenwich Community College Press, 1995

I hadn't expected much from this book. I'd passed it over several times in the Pepys Centre Tourist Information shop, having read various local 'memoirs' in the past and been underwhelmed by the writing standard and unexciting content. I was put off by the cover (aw, c'mon - show me the person who doesn't judge books by covers just a little...) with its dated font and annoying landscape format.

Once again I've been forced to eat humble pie. I bought this book on Friday and, despite a full weekend where I was staying with friends and supposed to be doing stuff with them, I just couldn't tear myself away from it. Iris Bryce is not just a natural storyteller, she has a story to tell.

Born and brought up in the centre of Greenwich in the 1920s and 30s, she came from a world where if you left your very street you were in foreign parts, dangerous and murky to a child who knew the hostility of poverty and the dangers of straying into the territory of a rival gang of kids.

Of course, we're hardly talking Yardies here. This is good old-fashioned intimidation, not gun culture. But childhood cruelty comes in many forms and the taunts of kids from a street only slightly more well-off than your own still cuts to the quick if you're the only one whose mother, even in a poor street, has to go to work to make ends meet. And to wander into the really poor areas was to risk the horrors of the 'witch' who sat on the step smoking a clay pipe or the docks, warehouses and scrap yards, with their seedy, shady 'other' worlds.

Where Iris Bryce's memoirs differ from so many stories of poor, working class lives in the 20th Century is the knowledge that, from a very early age, she wanted out of the circle of poverty that most considered their lot. She was a bright kid, something recognised by her teachers, but not her own family. Time after time she was given glimmers of hope - offers of scholarships and better education, time after time she suffered the despair of her father ripping up the letters that would better her life and throwing them into the fire.

This is no misery memoir though (BTW - has anyone noticed that places like Waterstones now have a special section for this dismal genre? I vaguely remember the title "Tragic Lives" sits above the section. I ask you - who on earth would search these books out as a matter of course?) Bryce's frustration is palpable but she never gives up for more than a few seconds, and it is that optimism that drives the book, and which kept me reading.

The detail about Greenwich is fine-tuned - enough streets, pubs and places namechecked to give a sense of real geography, but it is balanced with a strong storyline which although not always linear (hard to do linear when you're talking about someone's life, I guess) has a humanity about it. Even people like her father, an angry, violent man, are never painted totally black - there are moments of tenderness where it's possible to see the dilemma and perhaps even guilt Bryce felt at wanting to leave her 'lot' behind.

This is not a perfect book. But it is mainly sins of omission, rather than badly-written. Bryce repeats herself from time to time, but it's not something that really bothers me. Hell, I do it myself. What does get me, though, is that at no point is there any kind of biography of the author, and we are not given any start date for the story - forcing the reader to try to work out what period we're talking about. This vagueness makes the early part of the book shaky, as the reader is constantly trying to work out dates of gas-lamps, street name changes and electricity-arrival just to get a handle on when other things are going on.

My biggest problem with the book is its sudden end. Even a book that will have a sequel needs some kind of conclusion. Its whole conceit has been driven by Bryce's desire to leave her world, and at the end, she sort of does - she contrives to get herself conscripted into the ATS. But that's it. For a story so well-paced up to this point, it's extremely frustrating to turn to a blank page. No word on what happened next, whether she actually managed to break out of her cycle of poverty or even whether she ever returned to Greenwich. Even a "coming soon" teaser-note at the bottom would have sufficed. I found it extremely frustrating, lying in bed Sunday night, after a weekend of snatched paragraphs and sneaky peeks, to not actually find out 'the end.'

Of course the first thing I did yesterday was get onto the internet to see what I could find out about Iris Bryce and, after some searching, I have found out some of her story - she apparently married a well-known British jazz musician and went to live on a barge, writing several books about her life on the canals. There is even a follow-up to Remember Greenwich. I concede that she perhaps didn't know there would be a sequel when the first book was published - but a short biography at the end - even a few sentences - would have rounded-off the story without ruining the appetite.

I thoroughly recommend this book, whatever minor issues I may have with it. It would warrant a reprint - perhaps combined with the sequel, in a more attractive format, but in the meanwhile, I intend to quote liberally from this remarkable woman's story. It is as much a part of Greenwich's history as that of Henry VIII, Samuel Pepys and John Flamsteed.

London Irish

Zane Radcliffe, Bantam, 2002

Warning - Spoilers included...

Next in my Great Greenwich Readathon is London Irish which, despite the title, is largely set in and around Greenwich Market. It's the very blackest variety of comedies - lots of laughs ( until you get used to the main character Bic he's intensely annoying - the sort of wag that if you get next to him at a pub you find yourself chewing your arm off to get away from. Once you understand him, though, he's very loveable) but plenty of gruesome, lots of grim and a big dollop of yeuch. It's also a rather sweet love story.

The book toddles along quite nicely at first, the only bump in comedy proceedings being the big shock that Radcliffe inserts at the end of each chapter. Even when you start to realise that a shocker at the end of a chapter is just how he writes, quite what the shock is is always - well - a shock.

It's set, as modern Greenwich books seem to be, in 1999, just before the Millennium (though it is, importantly, published in 2002.) Bic's brother's working (or not working) on the Dome, and the eye of the world is just beginning to crank round to South London for the celebrations. Of course this means that the eyes of international terrorists are also on Greenwich and the story revolves around mistaken identity, misplaced blame and misunderstood actions.

My biggest problem with the book - highly enjoyable though it is - is that it is centred around an event that never happened. Now, if this was a small thing that the world wouldn't notice, I wouldn't be bothered about it. Most stuff that happens in novels doesn't in real life, and long may it continue to do so. But an international terrorist bomb that obliterates The ORNC, The Cutty Sark, Greenwich Market and several people that are big enough (even if fictional) to be missed? Hmm.

