Prose at the Pub: Laura Del-Rivo in conversation with Cathi Unsworth

The Mitre, Lord Craven Grill, 24 Craven Terrace London W2 3QH

Sunday 24 March at 5.00 pm

Tickets at the door: £5

Laura Del-Rivo, one of the first female writers of the Beat generation, will talk to Cathi Unsworth about the dark, Pinteresque stories she’s currently working on which beautifully capture the area around Portobello Road and its colourful characters.

Del-Rivo’s debut novel The Furnished Room, is according to the Guardian ‘an evocative taste of black-coffee blues’. Published in 1961,  it was filmed in 1963 by Michael Winner as West 11. Laura runs a designer tights stall on Fridays & Saturdays at Portobello Market. More information here.

Carlyle Mansions is an apartment block located on Cheyne Walk, in Chelsea, London. Named after Thomas Carlyle, a longtime resident of the area, the building is nicknamed the “Writers’ Block” because it has been home to a ton of authors, among them, Henry James, Erskine Childers, T. S. Eliot, Somerset Maugham, and Ian Fleming.

Built in 1886 Carlyle Mansions features ornate designs and detailing with carvings in Portland stone and red brick. Most notably it features ten stone relief panels depicting birds and flowers. Architectural and building journal, The Builder, suggested at the time that these were based on scenes from Aesop’s fables. It went on to describe ‘fireproofed floors, and a staircase featuring “a wrought-iron grille railing…and a passenger lift by the American Elevator Company”

Henry James lived at No.21 from January 1913 until his death in February 1916. Poet T.S. Eliot lived at No.19 from 1946 until 1957, during which time he wrote Notes towards the Definition of Culture (1948), The Cocktail Party (1949) and The Confidential Clerk (1953).

Ian Fleming moved to No.24 in August 1950. Here he began the James Bond series, completing the first draft of Casino Royale in early 1952.

Eliot shared his flat with editor John Hayward. According to biographer Peter Ackroyd “Hayward’s own rooms were at the front of the building and looked over the river and the gardens while Eliot satisfied himself with a study and bedroom down a dark passage at the back of the building. They were small and cheerless rooms. His bedroom was lit by a bare electric lightbulb, there was an ebony crucifix above his single bed, and the window looked out upon a brick wall. His study resembled that ‘of a ninetieth-century pedagogue or parson.’”

Though it’s a tad late to make it to this week’s Australian Open ( 14 – 27 January 2013)  in Melbourne Park, Melbourne Australia, there’s plenty of time to plan trips to Paris around the French Open 26 May to 9 June at Roland Garros  www.rolandgarros.com (Men’s Singles Winner 2012 – Rafael Nadal. Women’s Singles Winner 2012 – Maria Sharapova). Your accompanying Literary Tourist map here.

London, around Wimbledon 24 June to 7 July at The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club www.wimbledon.org  (Gentlemen’s Singles Winner 2012 – Roger Federer; Ladies’ Singles Winner 2012 – Serena Williams) Your accompanying Literary Tourist map here; and

New York around the US Open 26 August to 9 September, Flushing Meadow www.usopen.org (Men’s Singles Winner 2012 – Andy Murray;  Women’s Singles Winner 2012 – Serena Williams). Your accompanying Literary Tourist map here.

Peter Pan, Kensington Gdns.

The Guardian’s Sarah Crown explores Kensington Gardens with Nick Lane, the park’s education and community engagement officer. Listen as they talk about the place that has inspired literary luminaries such as JM Barrie, Matthew Arnold and Ezra Pound.

If you’re heading to London, England this year, as millions are…here’s a different sort of map for you: David Perdue’s Dickens’ London map:

Here from London Net are ten novels that will help you get a read on London:

Oliver Twist – Menacing, crime-ridden streets, the downtrodden Victorian poor: here’s Charles Dickens, London’s best loved author at full tilt.  Also in the running:  Bleak House, A Christmas Carol and Little Dorrit.

Mrs. Dalloway – Bloomsbury group star Virginia Woolf is a hugely important figure in world literature. Here we get one of her strongest, a ground-breaking stream of conciousness style story filled with shards of the relationship between an upper class socialite and a battle-bloodied war veteran.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes-  Cool, logical detective hunts down criminals from his Baker Street HQ in Arthur Conan Doyle‘s  portrayal of iconic wrong righter.

Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell’s  anti-totalitarian masterpiece is set in soviet-style London. Passages about Hampstead Heath provide the only relief from the grey, depressing cityscape. See also  Down and Out in Paris and London

London Fields Martin Amis’s masterpiece. Dickens with an edge. Rougher, sexier, more vulgar. In my opinion, funnier. Don’t miss Nicola Six

84 Charing Cross Road – Based on touching correspondence across the Atlantic between book buyer and seller.  Helena Hanff’s novel a  must for bibliophiles. Charing Cross Road, though depleted, remains the destination for used books in London.

The Buddha of Suburbia -  Hanif Kureishi’s patchy, if influential, trawl through the hopes and fears of a group of suburbanites semi-detatched by location and lifestyle.

The Secret Agent Recently voted the 46th best novel of the 20th century by Randon House panel, Joseph Conrad’s spy classic, set 100 years ago, sends up the pretensions of both the London police and a terrorist group.

