London Belongs to Me (Penguin Modern Classics)

Product Information

Tony, I think I still have at least four of Greene’s significant (if not top-line) works to read, including The Comedians, A Burnt-Out Case, The Human Factor and Our Man in Havana. In 1948 it was made into a film with a cast of iconic British character actors, among them Alastair Sim, Joyce Carey, Fay Compton and Richard Attenborough. The full version of this article is only available to subscribers to Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader’s Quarterly.

Despite an uncertain future in a time of war, the Jossers end the book back in the ground-floor rooms of 10 Dulcimer Street, se11, determined to sit it out where they belong, in Mr Josser’s beloved London. Everyone's foibles and weaknesses and stupidities are clear, but not condemned: they're all human and there's compassion for everyone. The main street was an interior set, but additional location filming took place around London, [2] and at Burnham Beeches in Buckinghamshire.I recently started reading Jose Saramago’s “A Brief History of the Seige of Lisbon”, and I thought it was very fine, but reading his very long sentences, I got just too tired, so after 60 pages, I switched to Amelie Nothomb’s “Tokyo Fiancee” which is only 170 pages and full of short sentences. Dulcimer Street, se11, could be regarded as the novel’s central character, though it is darling old Mr Josser – the man on the tram rather than the Clapham omnibus, who cries when he retires from his job as a lowly but loyal clerk in the City – who provides the book’s continuity.

By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.At its best the book is a directed but unforced tour of aspects of British – English – culture during wartime: a world of “chimney pots and telegraph wires”, of Bakelite and green baize, of séances and boxing matches (“The Tiger entered the ring in his celebrated striped dressing gown, allowed his seconds – two bullet-headed thugs like escaped convicts – to disrobe him as though he were too well-bred to do that kind of thing for himself, and stood there, like a cockerel, turning himself about for the people to admire him”), and of Lyons’ Corner Houses and miserable London weather, where “it was as though someone had deliberately smeared a wet dirty cloth across the sky”. His eventual fate is a reminder that no-one can throw off the dictates of conscience as he has done and expect to get away with it. To Doris, Camden Town is a disappointment and ‘appears exactly the same as the Elephant and Castle on her side of the river’. The theme of food recurs, and there is an almost Zolaesque relish in the depiction of detail: the ‘soapy yellow’ texture of Mr Puddy’s over-processed cheese; Grosvenor pie with ‘.