When I cross the river, the sword that divides me from pleasure and money, I go North. That is, I take the Northern Line up West , as we say: that is, to the West End. My London consists of all the stations on the Northern Line, but don t think I scare easily: I have known the free and easy slap-and-tickle of Soho since toddlerhood ... nothing between Morden and Camden Town holds terror for me - Angela Carter The clue is in the name: the London Review of Books has never been anything other than Bloomsbury-based, and though its outlook remains as international as ever, after 46 years you come to know a few things about your own patch. This year s LRB Diary duly takes an alphabetical tour, week by week, through 52 subjects indelibly inked into the capital s literary (and not so literary) past, present and future, via the magazine s archive. From Ackroyd to Zadie, carnival to cottaging, gentrification to the Great Stink, Keats to the Krays, Wren to Windrush.