Of course it could be me who finds it hard to deal with something so huge that never happened. I spent most of the novel wondering how the evil plot was going to be foiled; what clever ploy Radcliffe would use to make it resolve so that it came back to what we all know really happened. When it wasn't resolved and the terrorists succeeded, I felt somehow cheated - that Radcliffe had moved the metaphorical goalposts by changing History without letting the reader in on the joke. It's the literary novel equivalent of a murder mystery where the author gives you a selection of suspects and then tells you that it was a totally different character that hasn't appeared before (yes, Mr Allan Poe, I mean you... )

My other big 'iffy' thing was the use of coincidence - a series of events that are so unbelieveable that they would only work, ironically, if this was actually real life - those things where people say "You couldn't make it up." Too right. It's really hard to include HUGE coincidences in fiction and get away with it. In some respects Zane Radcliffe almost does - his charm and joi de vivre as a writer get him off many charges. But in my humble opinion he pretty much literally doesn't get away with murder.

Don't get me wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was a quick read - I couldn't put it down. But ultimately it left me with a slightly empty feeling, a sensation that somehow he hadn't played quite fair with me.

I know that other people here have read this book. What do you think? Am I being hard here? Should I lighten up? It is just fiction, after all. He made it up. That's what novels are about. Or is the fact that The Old Royal Naval College, The Market and The Cutty Sark are still standing (well - only just in the latter's case) make London Irish the comedy equivalent of The Murders in the Rue Morgue?

Walking Ghostly Greenwich Parts 1 & 2

Malcolm C. Godfrey, Time For Greenwich, 2004

I guess if anyone was qualified to write a book about Ghostly Greenwich, Malcolm Godfrey fits the bill, having been the last resident of The Lieutenant Governor's Residence in the Old Royal Naval College. He has always been interested in the supernatural and his role as Hospitality and Events Manager at what he claims to be the most haunted spot in Great Britain (a tough call IMHO - but you need to be bold when you're writing a book) meant that he, his family or friends were personally witness to several of the chilling events he describes. Does this make it even more authentic or slightly flaky? Well, I always say a tale is in the telling - and Malcolm Godfrey is clearly a raconteur...

If I'm honest, it does feel a teeny-tiny bit on the flimsy side. Of the two books, the first, about The Old Royal Naval College, is the most substantial. It's an easy, quick read, entertaining (if only for the typos,) and has a ring of personal conviction and enjoyable anecdotal evidence. Most of Greenwich's ghosts seem to be benign - either slightly sad - or even downright friendly. Several of the stories describe kindly spectres helping out with chores or keeping a watchful eye on things.

Where the book comes into its own are the little historical asides that Godfrey throws in almost, seemingly, by accident - several things I had neither read nor heard anywhere else. He is uniquely placed to know choice details about the building and function of the place and I wonder whether he might have been better employed writing a lighthearted history of the ORNC buildings (maybe he should think about that next.) I get the feeling that it's ever-so-slightly 'padded,' with descriptions of creepy places that don't actually have any supernatural history or sightings but send shivers down your spine anyway - but if a book's enjoyable, it doesn't really matter if its course alters from time to time.

The second book, which deals with Greenwich at large, "From Deptford to the Dome," is equally easy to read, if even lighter on 'ghostly' substance - but yet again has fascinating nuggets of historical detail and some curious photographs that stand up on their own for pure historical interest. Sometimes places don't need an actual ghost to give you the creeps and Malcolm Godfrey is very good at raising the fear temperature (just as the ghostly temperature drops) whilst telling stories about places that you'd not instantly associate with spirits. And just as he can make places that have no supernatural connotations feel phantasmagorical, he's equally (and frustratingly) good at not telling us the exact address of a haunted house because the present owners are unaware of the place's history. Now that's storytelling...

How much of it do I believe? Well, in the cold light of this sunny Monday morning, absolutely none at all. But stick me in the haunted skittle alley alone at midnight...

Birdman

Mo Hayder, Bantam, 1999

Several warped individuals recommended this psychological thriller as being set in Greenwich, but I confess I had prevaricated on the grounds that "I couldn't find it in the local bookshop" ( a feeble excuse, I know, but I am a sensitive soul) until The Phantom Webmaster found it in a booksale and I no longer had any excuse not to read it.

So. At last. A true Greenwich book - set in Greenwich, namechecking Greenwich all over the shop and with Greenwich-ian characters. A local book, then, for local people. What does it say about us that it's a horror story about a sexual-sadist serial killer...?

It's a fast read - pacy and a real page turner. I don't normally read this genre so I'm not sure whether it's a 'good' example of its kind, but I couldn't put the thing down, revulsed as I was. With every page I was thinking "Yeuch!" and "What's next?" in equal quantities.

Greenwich around the millennium is very finely portrayed - a largely downmarket world that though only seven years old is already part of history. The bodies initially bowl up around the aggregates yards near the building work for the millennium dome; the seedy strip joint that the low-life of Greenwich hang out in is in Trafalgar Road (maybe this book should be submitted as evidence of "What Could Happen" if the lap-dancing club is allowed to open...) It's rather (and perhaps deliberately) confusingly called the Dog & Bell (the only one I know is in Deptford, but I'm assuming the real one was somewhere like The Penny Black, the William IV or The Crown.)

The nasty hospital that is the centre for grizzly goings-on is a thinly-disguised Greenwich District Hospital - no wonder it closed a couple of years after this book came out if that's the kind of thing that went on ;-)

And so on and on. Several streets are named, giving a good feel for the area - Crooms Hill must be one of the most namechecked roads in Greenwich - if there's anywhere going to be named in any book, it's that one. Other names are disguised (I was sad enough to look them up on the A-Z.)

