London. A Personal History With Jo Frances Penn

“It is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or cheerful, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent.” Henry James London can never be contained or defined in one way. Everyone has a different perspective and experience that changes over time, and my relationship with the city has certainly evolved over the years.  My Brooke and Daniel crime thrillers are set there, and my love for the city resonates within those pages through the eyes of Jamie Brooke, but it certainly wasn’t always that way.  In this episode, I’ll talk a bit about the history and highlights of the city and how it’s played a part in my life. I can’t possibly cover it all, but I can give you a glimpse. 1997-2000 Cool Britannia. London in my early twenties 2011-2015 Literary London. A new career in my mid-thirties 2015 onwards. City of inspiration in my forties Visiting London — places to visit and tips on making the most of it * Recommended walks and books London can be whatever you want it to be — if you have the budget — and the key to getting the most from the city is choosing your focus. For culture, art and architecture, there are museums and art galleries, churches and modern art as well as some of the most iconic buildings in Europe. If you love nature, London is one of the greenest cities in the world, with 3000 parks of various sizes. You can walk by the river or the canal, visit Kew Gardens for exotic plants, Hampstead Heath for the wild, or cycle amongst the deer in Richmond Park. For entertainment, you can watch live theatre or comedy every night, eat pretty much any international cuisine from Michelin star restaurants to street food from pop-ups stalls, visit markets like Borough for the best local produce, and there are fantastic bars and clubs throughout the city. But as Henry James said, “It is not a pleasant place,” and it is not easy — as I found in my first experience of London nearly 25 years ago.  1997-2000 Cool Britannia. London in my early twenties I went to school in Bristol, a few hours west of London, so I’d visited the city over the years for school trips. I even spent a summer working there in my final year of university, but my relationship with the city really began in the summer of 1997 after graduating from Oxford.  Five of us, friends from Uni, rented a shared house in Tooting Broadway, and although we all worked professional jobs in consulting or accounting, the house was always a mess. There were constant arguments about washing up and cleaning the place, but we had a great curry house, the Shahnaz, around the corner and we were close to the Tube. Tooting was not a good area back then, but now I wish I’d bought a place as it’s inevitably gentrified and the houses are now worth millions.  The city was dirty prior to the Millennium clean-up, and it was back in the days when you could smoke in bars, so my clothes always smelled of smoke the next morning. It’s strange now to think that was once acceptable. We had parties and barbecues in the back garden of our Tooting house and it was the morning after one of those in August 1997 when we woke up to the news that Princess Diana had died. I remember watching the BBC with friends who’d slept on our floor with hangover coffee and bacon sandwiches.  But I wasn’t in the city much. It was the late 90s, and I worked on Millennium Bug projects, commuting to Brussels, Belgium every week on the red-eye Eurostar train. I had a regular minicab driver who would pick me up before four am and drive me to St Pancras Station. I’d watch the city go by and wonder how long I could keep up the pace of this life.  After Brussels, I worked on projects in Helsinki and then Southampton,...