Literary London Tour

Last night, Anne and I went on a walking tour of the Bloomsbury area of London (sorta around Holborn) to see sights with literary connections.

We saw a lot of different places; homes, churches, pubs and workplaces connected to Virginia Woolf, TS Eliot, George Orwell and Arthur Conan Doyle, among others. We stopped and had a half pint in a pub across the road from the church Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes married in...St George the Martyr, ominously. His publishers were located down the street, so he often walked past it. Must have been nice when they were happy; probably a bit melancholy after her suicide.

We went down teh street TS Eliot lived in; he'd hoped to live one over, where Arthur Conan Doyle lived, and had a habit of reciting bits from Sherlock stories at parties. Clearly a nutter. While working at a pubilishing house, Eliot turned down a writer--George Orwell--showing how really stupid he is. Eliot, not Orwell.

Also learned that Virigina Woolf is the granddaughter of William Thackeray. Didn't know that before. And, then we stopped and had a few pints in the Museum Tavern, apparently a favourite of Karl Marx.

So that was fun. Getting tehre was also fun, as we didn't really map our route out. We were pretty confident that we could just wing it. Turns out, we were both wrong and right. We took the train to London Bridge, but should have taken it to Charing Cross. I looked at the map to see what line to finish the trip with, and correctly chose the Northern, but didn't realize we were on a different part of the line than I thought. So, we're riding along, not hitting any of the stations I thought we should, and not able to see a map, because the carriage was crowded. Anne and I are trying to decide where to get off, and she says, as we're pulling into Kings Cross/St Panacras, "here. Let's get off here. I think this is the right one." It was a total guess, as she didn't even know what station it was. She was right, sot apparently she is psychic (as we discovered on the last walking tour we took). Who needs an A to Z when you've got an Anne?