Is this a 'good' book? Well, it's not 'literary fiction' in its purest form - but as a shocker it's completely gripping - and I would argue that that in itself makes it "a good book." Any novel that can transport its reader, scare the hell out of them and make them turn the page fits the bill as far as I'm concerned. I would be proud to have written it.

I understand there's a film in the offing. When I looked it up it was "in pre-production" which in movie-speak generally means "Don't hold your breath." Hopefully Mo Hayder will have received a nice fat "option" cheque but I lost interest when I read further down and discovered that this wouldn't be a first for Greenwich - a Greenwich-set flick actually filmed in Greenwich - but would be transported wholesale to Los Angeles. If I'm honest there isn't any plot reason why this story should be set in Greenwich - it could fit anywhere - it just seems a shame that American film makers don't seem to be able to see beyond their own back yard (though I guess that on this particular morning they probably can't actually see their own back yards.)

Birdman comes highly recommended by this phantom - if you don't mind a spot of gore and don't live in Crooms Hill....

An "Old" Guidebook...

Eccentric London, Benedict le Vay, Bradt, 2002

Does anyone remember that fantastic 1950s Hollywood Musical On The Town? You know - where three toothsome sailors (Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin) have just 24 hours to "do" New York on shore leave?

There's a scene where Frank Sinatra's naive (yeah, yeah - it's fantasy, ok...) cabin boy Chip wants to see all the sights in his granddad's 1902 NYC guidebook, but his glamorous female cabbie (Betty Garrett, if you recall) has other things she'd like him to see. During the progress of the song My Place Ol' Blue Eyes lists the places he wants to see; Betty Garrett tells him the attractions don't exist any more and suggests an alternative programme to fill the afternoon.

Why am I talking about this? Because I was reading Eccentric London yesterday and I was struck by how much like Chip's granddad's book it was. That guidebook was over fifty years old - but the one I held in my sweaty mitt wasn't even five yet and already horribly out of date - just going to show how fast things are moving in Greenwich. Of course Eccentric London is about the whole of the capitol, not just Greenwich - and I can't speak for the rest of the city's up-to-dateness, but I suspect the world is moving so fast that Benedict LeVay is going to need to do a complete revision sometime very soon...

LeVay suggests a walk that takes in the sights of Greenwich. I was going to put today's blog to the tune of My Place, but it occurred to me that perhaps I'm the only person who still watches 1950s Hollywood musicals to the point of being able to sing along with all the songs. I wouldn't want you to think I was the obsessive kind...

He starts out at Greenwich Station, moving down to St Alfeges, taking in Greenwich Borough Hall. So far, so good. He suggests a poke around the Junk Shop and Halcyon Books - both of which I am happy to report are still thriving (though I wonder whether it will still be the case if someone reads this blog in five years time.)

But then it all starts to go wrong. LeVay suggests lunch in Goddards Pie shop "run by the same family since 1890, so they must be doing something right." Ahem. As Betty Garrett would sing:

Goddards Family Pies saw their demise this year -
Come back to my place

After lunch, leVay recommends a browse around Unique Collections - that lovely old coins and medals shop, which closed just as I was starting blogging. Funny - that old shop looked like the sort of place that would never go - its dusty military helmets and old models of the Houses of Parliament one of the institutions of Greenwich.

Betty Garrett:

That Coins and Medals store will sell its wares no more-
Come back to my place...

Benedict le Vay then suggests a stroll around the market. A nice look around the second hand bookshop Marcet Books, perhaps?

Betty Garrett:

Come back to my place...

Ok. Let's try a different area...

Frank Sinatra:

My Granpa always told me Son
If you're in Greenwich, for a lark
You must career
To Greenwich Pier
There will appear the Cutty Sark...

(SFX: screeching of taxi brakes.)

Oops! I seem to have fallen into song anyway. Of course Benedict le Vay wasn't to know the old girl would have her knickers down and her vest up five years later...

Betty Garrett:

That guidebook is a liar, The Cutty Sark's on fire-
Come back to my place...

I could go on, but we're getting to the climax of the song...

Frank Sinatra:

Let's see the ships at Lovells Wharf

B.G: Let's go to my place...

FS: Round-the-world-yacht Gipsy Moth

BG: Let's go to my place

FS: See Knife Edge by Henry Moore

BG: Let's go to my place

FS: Take a planetarium tour

BG: Let's go to my place

FS: Let's see the great Millennium Dome

BG: Let's go to my-

(That's enough Hollywood musicals - ed.)

Betty Garrett:

My place.

The Time Apprentice

Val Tyler, Puffin

I bought my copy of The Time Apprentice in a bundle with its predecessor The Time Wreccas from Amazon, and I confess that had I not done so I probably wouldn't have read this book. The first book was an okay kids' story - mildly enjoyable, but a little too clunky for my personal (and, I have to point out, adult) tastes.

In the sequel, however, Val Tyler has found her stride. Admittedly I still see some of the issues I had with the first book, but they are much more subservient to the plot, which really does take centre stage here. It's brought in quickly and thunders through the story, giving it a drive that I didn't feel so much with the first book. There is some good, classic quest-storytelling and a genuinely creepy section underground that if it reminds me of The Hobbit, can only be a good thing. Concepts of shifting time are dealt with simply and elegantly and issues of friendship, self discovery and sacrifice for the common good revolve around the central tale.

The politically-correct doling-out of equal roles to male and female characters that felt artificial in The Time Wreccas is much less heavy-handed here and although the one instance of death is once again glossed over (and wasn't, IMHO, actually necessary) it's not nearly as unforgivable as the first time around. Once the quest is begun, the steam-train of the plot takes over and tells a compelling tale that I would have enjoyed as a child.

