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London Lit Parade – 10 Books by Which to Read London

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1. Oliver Twist
– Dingy, crime-ridden streets, the downtrodden Victorian poor; welcome to Charles Dickens, the definitive London author in full throttle. See also Bleak House, A Christmas Carol and Little Dorrit.
Buy Oliver Twist Now.

2. Mrs Dalloway
– Bloomsbury group stalwart Virginia Woolf remains one of the major figures in world literature. Here she gives full rein to her ground breaking stream of conciousness style in the story of an upper crust socialite and a battle-scared war veteran.
Buy Mrs Dalloway Now.

3. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
– Snobby detective sniffs out wrong doing from his Baker Street base in Arthur Conan Doyle‘s famous portrayal of dispassionate, dilettante logic applied to the realms of the senses.
Buy The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Now.

4. The Ministry of Fear
Graham Greene‘s superb novel set in wartime London. Regarded as England’s finest post-war writer, Greene’s other novels with a strong London element include The Human Factor, It’s a Battlefield and The End of the Affair.
Buy The Ministry of Fear >>

5. Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell‘s seminal anti-authoritarian tome is set in a bleak, soulless London that fortunately never met its appointed date with history. The section in the book on Hampstead Heath offers poignant relief the from the doom laden and claustrophobic cityscapes. See also Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London which remains a powerful indictment of homelessness.
Buy Nineteen Eighty-Four >>

6. London Fields
Martin Amis‘s memorably middle-class fear of the mob epic. Dickens plus swearing and sex, minus compassion.
Buy London Fields >>

7. 84 Charing Cross Road
– Touching correspondence across the Atlantic Ocean form’s basis of Helena Hanff‘s quiet novel. Charing Cross Road is still the centre for bookshops in London.
Buy 84 Charing Cross Road >>

8. The Buddha of Suburbia
– Nothing dates like the recent past, they say, and that certainly applies to Hanif Kureishi‘s patchy, if influential, trawl through the hopes and fears of a group of suburbanites semi-detatched by location and lifesytle.
Buy The Buddha of Suburbia >>

9. The Secret Agent
– Recently voted the 46th best novel of the 20th century by Randon House’s esteemed literary panel, Joseph Conrad‘s spy classic, set 100 years ago, sends up the pretensions of both the London police and a revolutionary cabal.
Buy The Secret Agent >>

10. The Jeeves Stories
– Many regard PG Wodehouse as the funniest ever writer in English. His famously upper-class twittish Jeeves character lived in exclusive Mayfair and only really left the capital on jolly weekend jaunts with his pals.
Buy PG Wodehouse – Five Complete Novels >>

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