[Note from Frolic: We’re so excited to have author Karen White guest posting on the site today. She’s sharing her favorite books set in London. Take it away, Karen!]
Long before I moved to London, I felt as if I knew the essence of the city because of all the books I’d read and films I’d seen that were set there. From my perspective of an American girl of twelve flying across the Atlantic to what would become my family’s home for the next seven years, London was a city of drab gray and shadows, of constant drizzle, and heavy, congealing fog. Anyone who’d ever seen a Jack the Ripper movie or read Sherlock Holmes accepted this with the same absolute understanding that the Queen spoke with a British accent. It just was.
Imagine my surprise when we landed at Heathrow Airport to a bright and hot August day in the middle of the worst draught in England’s history. There was no rain, or fog (thanks to the 1956 Clean Air Act that banned the burning of coal which had been the cause of the regular cloying fogs), nor was there any air-conditioning or ice in drinks.
Before I could consider that we’d gotten on the wrong airplane, the chatter of British accents around us and the view of Hyde Park and Kensington Palace that we passed in the taxi on the way to our temporary accommodations convinced me otherwise.
I was in London, and I would spend the next seven years exploring this legendary city, discovering how tactile its history is, and how its stubborn existence and survival for almost two thousand years makes it perfect fodder for poets, songwriters, and novelists alike.