The Jeeves Stories – Many regard PG Wodehouse as the funniest writer ever.  Jeeves lived in exclusive Mayfair and left London only for jolly weekend jaunts with the chaps

The Literary London Society was founded in July 2011 to “foster interdisciplinary and historically wide-ranging research into London literature in its historical, social, and cultural contexts, to include all periods and genres of writing and representation about, set in, inspired by, or alluding to central and suburban London and its environs, from the city’s roots in pre-Roman times to its imagined futures.” To meet those aims, the Society publishes a journal, runs an annual conference, and supports a reading group. As the society grows, it hopes to run further events, seminars, and other activities. Follow the links below for more information.

• Join the Society
• The Society’s Executive Committee
• Constitution of the Literary London Society (PDF)
• Contact the Society

Memorial to William Hazlitt, in St Anne’s church, Soho,London.

This memorial restores the text written on Hazlitt’s original gravestone:

Ann Hathaway’s Cottage

I recently wrote about how moving it was for me to have been in Houston, and to have seen, glimpsed at really, the Cancer Center where Christopher Hitchens died.

Reading Julia Thomas’s Shakespeare’s Shrine, The Bard’s Birthplace and the Invention of Straford-Upon-Avon, (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) I’m struck by this somewhat contradictory passage:

” The modern Birthplace does not inspire much awe for Shakespeare…The house is less a site of pilgrimage than a site of pedagogy, as the information for tourists describes the visit as an opportunity to learn about Shakespeare, his life, and the Elizabethan period…In a sense though, the house on Henley Street today provides an even closer intimacy between the place and the plays than the ideological link on which meanings of the building came to depend in the Victorian period. Twenty-first century tourists to Stratford can view the Birthplace from an entirely different perspective. The colossal statue of Sharkespeare, through the eyes of which the sites of London could be seen, never materialized, but Stratford now has its own, admittedly less ostentatious, viewing platform: a tower built onto the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, which enables tourists to see across Stratford and the adjoining countryside. The tower connects the auditorium of the theater with the trajectory of Shakespeare’s life. From here visitors can see the Birthplace, Holy Trinity Church, and the other Shakespearan properties alongside Snittersfield, where Shakespeare’s father was born, as well as Wilcote, the location of Mary Arden’s house, and Charlecote. “

This emotional-educational dicotomy seems about right to me. Poking about some old retrofitted house isn’t necessarily the way to forge any kind of meaningful spiritual bond with a favorite author. Although seeing desks, writing instruments, bookshelves may well prompt some pleasing imaginations.  Far better I think to read the author’s works, take in whatever the labels and tour guides might have to say, and try to seek out some ‘authentic’ unchanged landscape: views that might have wowed the Bard; places where he may have frolicked.  Fields and flowers, birds that may have inspired writing of the words you so admire. Much of the success of a literary destination depends upon the quality of presented information; how lively and enthusiastic the tour guide might happen to be; or how ‘real’ or unembellished the surroundings. Hard to say what will trigger a reaction. Might just take a glimpse of a building. Less is often more.

London will be a busy little city this year what with the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Celebrations taking place, and the Olympics.  It’ll also be a go-to destination for Literary Tourists, that’s because of The World Shakespeare Festival. It kicks off April 23. 

Here’s what TheatreBreaks has to say about the affair:

This year as we remember the world’s greatest playwright, William Shakespeare, 400 years after his death. Here in the UK The World Shakespeare Festival, in partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, celebrates by welcoming artists from all over the globe performing their own unique takes on Shakespeare. Performances will take place at Shakespeare’s Globe, the Roundhouse in Camden and five of them in the West End – the heart of London’s Theatreland.

“First up and bound to be the most sought after ticket in London this Fall is Richard III & Twelfth Night running in rep at the Apollo Theatre, Shaftesbury Ave between 2nd November 2012 and 3rd February 2013. Performed as it would have been in the 1600s, an all-male cast is led by award winning actor Mark Rylance who plays the scheming and murderous Duke of York in Richard III along with the role of Olivia in Twelfthe Night – a play of unrequitted love and vengeful comedy. There’s also the added bonus of international actor, social commentator and comedian, Stephen Fry, as pompous steward Malvolio.

Our next recommendation is a seat at The Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park which is an ideal setting to watch A Midsummer Night’s Dream with romance, comedy & fairy magic. Speaking from past experience, you really will believe in fairies as dusk falls and the actors emerge from the trees. It is an experience not to be missed by any visitor to London during the summer. Performances are Monday to Saturday from 2nd July to 5th September 2012.

Another production not to be missed in London is director Iqbal Khan’s Indian themed Much Ado About Nothing which is at the Novello Theatre, St Martin’s Lane from 22nd September to 27th Ocotber 2012. It stars award winning British actress, screenwriter and comedienne Meera Syal as the argumentative Beatrice playing opposite Paul Bhattacharjee’s Benedick. This is a play full of suppressed love, wicked sarcasm and treacherous deceit.

Our final recommendation is Timon of Athens at the Olivier Theatre on the South Bank performing for a very limited run between 5th August and 9th September 2012. Simon Russell Beale takes the title role in this modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s strange fable of conspicuous consumption, debt and ruin, written in collaboration with Thomas Middleton”