The revised, updated and expanded second edition of my book, “The Lost City of London”, is due out in August (published by Amberley) …
By way of a taster, here are some haiku I wrote for the frontispiece:
Westminster Abbey
Impassive gargoyles
bear witness to history
from lofty perches.
Bermondsey Abbey
Chants, caught on the wind
of a thousand years ago,
can be heard here, still.
St Bartholomew the Great
Black-cowled monks’ candles
dart light to shady alcoves
in an antique nave.
Crossbones Graveyard
O, Crossbones Graveyard!
Echoing to the cackles
of Winchester Geese.
Charterhouse
Monks once cloistered here
and offered up silent prayers
beside the plague pit.
Smithfield
Blood’s pervading stink
evokes a folk-memory
of puttings to death..
41 Cloth Fair
Built while Shakespeare lived
it stood, mute, in Smithfield’s wings
as drama unfurled.
The Banqueting House
Rubens’s ceiling
set the stage the very day
a king was killed here.
The Plague Year
Sixteen sixty-five
Death himself, on his pale horse
visited London.
Pudding Lane
“Lamentable Fire”
comes to mind where Monument
casts its long shadow.