It's set in Greenwich, but frankly in many ways, could be anywhere. The Meridian Line is, of course, referenced, but Greenwich itself is not described once, which in my very narrow reading of the book, is a failing. I could have had a couple of 'markers' (nothing too nerdy - perhaps one or two of the tourist spots that chidren outside the area would know) to really make me feel that the author had actually visited the place...

I am not a child reader, which makes a 'real' review of this book quite difficult, so perhaps my mild irritation at the exposition and telling-rather-than-showing in places is misfounded - maybe children need things spelled out more clearly. In the same way, the liberal sprinkling of adverbs (something of which I am highly (oops) aware I am guilty of doing myself) can probably be forgiven. If it's good enough for J.K. Rowling...

The Time Apprentice is much better than its predecessor - and left me thinking that when the next "Greenwich Chronicle" comes out I will actually buy and read it - without the need for it to come bundled with something else...

Excavations at Greenwich Palace 1970-71

Philip Dixon Greenwich & Lewisham Antiquarian Society, 1972

Over the weekend, in an obscure secondhand bookshop in the middle of nowhere, The Phantom Webmaster found me a lovely thing indeed - a pamphlet I had never seen before about the excavations at The Old Royal Naval College. I had only ever seen the aerial view of the dig at the Pepys Visitor Centre and had assumed that the pictures were so - well - grainy - that they must have taken place in the 1950s - and I was really rather surprised to see that they had actually been much more recent than that.

The idea of the excavations was to see what was left of the old foundations of the various palaces on the riverfront underneath the site of the Naval College, the most famous of which being the manor built by our mate, Humphrey,Duke of Gloucester and given that Changing Rooms look by Margaret of Anjou after Humph, ahem, fell from favour.

The palace was heavily repaired by Henry VII, and much enjoyed by Henry VIII and Elizabeth I but not much liked by other monarchs who, suffering from various aches and pains, preferred places a bit more luxurious. By the time Charles I came back to it, poor old Placentia was one of the classic ruins that Cromwell had knocked about and he began the redesign we see today.

Obviously the archaeologists weren't allowed to poke around under any of the existing buildings (not least because in the 70s the Old Royal Naval College was just The Royal Naval College and still very much in use.) So they dug under The Grand Square - the green bit in the middle which lines up with the Queen's House - where they put the ice rink these days.

300 volunteers mucked-in with the experts during the summer of 1970 and the spring of 1971, with the usual pressure that archaeologists labour under - that of the owners of the site wanting to cover it all up again. They knew that it was unlikely it would happen again in the foreseeable future so they did what they could, and left most of the analysis 'til later so they could concentrate on digging.

What I have in my sweaty little paw is the interim report, before it was all processed and I haven't even finished reading that yet, so I will have to return to what was actually discovered on a later occasion, but for now, on a quick flick-through, it would seem they found a little 14th C, a fair bit of 15th and 16thC foundations, some very interesting bits of the old manor house, remains of the kitchen, something that may have been a bathroom (I seem to remember Margaret enjoying her baths) an area of the courtyard and a bit of aqueduct.

I really need to read this lovely book and then find its friend, the results-pamphlet before being able to say much more. I'm also keen to find out whether there were any colour photos taken (surely there must have been - colour photography was hardly in its infancy in 1971) and where I can see them. I'm most annoyed I missed the recent archaeology exhibition at the Heritage Centre, where, presumably, everything would have been made clear, so I shall just have to go about it the hard way. Next time I must get my act together.

In the meanwhile, when the archaeologists couldn't eke any more time out of the powers-that-be, the huge spoil-heaps covering the site all went back into the holes, re-covering the foundations, for future generations to sift through. Sadly it probably won't happen in our lifetimes.

The Lord of Greenwich

Juliet Dymoke, 1980

The next in my personal Great Greenwich Book-a-thon, The Lord of Greenwich has taken me forever to wade through. It's only a little paperback - and should have taken a day or so at most, but instead I have trawled it around with me all over the place, managing a mere couple of paragraphs at most whenever I opened the cover.

It suffers all the problems of fiction written about real events and real lives - that the characters are already set in stone and the outcome of major (and many minor) events is fixed. There are historical fiction writers who still seem to rise above these horrible constraints, but it must be very difficult not to just get the main facts down and write a bit of dialogue around them, which is, as far as I can see, exactly what Juliet Dymoke has had to do with The Lord of Greenwich. It's a hiding for nothing, in my humble opinion.

Part of her Plantagenet series, it deals with Duke Humphrey (she spells it 'Humfrey' - probably rightly) and his life up to and partially including his time at Greenwich. I was particularly interested because I've been reading about Humph, and I was hoping to get some insight into his world.

Sadly, it just reads like bullet-points of his life, filled in with some conversation, very little of which adds much. Occasionally it gets a bit exciting - the battle of Agincourt, for example, but I would be extremely surprised if someone could make that dull. Humfrey plods his way through life, reminding us every so often that he's a) a laydeez man and b) he likes books. Every so often he has dinner with Richard Whittington and his wife Alice (where are Dick's cat, Bertha the Cook and the slop-scene, I want to know) or moves on to the next new love of his life - something unavoidable as that's exactly what did happen - but it's tough for a reader to sympathise with characters who waft in and out of a book.

The problems with writing about real life are really that although someone can have a extraordinary life - and Humphrey/ Humfrey's life was never less than spectacular, it's rarely in classic story-format. It's quite often episodic, and some of the best bits are in the wrong place dramatically. Add some frankly rather flat dialogue and you have an unremarkable read. Sorry guys.

