Archive - John Vane: London Stories

It's an inspiring sort of street

May 27 •

April 2025

London Fiction: Fiona Keating's East End Smoke and Silk

An entertaining crime novel that provides new angles on the Victorian East End

Apr 18 •

Retro Gaggia and feather fascinator

He'd never seen so many tampons. He'd never seen so many bras

Apr 7 •

March 2025

The missing Italian

They knew Covid was coming, but for an absent colleague it already had

Mar 9 •

February 2025

Ward evacuation

A close encounter with a sick man and his bowels

Feb 16 •

John Vane: A police car and a view of the Emirates

A little slice of north London residential street life

Feb 9 •

January 2025

Nervousness on WhatsApp Street

A London neighbourhood watches and wonders about strangers seeking favours at its front doors after dark

Jan 6 •

December 2024

London fiction: Mission accomplished

Some were enormous novels, some were short stories and they all shed their own light on the city, its people and its changing times

Dec 31, 2024 •

London fiction - The Diary of a Nobody

George and Weedon Grossmith captured the struggles of a particular class of Victorian to retain respectability amid the constant assaults of vulgarity

Dec 28, 2024 •

London fiction - Rosie Hogarth

Alexander Baron's novel captures the conservatism and the discontents of post-war working-class Islington

Dec 23, 2024 •

London fiction - Vine Street

Dominic Nolan's crime novel explores in fine detail the Soho of the 1930s

Dec 10, 2024 •

Comic turns, Camden

Jokes about dating, ethnicity and meditation and one routine that went too far

Dec 1, 2024 •

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