Literature and London Part 3: Odds and Ends and a Bit of Shakespeare

Alright, again, a lot of my LaL pictures don’t take place in London. But bear with me, because I do like the alliteration in the blog title!

All the same, I hadn’t planned a vacation around books for the most part, but I can’t help being transported to locations in fiction when I visited England. Some of the locations in London itself helped remind me how celebrated authors were. Some locations triggered a memory of a book or a detailed description of a setting in a rather enjoyable book. And some locations pretty much screamed scenes from literature I’d enjoyed in the past.

Let’s take a look at them, shall we?

When he had first arrived, he had found London huge, odd, fundamentally incomprehensible, with only the Tube map, that elegant multicolored topographical display of underground railway lines and stations, giving it any semblance of order. Gradually he realized that the Tube map was a handy fiction that made life easier but bore no resemblance to the reality of the shape of the city above. It was like belonging to a political party, he thought once, proudly, and then, having tried to explain the resemblance between the Tube map and politics, at a party, to a cluster of bewildered strangers, he had decided in the future to leave political comment to others. – Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

Honestly, I was pretty much experiencing the same thing Richard Mayhew experienced the first time he came to London and went to examine the Underground map. The London Tube didn’t take too long to navigate, and I must have gotten off the wrong stop maybe once on my seven days of having taken it on a daily basis. I could understand why it gets a bit confusing (nothing beats the simplicity of Rome’s underground lines), but I’ve had a bit of practice with city train stations.

All the same, every single time I entered the Tube, I had Neverwhere in the brain, heh.

They arrived in Bath. Catherine was all eager delight; her eyes were here, there, and everywhere. – Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

There is a major Jane Austen presence in Bath, and the irony of it is, the writer herself was well-known for her dislike of Bath. It was a place best left to the elderly and the sick and the long host of husband-hunters. It was not a place Jane had wanted to move to and live in for a few years. And yet she did, and at least two of her books were set in Bath, while a number of others mention Bath occasionally.

I went to Bath for only a short period of time, and honestly, the time I spent there was not enough. It was a beautiful place, and I could have spent more than a day just exploring the area and walking the places that Jane frequented. Unfortunately, since it was a short stop on my tour (which included three other places), I had a measly hour to…well…soak in the sights.

There had been three alternatives, London, Bath, or another house in the country. All Anne’s wishes had been for the latter… She disliked Bath, and did not think it agreed with her – and Bath was to be her home… – Persuasion by Jane Austen

And then of course I saw the Jane Austen Centre and was absolutely devastated that I couldn’t spend the day at the museum and the tea room! I settled with grabbing a few souvenirs, however, so my visit wasn’t completely in vain. On my next sojourn to London, I definitely plan to go back to Bath and stay there for a couple of days at least.

I could feel the hair rising on my forearms, as though with cold, and rubbed them uneasily. Two hundred years. From 1945 to 1743; yes, near enough. And women who traveled through the rocks. Was it always women? I wondered suddenly. – Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Let’s be clear, Stonehenge isn’t Craigh na Dun. It’s nowhere near Craigh na Dun, which is located near Inverness, which is in Scotland. England is not Scotland. HOWEVER, as far as stone circles go, Stonehenge is one of the preserved landmarks littering the British and Irish isles. And unless I traveled to Scotland (which I will…eventually), this was as close as I was going to get to pulling a Claire and traveling to the 1740s.

Not that I’d want to be in England during the 1740s. Unless I was in Bath, lol!

I prayed all the way up that hill yesterday,” he said softly. “Not for you to stay; I didna think that would be right. I prayed I’d be strong enough to send ye away. – Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

DON’T JUDGE ME. Of course I’d have to do my Outlander pose. The standing stones were calling to me, and I was so dressed for the part! Almost tempted to Photoshop Jamie Mackenzie Fraser onto this picture…

And okay, this one was actually in London. So I’m justified in posting Outlander things. Mostly things about the wonderful James Fraser. I’d go into his house, too.

Cobbled streets and no shops open past six o’clock, a communal life that seemed to revolve around church, and where you could often hear bird song and nothing else: Gaia felt as though she had fallen through a portal into a land lost in time. – The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling

I haven’t actually read The Casual Vacancy, but I walked into Lacock imagining it was the type of English village that Rowling had been describing in the book. It certainly has that feel of falling into a different time period. The village itself was very quiet when I visited. It was almost six o’clock, shops were closed except for the local pub, the place smelled of petrichor (because, yes, it did just rain), and besides my tour, no other visitor was around. On top of that, small booths with tills were assembled just outside of the stone houses, selling mint and meringue and other lovely things, and all we had to do was drop the money into the till!

And on a J.K. Rowling note: Can I just make note that I found Professor Slughorn’s house? Apparently Lacock was one of those little Harry Potter locations that Warner Bros. filmed at. Friggin’ awesome, that.

The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances. – Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Anyway, back to London. Ran into monument to Agatha Christie and I pretty much smiled at the thought that this woman is still going to be celebrated decades from now. If there’s any expert on mystery stories, it’s definitely her.

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. – As You Like It by William Shakespeare

The Globe Theatre! Though as I understand it, this was not the original one. With the amount of times the original Globe burned down or was destroyed, this Globe Theatre is a copy of where Shakespeare put on his plays. That said, I had visited the original location as well, though there isn’t much to take a picture of, the original Globe area is now just a plain ole’ lot with a sign about the Globe Theatre on it.

As for the present Globe, it certainly stuck out amidst all the modern buildings surrounding it. I would have loved to have watched a play while I was in London, but didn’t think that far ahead to book myself a ticket. A shame, but something I am looking to remedy next time I head over there.