Cityread London was first celebrated in 2012 to coincide with Dicken’s 200th birthday. London has one of the richest, most fascinating and entertaining literary traditions in the world. From the opening of The Canterbury Tales to the dénouement of The Da Vinci Code, our city has inspired countless incredible stories and nurtured endless amazing writers.
Each year we choose a different book to focus our celebration on and whether delving into the past, exploring contemporary life or imagining an alternative reality, they are all brilliant reads.
2014 - My Dear I Wanted To Tell You
A powerful tale set during the First World War, My Dear I Wanted To Tell You was our 2014 book. 2014 also saw us work for the first time with immersive theatre company Look Left Look Right who created a series of theatrical events for us including an army recruiting station in St Pancras Station, a field hospital in Foyles Bookshop, a walking tour of South Kensington (where the book’s hero and heroine first meet), a war time tea room in the National Portrait Gallery and an Armistice Cabaret Party in Soho Theatre.
About My Dear I Wanted To Tell You
A letter, two lovers, a terrible lie. In war, truth is only the first casualty.
While Riley Purefoy and Peter Locke fight for their country, their survival and their sanity in the trenches of Flanders, Nadine Waveney, Julia Locke and Rose Locke do what they can at home. Beautiful, obsessive Julia and gentle, eccentric Peter are married: each day Julia goes through rituals to prepare for her beloved husband’s return. Nadine and Riley, only eighteen when the war starts, and with problems of their own already, want above all to make promises - but how can they when the future is completely out of their hands? And Rose? Well, what did happen to the traditionally brought-up women who lost all hope of marriage, because all the young men were dead? Moving between, London, Ypres and Paris, My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You is a deeply affecting, moving and brilliant novel of love and war, and how they affect those left behind as well as those who fight.
About Louisa Young
Louisa Young was born in London. She was for many years a freelance journalist, working mostly for the motorcycle press, for Marie Claire and for the Guardian. She has travelled widely and published ten books. She lives in London and Italy with her daughter and the composer Robert Lockhart. She is the adult half of Zizou Corder, authors of the best-selling Lionboy trilogy, which is published in 36 languages.
2013 - A Week in December
London, the week before Christmas, 2007. Seven wintry days to track the lives of seven characters: a hedge fund manager trying to bring off the biggest trade of his career; a professional footballer recently arrived from Poland; a young lawyer with little work and too much time to speculate; a student who has been led astray by Islamist theory; a hack book-reviewer; a schoolboy hooked on skunk and reality TV; and a Tube driver whose Circle Line train joins these and countless other lives together in a daily loop.
With daring skill, the novel pieces together the complex patterns and crossings of modern urban life, and the group is forced, one by one, to confront the true nature of the world they inhabit. Sweeping, satirical, Dickensian in scope, A Week in December is a thrilling state of the nation novel from a master of literary fiction.
About Sebastian Faulks
Sebastian Faulks was born in April 1953. Before becoming a full-time writer in 1991, he worked as a journalist. His French trilogy - The Girl at the Lion d’Or, Birdsong and Charlotte Gray (1989-1997) - established him in the front rank of British novelists. UK sales of Birdsong exceed 2,500,000 copies, and for this novel he was named “Author of the Year” by the British Book Awards in 1995. It is regularly voted one of the nation’s favourite books. Charlotte Gray has also sold over a million copies and was filmed with Cate Blanchett in the main part.
2012 - Oliver Twist
‘A parish child - the orphan of a workhouse - the humble, half-starved drudge - to be cuffed and buffeted through the world, despised by all, and pitied by none’
Dark, mysterious and mordantly funny, Oliver Twist features some of the most memorably drawn villains in all of fiction - the treacherous gangmaster Fagin, the menacing thug Bill Sikes, the Artful Dodger and their den of thieves in the grimy London backstreets. Dicken’s novel is both an angry indictment of poverty, and an adventure filled with an air of threat and pervasive evil.
About Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens was born in 1812 near Portsmouth where his father was a clerk in the navy pay office. The family moved to London in 1823, but their fortunes were severely impaired. Dickens was sent to work in a blacking-warehouse when his father was imprisoned for debt. Both experiences deeply affected the future novelist. In 1833 he began contributing stories to newspapers and magazines, and in 1836 started the serial publication of Pickwick Papers. Thereafter, Dickens published his major novels over the course of the next twenty years, from Nicholas Nickleby to Little Dorrit. He also edited the journals Household Words and All the Year Round. Dickens died in June 1870.