I found this a difficult book to enjoy but I'd like to be persuaded otherwise. Does anyone disagree with me? Have you read this and found it a sizzling page-turner?

Mrs Caudle's Curtain Lectures

Job Caudle, the poor sod, was the ultimate hen-pecked husband; the man who launched a thousand sitcom characters and not a few saucy picture postcards. Born in 1845 to proud parents writer Douglas Jerrold and Mr Punch, he lived for 365 rantings by his terrifying wife, Mrs Caudle, in the world's longest-running satirical magazine.

Every edition of Punch, for many years, had a touching bedroom scene between the happy couple, where she ticked him off for what he had (or hadn't) done that day. It didn't matter whether he had lent his umbrella to a friend, spent an evening playing billiards or joined a club, Job Caudle was on the receiving end of an earful from his wife which had Victorian gents rolling in the aisles.

I found a modern edition of some of Mrs Caudle's Curtain Lectures in a charity shop and although it's not really that funny any more, what can be seen is the seed of a stereotype that endured right up until the birth of feminism and to some extent still exists today. It's also a great social document of what really happened in Victorian London - not the big things - the grand events and the antics of the rich and influential, but the ordinary working and lower-middle class people - the mass.

And why am I including it here? Because one of Mr Caudle's worst transgressions was a visit to the notorious Greenwich Fair. "...and you call yourself a respectable man, and the father of a family!"

Mrs Caudle, fully aware that "all sorts of people" go to Greenwich on Easter and May Bank Holiday, can't decide whether she's more cross that Mr Caudle has gone to this appalling place "at your time of life" or that Mr Caudle didn't take her with him. She knows all about the gross indecencies committed there "...and of course you went up and down the hill, running and racing with nobody knows who," and "I suppose you had your fortune told by the gypsies...and you didn't go riding upon the donkeys?" One by one, Mrs Caudle lists the unique iniquities that went on at Greenwich - which I'll go into on another day - and expounds her opinion "Pah! It's disgusting!"

And that's when you suddenly realise that Mrs Caudle isn't just a bog-standard comedy 'overbearing spouse' - she represents what Victorian Britain was becoming - prudish, domineering and disapproving of anything that smacked of fun. It's also interesting to note that there is also more than a hint of envy in her voice - a subconscious desire to break the chains of 19th Century womanhood, unlace those corsets and tumble down the hill at Greenwich Park with everyone else...

The Time Wreccas

(The Greenwich Chronicles) Val Tyler, Penguin

Warning: Contains spoilers

Wreccas are nasty little creatures who live underneath Blackheath and Greenwich Park. They all have names beginning with 'S' and they're all the kind of names that make kiddies giggle - Snot. Snivel. Spew. They remind me of those other great childhood baddies, the Bottersnikes and their entire reason for existence is to spoil other people's fun, especially the angelic Guardians who live above ground, guarding Time. Both races are invisible to humans and their battles are fought in the shadows of Greenwich Park unknown to the rest of us.

In a traditional battle between good and evil, the Wreccas steal the Tick that keeps Time going and it's up to two kids, one Wrecca, one Guardian, to return the Park to normality. It's a clever concept.

Once you get into it (and it took me a while - I read The Secret Agent in its entirety between chapters 3 and 4 of The Time Wreccas, though, that said, I am hardly the book's intended audience) it's a satisfyingly compelling read. At first I thought it might be one of those Christian allegory-type books, like The Chronicles of Narnia but now, having finished it, I think it is a classic quest-tale with a spot of redemption here and there along the way.

All the elements are there - adventure, peril, magic, guilt, penance - you've got the picture. But there is something slightly clunky here and there that grated on me as an adult reader who can hear the relentless bell of political correctness clanging round the offices at Penguin.

First, and most obvious of all, IMHO, was the careful doling out of male and female characters in equal roles of importance. To me, they'd thought "Hmm, we need to make sure that women are seen in equal status and that there are Positive Role Models for girls," rather than "What sex would most suit this character and would best develop the plot?"

Novels need to be character-led, not dictated by What Should Be. In the best books equal roles (a good thing, BTW) are fitted in so seamlessly that you don't notice. The weird thing is that when the chips are down here, the women go anyway - female Wreccas mysteriously disappear when they reach adulthood - which, it could be argued, would imply that women "can't" be revolting and horrid, perpetuating some kind of Victorian concept of femininity. Snot is the only female Wrecca we see - and she is 'redeemed' - leaving the only 'baddies' in the story all male. I'm not going to stay on that one for long, as I'm not sure that I'd argue that, but I did get the feeling that some of the characters were manufactured rather than being allowed to develop by themselves. It's hammered home when Snot says "I just forgetted, that's all...Girls is definitely as good as boys."

My other beef was the perfunctory death of a middling-to-major character. Just because J K Rowling did it, it seems that everyone has to force kids to 'face up to the reality' of Death. I don't even have a problem with that - if a major character has to die to push the plot forward, so be it.

But this was handled so matter-of-factly, that I felt cheated. This character had been responsible for heroic action, and was someone with whom I would argue children would have identified - or at least had sympathy, and their death would have had serious repercussions for at least one other character, who doesn't get a chance to deal with it in the book. The death warranted more than a short paragraph in the middle of a chapter, followed by "The next day..." This doesn't prepare kids for the concept of death - or coping with it - this lovable character was dispatched and the story ploughed on.

This all sounds as though I didn't enjoy it, which is not true. The simple story of good and evil trips along nicely and what I have read into it is one adult's overview, not how its intended audience (8-10? I'm rubbish at guessing ages for children's books) might see it (though I still think that the death isn't dealt with very well at all.) For local children especially, the references to parts of the park and Blackheath will be fun to identify, but I don't see this as a future classic. Anyone else read it?

