Great books with London setting?

Question

Can you recommend a piece of literature (preferably postmodern//classic) that not only takes place in London, but uses it as a major element of the story?

*For example, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and the description of the protagonists wandering through Trafalger square and Hyde park.*

Answer 1

My favourite novel with a postwar London setting is "Mother London" by Michael Moorcock. It is sort of old now...It came out in 1988. It is a little strange, but it will reward the time you spend on it. There's no real plot, this is a character novel and the character being examined is as much London itself as it is any of the three main protagonists. Still, it is a very interesting and successful fictional treatment of this most fascinating city.

Answer 2

Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd

Awarded the Whitbread Prize, 1985

"In 18th-century London, squalor vies with elegance as architect Nicholas Dyer is commissioned to build new churches in the aftermath of the Great Fire. In 20th-century London, CID Detective Hawksmoor investigates a series of murders that have occurred on the sites of Hawksmoor’s 18th-century London churches."

Answer 3

George Orwell - 1984

One of the greatest books ever written about a vision of London in 1984, wrote in 1948. George Orwell lived in Islington and so has a real understanding of life in London in and around the second world war. He fought in Burma in India and brings a lot of this experience of the military to his work. A classic writer!!!

Answer 4

Go for Alan Hollinghurts's The Swimming-Pool Library and The Line of Beauty . They both picture London extremely accurately, you can almost draw a map of the city with those books in hand.

Answer 5

Not everything by Peter Ackroyd is set in London, but some of his best stuff is. I am also an enormous fan of Iris Murdoch, who sets a number of her novels in London. Try A Word Child. There are others. Also try Ian McEwan (early stuff). Will think more about your question and reply again.

Answer 6

For a teen read, try Rebel Angels, the sequel to A Great and Terrible Beauty. The first one doesn't take place in London, but the sequel does.

Answer 7

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene is a good one. London during WWII - descriptions of places in the west end and Clapham Common.

Answer 8

London Fields by Martin Amis.

Answer 9

Sherlock Holmes

Answer 10

'Neverwhere' by neil gaiman. It's a great fantasy story set in and around the London Underground, using the names of stations literally as intrinsic parts of the plot. You'll never look at signs for 'earls court' and 'angel islington' or hear 'mind the gap' again in the quite same way.