The successful navigation of such a city is dependent upon the composition of a mental map, which can be transposed upon its physical layout,

Edgar Allan Poe’s short story The Man of the Crowd.

Hawksmoor

remapping of London through an alignment of those churches designed by the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor.

all share a perception of the city as a site of mystery and seek to reveal the true nature that lies beneath the flux of the everyday.

wealth and respectability conceal the existence of poverty and depravity.

dramatise the city as a place of dark imaginings.

the tradition of writer as walker

London is overlaid by the fictional and poetic reworking of successive figures, creating patterns of continuity and resonance that can be detected by those attuned to the city’s eternal and unchanging rhythms.