BTW I bought the second book in the series as part of a bundle from Amazon, so I will be reviewing that as soon as I've read it. Something adult for now for me, though...

Olaudah Equiano, 111 Maze Hill

The Interesting Narrative/Sold as a Slave
Penguin, £ 4.99

There are two famous slaves closely associated with Greenwich. I've been putting off writing about them as it would look like I was just jumping on the whole 200th-Anniversary-of-the-Abolition band waggon, but hey - I've changed my mind. What did it was reading Sold as a Slave - an series of extracts from Olaudah Equiano's book The Interesting Narrative. It features first-hand accounts of the experience of slavery that still need to be read two centuries later.

The first part of his Interesting Narrative takes place in Benin in Africa. We see the young Olaudah as he relates the customs and ways of his village. He relates his capture - by his own people - and journey to the coast via various sales and acquisitions on the part of merchants from other tribes.

His passage to the New World as a slave is related in appalling detail - often simply told, but all the more horrific for that. He includes the little incidents that the great history books omit and it is in the small, exquisite atrocities that the major indignities of this world gain their true horror.

He was sold to a ship owner where he lost the final shred of his dignity - his name, being called Gustavus Vassa and beaten until he answered to it. Going into the Navy, however horrid at the time (the other sailors had usually been "pressed" into it - Olaudah himself gives an account of joining a press gang to get hands for the ship) was actually probably a better life for the poor guy than working in the fields in the West Indies would have been. He got to sail to England and came to stay at 111 Maze Hill with his master's relatives, the Guerin sisters, in 1755 and 1770. There's no plaque there, but I've heard rumours the powers-that-be are considering a blue one.

The Guerins taught him to read and write, in between his going off to fight in the Seven Years War. Once again his descriptions are alive with the kind of detail that usually gets left out of the history books - he was the lowest of the low - a powder monkey, who faced being blown up himself with every shot he loaded. His accounts are terrifying - the man who opened his mouth to shout orders only to have a musket-ball go straight inside and come out through his cheek - and occasionally darkly funny - the man who had a nightmare where God told him to swear off the booze and give away his rum ration. The men laughed at him for having dreams but all agreed that it was probably a good thing to let them dispose of the demon drink for him. He had the last laugh - when the ship was collapsing around them, he was sober enough to escape.

Throughout, Equiano dreamed of freedom. When he got back to Deptford, he believed his moment had come. A shipmate who had bought him and treated him kindly promised freedom in return for his wages, but he was betrayed and sold again to a Captain who took him to Montserrat where he was at least bought by a kindly master, but witnessed worse degradations than he had even seen so far. He saved up enough to buy his freedom and came back to London. After not really succeeding in a venture as a hairdresser, he went back to sea, joining an expedition to the North Pole. Also on board was a young Horatio Nelson.

He came back to London met the abolitionist Granville Sharp and became involved with the campaign, though, contrary to recent films, he never met William Wilberforce. On a trip back to the Caribbean, he was cheated again and nearly sold back into slavery, strung up for hours before finally escaping in a canoe.

When he finally got round to writing his life story, which was an immediate, if at first surprising, hit. The year was 1789. The world was changing. Across the channel the French were revolting. Philosophers were questioning and even British nobles were beginning to realise that things could not continue the way they were.

Equiano died ten years before abolition was accomplished. He continued to campaign for equality, but also found happiness for himself. He married an English woman, Susanna Cullen and left £ 950 (quite a sum in those days) to his surviving daughter.

One of the problems of this new Penguin edition of parts of Equiano's work is that it is so very scanty that it leaves gaps which are at best frustrating, at worst misleading. Part of the Great Journeys imprint, which are meant to be read, I guess, on a train journey or short plane ride, it is the Readers Digest of the classics - enjoyable enough at the time but ultimately posing more questions than it answers.

In almost every account I've read elsewhere of this pioneering influence in the abolitionist movement, it is accepted that his memories of life in his African village before being captured as a small child and later sold by his own kinsmen to white slave traders at the age of eleven is true. The Penguin introduction (a paltry two paragraphs) declares this is "almost certain...a fabrication." It has been argued that although after his sale his accounts can be independently verified, the earlier accounts may have come form other slaves' reminiscences. There is a graph of pros and cons as to whether he is telling the truth here: http://www.brycchancarey.com/equiano/nativity.htm
but I would argue that frankly it doesn't matter. Whether those memories are his or someone else's, they are real and deserve respect.

The Secret Agent

Joseph Conrad

The next installment in my own personal Great Greenwich Readathon, I was a little nervous of The Secret Agent. I fully expected it to be written in some ancient crusty old style, dry and dusty and only of academic interest.

But there's only one way that books become classics, and as with virtually every classic I've ever read, I found myself drawn in to an intriguing web of ideas, not to mention genres. It was, frankly, easier to read than a kids' book that I'm currently ploughing through in the name of completism.

It's exactly one hundred years old this year - not that anyone else seems to have noticed - yet the themes of politics, terrorism and personal grief are as fresh now as ever. Even the concept of someone wanting to deliberately harm a great Greenwich monument isn't entirely far-fetched given the context of last Monday's events...

This was written at the very beginning of the genre novel when the rules of such things hadn't solidified, and if you try to pigeonhole at it as such, you'll find yourself tied in knots. What is it? A police procedural? Political satire? A straight tale of espionage? A thriller? Surely not a comedy? There are elements of all of these, but Conrad himself describes it as "a simple tale." I would argue that ultimately it's really about human frailty - the things we do for others - consciously or otherwise - and the real effect they have on those around us. It is a story of consequences and repercussions.

