Devil Inspirations 3

Books that made my head buzz while writing Lawless & the #DevilofEustonSquare, & why.

The workmen’s train, London, a Pilgrimage, by Blanchard Jerrold, engraved by Gustave Dore. Steam trains at Gower Street station (now Euston Square); Part of the Metropolitan Railway, opened in 1863, out of copyright.  

Non-Fiction Inspirations

Richard Trench & Ellis Hillman, London Under London

The seminal work on the many pipes and tunnels riddling London’s underbelly, this was what first gave me the idea to concoct an underground terrorist trauma.

Henry Mayhew, The London Underworld (edited by Quennell, selections from London Labour and the London Poor)
Interviews, observations, the odour of street life and cacophony of chatter: an unequalled record of street life and the unheard voices of the age. Stunning journalism.

Peter Ackroyd, Dickens
Reimagining the great writer as he experiences the city. Great for flavour and concerns of the age: Progress, Social Evils, the Great Struggle for Life.


Judith Flanders, The Victorian House

Social history of Victorian domesticity. Neatly exploits letters, diaries, journals and 19th-century novels.

Also worth a look:

Blanchard Jerrold and Gustave Dore, London: A Pilgrimage

Antony Clayton, Subterranean City

Christian Wolmar, The Subterranean Railway

Stephen Halliday, The Great Stink of London

Books I didn’t nick from (despite common ground) because I hadn’t found them

The Medical Detective: John Snow, Cholera and the Mystery of the Broad Street Pump Sandra Hempel

Peter Ackroyd, London Under


Dore again.