London. What more could be observed in the writing of this city in centuries to come? If that more could match what has been written through past centuries of observation, then another six hundred page, five kilogram book would be the perfect companion to the 2013 anthology of diary entries in A London Year compiled by Travis Elborough and Nick Rennison. It is a ping ponging visit through multiple periods of London history; a daily walk we take carrying human thoughts of past days that somehow bring us to our here and now.
For a third time since 2013, this January, I picked up this book which holds a special spot in a stack beside a lamp on an end table. I began a daily read of the short entries from diaries, journals and letters of famous and lesser known persons who lived, worked or temporarily lodged in London from the 16th century through to the 21st, all the while sensing the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the city that accompanied the deportments of characters and the flow of crowds.
Naturally you would expect to hear from people like Samuel Pepys and his friend John Evelyn in the 17th century, but then there are others from Virginia Wolfe to Michael Palin in the 20th century. One of the charms of this sumptuous volume is that the sets of entries in each of the 365 days do not fold out chronologically, so you meet up to three or so different people from various periods of history. I often muse how cool it would be, through the device of a time machine, if they all met up in my den on the same date to trade these observations. How we all might marvel.
By way of example let me share who was talking in the opening days of early July. On July 1st 1814, close friend of Lord Byron, John Cam Hobhouse describes Byron at a masquerade dressed up as a monk – “Does he not look beautiful?” said a Miss Rawdon to Hobhouse. On July 2nd, 201 years earlier, Sir Henry Wotton (20 years an ambassador to Venice) tells of the fire at the Globe Theatre four days prior – “only one man had his breeches on fire.”
In a July 5th entry from 1943 we see poet Dylan Thomas painted as “an intoxicated octopus” by writer Joan Wyndham after he smothered her with kisses in a taxi ride while an air raid siren went off over the city. Fast forward to July 7th 2005 and Dickon Edwards, self-declared dysfunctional dandy, indie-band musician and diarist, shares his initial shock of the London Underground bombing, looking at “a cave-like photo of people walking along Tube tunnels.”
Then there is a touching moment from July 9th 1551. We see death through the eyes of 13 year old Edward VI, who himself had only two more years to live, a terrible illness taking him away July 6, 1553. In his July diary entry Edward was matter of fact in his gloom – “At this time came the great sweat into London, which is more vehement than the old sweat.” The infectious disease, sweating sickness took a young life quickly those days. In the case of Edward, it was tuberculosis, age 15.
Not all is gloom in A London Year of course. It’s human behaviour as theatre on the streets. It’s humorous banter and crazy antics one day and, hangings or riots the next. It’s colourful language, often changing in grammar and spelling as it captures the writing style of the times. It helps if you have walked about London as I have, to get a quick sense of neighbourhoods and landmark locations where all this action happens, and somehow, sometimes it feels like time has stood still.
If you are not that well read on all things London or have never been there, that’s no limitation, for you may use this volume as an entry point for further discovery. The short biographies of all who wrote these daily observations will help as you flip back to see who is who in the context of their times. One thing for sure – I will be taking another dive into A London Year, maybe in 2030.