Set in London, around a dirty bookshop in Soho, the plot is centered on a real-life "anarchist" attempt to blow up Greenwich Observatory. Conrad took the news story and created a fiction around it, treading an unsettling path between what really happened and his own interpretations, intriguingly cynical for the times. In one of my favourite scenes, the sinister Mr Vladimir from an unnamed embassy, coolly reflecting on the best target for a terrorist attack, dismisses in turn a church, restaurants, theatres and art as not actually being horrific enough. He talks about targets the way a modern advertising exec might consider the best place to put a hoarding, with a clinical knowledge of what would really get to the core beliefs of each social class.

There are wonderful references to the area - the would-be terrorists get off at Maze Hill Station, and one of them escapes via the now-defunct Greenwich Park Station, but not without being spotted by the keeper of the Lodge at King William Gate (now the Cow and Coffee Bean Cafe.) But to just use this as an historic document would be a shame. Conrad's writing rises above mere pot-boiler. There is something of Dickens in it - hardly surprising, he was a great fan, but it has an almost modern feel too. The futility of misplaced trust and ultimately pointless sacrifice on the part of several of the characters is told simply enough, but has a resonance that speaks today.

Far From The Sodding Crowd

More Uncommonly British Days Out
Halstead/Hazeley/Morris/Morris

Penguin, £ 14.99, £ 8.98 (Amazon)

Bollocks to Alton Towers - Uncommonly British Days Out is still probably my favourite travel guide of all time. Published a couple of years ago (in hardback, almost unknown for Penguin) it captures perfectly that rigid addiction to eccentricity that British people seem to be born with. That stoic determination to enjoy a day out at the seaside despite the hailstorm raging around the car parked on the prom, where they sit in silence stolidly chewing at sodden sandwiches, staring at leaden seas through rain lashing across the windscreen. The recipe of humour and indulgence that the four authors concocts hits, for me at least, the spot square-on, the fabulously grainy pictures so clearly taken by the authors rather than relying on professional 'stock' photos only adding to the experience.

Inspired, I made an effort to visit, among others, Mother Shipton's Cave, Dennis Severs House, Avebury Stone Circle, Bekonscot, and, ahem, Gnome Magic, but, short of counting the David Beckham Trail, which would be a cheat since the tomato-grower's polytunnel they call The David Beckham Academy wasn't built at the time, Greenwich was sadly neglected.

I am delighted to say that the sequel, Far From the Sodding Crowd, has redressed the balance. Our home town is represented in this cornucopia of eccentricity in the august form of The Fan Museum, though I have to admit that in the slightly scary face of entrants such as the Yelverton Paperweight Centre, Cheddar Crazy Golf and the Pork Pie Pilgrimage, it seems almost sane in comparison. I won't give you too much of their wonderfully gentle humour style, but in the few pages that they devote to the museum, the authors manage to give us an affectionate, yet accurate description I would have given my eye teeth to have written.

"Men and fans tend to make odd bedfellows. However stick an engine to a fan and it's different story. Suddenly it becomes a Man Fan."

Enjoy the entry about the Fan Museum, by all means, but don't just buy the book for that. It's a volume meant to be read and enjoyed cover-to-cover, and, with a bank holiday looming, to use. Visit a few of these truly British institutions and wonder that the big theme parks make any money at all. And if you are not already familiar with Bollocks to Alton Towers, get that too. It's a sound investment indeed.


PS - how weird is this? As I am writing this entry, an interview with the writers has just come on the Today Programme.The music from The Twilight Zone has started burning through my brain...

The Dead of Summer

Camilla Way, Harper Collins

Book Two in my Great Greenwich Fiction Readathon, The Dead of Summer is the most recent novel set here - it's only just out. I read an interview with Camilla Way in The Guide (the only local mag I have much time for) and thought she looked interesting. From this, her debut novel, I'd say she probably is.

Set in the long, hot summer of 1986, The Dead of Summer is the story of three misfit pre-teenagers - the mercurial, dangerous, Kyle and his loyal followers, fat, slow Dennis, and "skint paki" Anita, through whose eyes the story unfolds. Right at the beginning, where, some years later, Anita is recounting the story to her doctor, we realise that something went very badly wrong that summer "There were four of us, now there's only one." We know that some terrible event will happen before the end of the book, but I challenge anyone, even up to the last chapter, to work out what that event will be.

There is a heavy sense of foreboding through the heat and the dry sunshine of Greenwich Park, the chlorine stench of The Arches swimming pool, the steep slog of Point Hill - even on the bus from Brockley (where the kids actually live.) As we follow the unstable Kyle and his two cohorts through the park, looking for the tunnels under the hills (yes - you know the rule - if there's a book set in Greenwich it MUST include a reference to the tunnels under Greenwich Park...) we begin to feel that not everything is right or even particularly wholesome in any of the children's lives.

There are a couple of really chilling moments, though I'm not going to give you any spoilers here. But in a Wasp-Factory-esque, Curious Incident of the Dog-ish sort of way, expect not to get what's going on until it's far, far too late.

In the Guide interview, Camilla Way says she was a magazine sub-editor, which to some extent explains why this book keeps its taut, flat, emotionless tone throughout - she is the person that cuts the fat out of other people's writing, so presumably she's quite good at editing-out her own flabby material, sticking to the story in hand (Ironically, I did notice at least one typo in the interview. Tut, Guide subs - you'll never get a book published now...)

This is not a long read. But The Dead of Summer's bitter taste lingers long after the last page...

The Worm of Death

Nicholas Blake, Hamlyn, 1961

She's an award-winning sculptor. He's an Oxford-graduate poet. They fight crime...

It's official. Poetry doesn't pay. When even the Poet Laureate needs a day job, there's no hope at all for the rest of us.

