Welcome to New London is not just a book about a city; it’s a vivid, personal account of a city in flux, where the author’s passion for exploration and his commitment to bearing witness to change converge.
Our host for the evening, Travis Elborough, is described by The Guardian as ‘one of the country’s finest pop culture historians’. Travis has been a freelance writer, author, broadcaster and cultural commentator for over two decades now and his well-loved books include Wish You Were Here: England on Sea, The Long-Player Goodbye, a hymn to vinyl records that inspired the BBC4 documentary When Albums Ruled the World, Through the Looking Glasses: The Spectacular Life of Spectacles and Atlas of Vanishing Places, winner of Edward Stanford Travel Book Award in 2020. He is a regular host and cherished author at our Crow events. Tickets £5 (include a drink) https://booksellercrow.co.uk/shop/john-rogers-with-travis-elborough-event/
As we start to sense the possibility of Spring, plans for future walks start to take on a new tone of intent. One such plan is to pick up the trail of this enlightening walk exploring a dramatic stretch of the River Medway in Kent from Gillingham to Rainham with the brilliant Professor Kate Spencer. Last summer, we started at Strand Leisure Park, then passed Horrid Hill, Bloors Wharf, Eastcourt Woods and Otterham Creek. Kate is an expert of estuarine environments and in this video we learn about the specific ecosystem of the Medway estuary and its industrial past. This route also follows the Saxon Shore Way. Expect the next instalment some time in Spring.
A late afternoon wander across Wanstead Flats across traces of ancient usage and possible Roman routes.
Resist the lure of The Golden Fleece, where I haven’t been for years, and get drawn down The Chase that appears as a remnant of old country Forest Gate.
Loop around Alexandra Lake through sunset into gloom and to The Red Lion and a few magickal pages of Alan Moore’s Voices of the Fire.
A freezing cold night in January I found myself ensconced in the Thameside Inn having stumbled upon the ruins of the Bishop of Winchester’s Palace in the narrow lanes near Borough Market. Supping a pint of Adnam’s Ghost Ship from Southwold, I looked across the river at the City lights reflecting in the Thames and the flashing blue lights on the ferry coming in to dock at London Bridge. I must make a video of this short deeply storied strip of the river between London Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge, I resolved as I lined up the second pint.
A couple of weeks later a friend and former colleague messaged me to say that I had to visit Hopton’s Almshouses just behind Tate Modern, a rare secluded gem hidden amongst the rush and tear of Southwark. This is what gave me the final push to go and shoot the Bankside stroll in this video.
The Route: Crossing Blackfriars Bridge we first visit Hopton’s Almhouses built in the 17th Century. Then we pass through Tate Modern and then Cardinal’s Wharf where Sir Christopher Wren stayed during the rebuilding of St Paul’s Cathedral. Next door is Shakespeare’s Globe theatre, a reconstruction of the famous Elizabethan theatre. We pass along Bear Alley the site of a Tudor Bear pit and into Park Street where we find the sites of the Rose Theatre and the original Globe Theatre. Our Bankside amble then passes the notorious Clink Prison and the ruins of the Bishop of Winchester’s Palace before ending at the reconstruction of the Golden Hinde ship famously skippered by Sir Francis Drake on circumnavigations of the globe.
It’s that time of the year to answer some of the brilliant questions about London that people asked me on YouTube in this Q&A video shot in front of Southwark Cathedral. Such as:
best things about walking in London and most frustrating things
do’s and don’ts for walking across fields
if I had a time machine which era of London’s past would I do a walk in
if you could be any historical figure who would you be and why
Stumbled across this fascinating video on YouTube about Josh Charow’s photography book ‘Loft Law. The Last of New York City’s Original Artist Lofts’. “The law, enacted in 1982 (Article 7-C of the Multiple Dwelling Law), granted protection and rent stabilization to thousands of artists who were living illegally in commercial and manufacturing zoned lofts in neighborhoods like Soho, Tribeca, and the Bowery after the manufacturing industry predominantly left Manhattan.
Two years ago, he found a map of the remaining protected buildings, rang hundreds of doorbells, and photographed and interviewed over 75 artists who are still living in these incredible lofts to this day. The photographs explore some of the most unique beautiful, and hidden artist studios across New York City. The book includes writing and personal stories from the incredible group of artists featured in the book.”
