John Vane: London fiction mission accomplished

John Vane

1 month ago

As I’ve mentioned more than once in recent months, I set myself the task for 2024 of reading and then writing about 25 pieces of London fiction I hadn’t read before. As the list below shows, I have completed that heroic mission.

Some of the works in which I have immersed have been big, fat novels of well around 550 pages. Others have been very short short stories. Some were books I have had on my shelves at home for many years, even decades. I no longer have to feel guilty about neglecting them. Others were titles brought to my attention by readers – about a third of them – for which I am very grateful.

For someone who writes in one form or another just about every day, including a bit of fiction, I don’t read as much as I should. It has therefore been what the Victorians might have called an improving experience to have devoured this very wide range of creative endeavours, many of them outstanding and all of them enlightening.

Much of the stuff is still in print, some can only be obtained by searching online. All of it has something to recommend it for people who, like me, are enthralled by London and Londoners the way they have been portrayed in works of fiction.

John Vane is a pen name used by Dave Hill, editor and publisher of On London. Buy his London novel Frightgeist: A Tall Tale of Fearful Times here, here or here. Subscribe to his Substack too.