Our very own local Poet Laureate, C. Day Lewis's day job was writing pot-boiler mysteries, as Nicholas Blake. His 16 Nigel Strangeways stories, started in 1935, garnered quite a fanbase as readers followed the young, handsome poet from idealistic days as a sleuth who used literary references to solve mysteries, through darker times in WWII, a marriage that ended with his beloved wife's death through to much more world-weary stories in the 1950s and 60s. By 1961, Strangeways, in many ways older and wiser, has met a sculptress (sculptor, she reminds someone less politically correct than myself) and they have moved to Greenwich. This is handy, since that's exactly what C. Day. Lewis himself had done (moved, that is, not married a sculptor.)

The Worm of Death (don't you just love that title) is nearer the end of the cycle, but Strangeways is still sleuthing away, like a poetic cross between Miss Marple and The Famous Five, by this point aided and abetted by the lovely Clare. It's all very modern for the time - a point is made about their not being married - quite racy for 1961, and though the actual book feels a little dated, the story clips along at a good pace, albeit with some now-hilarious dialogue.

The best bit about The Worm of Death is the fabulously atmospheric setting. We are deep in mid-20th Century Greenwich here, and the references to the place show just how little - and how much - the place has changed. It's set in the winter of 1960 (Blake/Lewis somewhat red-faced admits he's changed the weather of that year) in thick pea-souper fog with the whole of Greenwich immersed in a myopic vision of fear.

Roads and areas are regularly namechecked - it's clear Lewis/Blake adored the grime, smut and beauty of it - and places described with the eye of one who knows every inch of the terrain. Most of it is set in Crooms Hill (handily in the house where Lewis himself lived - check out the blue plaque at Number 6) and around the west and centre of town (East Greenwich is only mentioned as a sort of amorphous mass where where poor people and undesirables live, ditto Docklands, though the foot tunnel does get a splendid mention.)

The big difference about this freezing, foggy vision of our town and the one we are more familiar with today is the river traffic and the docks, which are a constant presence. The citizens of this Greenwich know every ship, every noise each boat makes and the different vessels that traverse the Thames as well as their own children. The factories and docks are characters in themselves and in this The Worm of Death is an important social document. This is stuff within living memory, but hardly anyone thinks about it now.

It's a pretty basic whodunnit, which, if you suspend your disbelief in a device where a top Scotland Yard official would go to an ageing local poet for help to solve a murder, is really rather fun. I enjoyed accompanying Strangeways and one of his suspects up to the top of one of the hills in the Park and sitting on that bench looking out over London with them, I enjoyed walking past the Power Station and Ballast Quay, and looking into the murk of The Thames outside Trafalgar Tavern for clues, then going inside to ask the residents (not regulars, mark you, these guys lived there) if they'd heard anything suspicious. I especially enjoyed the detailed description of what was clearly Lewis's house.

I was a bit disappointed that Strangeways didn't actually compose any poetry along the way, though his artistic sensibilities came out in other ways:

"She'd be quite handsome, thought Nigel, if she took herself in hand: but what possessed her, with that complexion, to wear a coffee-coloured dress?"

"Nigel shuddered inwardly at the appalling solecism."

Happily Clare does do a spot of sculpture, much to the alarm of her cock-er-ney char lady.

It's great fun, and I romped through it in a matter of hours. I was less sure about the frankly baffling ending. I won't reveal what it is in case you fancy reading the book (it's been out of print for ages but is still to be found on Amazon Marketplace etc. - I got my copy for 37p) but in today's climate of policing, it owes more to Life on Mars than The Bill. I guess it's just a sign of not just police-methods but literary style itself changing, but nonetheless, The Worm of Death still makes a charming local read, and not only from an historical perspective.

Fiction

Over the past few weeks I've been learning about various fictionalised versions of Greenwich and have decided to try to read them all and discuss them one by one. I thought if I told you about them, you could read them too if you like and we could discuss them...

The first one I'm going to read is Nicholas Blake's The Worm of Death. Never heard of Nicholas Blake? Try C. Day Lewis. He wrote mysteries under the pseudonym from the 30s until the 70s. When he moved to Crooms Hill, next to Greenwich Park, he moved his hero Nigel Strangeways, a crime-solving poet, no less, into his house too. The Worm of Death is, inexplicably, out of print, but can be found on various second hand sites. I got my copy for 37p.

While we're about it, I'll also be reading Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, a foggy story of dark deeds around the secret tunnels in Greenwich Park and Blackheath based on a real incident of anarchist bombs and derring-do in the late 19th Century.

The Greenwich Chronicles are kiddies books by Val Tyler aimed at 8-10 year-olds so they should be just right for me. The Time Wreccas and The Time Apprentice get vastly mixed reviews; roughly half the people on Amazon love these stories about little folk who live in the secret tunnels of Greenwich Park guarding Time, the other half detest them. We'll just have to see for ourselves...

I'm particularly looking forward to reading first-time novelist Camilla Way's debut which has just come out. The Dead of Summer tells the story of three just-pre-teen youngsters who spend a summer investigating - guess what - the secret tunnels of Greenwich Park. She's interviewed in The Guide (the only local paper/mag I have any real time for) this month and I like the look of her.

I think it's Marilyn who's told me about James Herbert's The Rats. I'm not a huge horror fan, so that one will be, ahem, last on the list, but I will be reading it of course.

If you know of any other fiction set in Greenwich we should be reading, do let me know...

In the meanwhile I'll get started on The Worm of Death (which deserves a medal just for the title.)

I won't be posting tomorrow - so for now, Happy Easter. If you still haven't got your Easter Eggs yet, La Salumeria's selection is stunning.