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.