It’s particularly poignant to watch this at a time when artists are really struggling for affordable spaces in London – not just to work but to live (like everybody else) – with what studio spaces that are created as a product of newbuilds being shortlife. It made me think of the artist community that once thrived in Leytonstone before the M11 Link Road was built.
I had the great pleasure of being interviewed live onstage at the fantastic Wanstead Tap about the subject of walking and psychogeography for the Tap Into Podcast. And appropriately I did ramble all over the place a bit.
Here are some of my notes. Original definition of Psychogeography by the Situationist International: “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.” S.I. dérive A mode of experimental behavior linked to the conditions of urban society: a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances. The term also designates a specific uninterrupted period of dériving.
Note on psychogeography from my book This Other London: “In 1953 a young poet and activist, Ivan Chtcheglov, writing under the pseudonym of Gilles Ivain, produced an article called ‘Formulary for a New Urbanism’, in which he put forward this utopian vision: ‘Everyone will live in their own cathedral. There will be rooms awakening more vivid fantasies than any drug. There will be houses where it will be impossible not to fall in love. Other houses will prove irresistibly attractive to the benighted traveller.’
Quote about the S.I and the City One article from 1958 sums up the group’s feelings about the city: “The world we live in, and beginning with its material decor, is discovered to be narrower by the day. It stifles us. “We yield profoundly to its influence; we react to it according to our instincts instead of according to our aspirations. In a word, this world governs our way of being and it grinds us down.”
Video I made about Mathieu O’Neil’s Situationist Library in Paris.
Link to part of the Chris Gray Memorial Lecture at Housmans bookshop October 2012.
Extract from an article I wrote about British Psychogeography and the 90s psychogeography revival: The revival of the London Psychogeographical Association had been announced with a statement in their first newsletter in 1993, “The revival of the LPA corresponds to the increasing decay in British culture, and indeed of the British ruling elite. It has been, in fact, an historical inevitability”. In an essay entitled ‘Why Psychogeography’ Stewart Home reinforced the point, “Psychogeography is not a substitute for class struggle, but a tool of class struggle.”
Lud Heat map
London Psychogeographical Assocation Newsletter – Why Psychogeography “There is a spectre haunting Europe, nay, the world. The spectre of psychogeography” The publications of the London Psychogeographical Association forthrightly present a reconstruction of urban life.
Proto-psychogeography The Fringe of London “On rambling round the outskirts of London, and the unexpected turns, trials and triumphs that lie in the path of the wayfarer”.
Discovering Maxwell’s The Fringe of London had been an epiphany for me, realizing that there was a heritage for this odd practice of wandering around neglected streets, following the city’s moods, tracking myths, retracing old paths and uncovering forgotten histories. – out-take from TOL
“The border-line between folk-lore and fairy-tales is not more nebulous than that between topographical research and “nosing about.” The former, in either case, is but a grander name for practically the same thing. I mean the outdoor part of topography, not the many hunts in the land of books that usually follows later.”
“There are two ways of topographical hunting: one is to follow the “scent” of a clue, and the other is to go into the unknown to find what may be. Each way has its own charms and surprises. “ “The way of the topographical rambler is sometimes hard, often muddy, usually interesting; but never dull.” – Gordon S. Maxwell – The Fringe of London, 1925
England’s Character by SPB Mais 1936 “So make up your mind to be bound by no programme, to travel with complete irresponsibility, to start nowhere in particular, and the odds are that you will catch a glimpse of England that is vouchsafed only to the privileged few.” “What you are looking for is as elusive as the faery music of the piper at the gates of dawn. What you see may be incommunicable to others, but it will provide you with a vision that may well alter the whole of your outlook on life.”
“Londoners live and sleep in places that in one’s lifetime had been remote and inaccessible” Walter George Bell, 1926
“… I decided that these little towns must be celebrated. I would lock up, gather toothbrush, comb, and razor, and revisit them; make a Grand Tour of the true heart of London” The Outer Circle Rambles in Remote London, Thomas Burke 1921
