London’s Lost Rivers Volume 2 is the long-awaited follow-up to Volume 1, which was first published in 2010. The new volume features walks along nine more of London’s fascinating network of buried rivers, tracing the impressions they have left on our city. These walks are guaranteed even stranger and more obscure, tracking barely-remembered rivers such as the Black Ditch, the Bollo Brook, and the Cock and Pye Ditch while also following the marginally better known – the Falcon Brook, Hackney Brook, the Moselle, Stamford Brook and more.

“The shades of Sinclair, Sebald & Self cluster thick & fast in this remarkable exercise in Gonzo archaeology.” Alex Diggins, The Clearing

It is available from purveyors of unpopular culture, Strange Attractor.

And a new, thoroughly revised edition of London’s Lost Rivers Volume 1 is also available, incorporating all the changes that have happened to London and its rivers since it was first published in 2010.

A countercultural history of Camden

I spent a very enjoyable hour talking to Stephen Coates for his Bureau of Lost Culture show on Soho Radio, about Camden Town. The discussion was based on my book Camden Town: Dreams of Another London and covers Withnail and I, Poets, Spiritualists, Irish, Spanish and Hugenot immigrants, Serial Killers, Artists, Railway workers, William Blake, Rimbaud and Verlaine, Walter Sickert, Sex, Drugs, Rock’n’Roll, Music Hall, Folk, Britpop, Levitation, The Roundhouse, Cecil Sharp House, The New Jerusalem, Markets, Markets, Markets…

Theatre: The Merchant of Venice

Photo @ Tristram Kenton

My review of Abigail Graham’s revelatory production of the Merchant of Venice at the Globe, with a  moving performance from Adrian Schiller. Remarkably, they rehabilitate what is usually seen as Shakespeare’s least likeable plays.  

Music: C. Joynes – Poor Boy on the Wire

No boundaries: my review for The Quietus of the new album from Chris Joynes for which he uses all his guitars.