Phil Baker

LONDON: CITY OF CITIES This was written pre-Covid and some of the shops and bars mentioned have probably disappeared. It’s too soon to give a final tally, and the ones I’ve checked so far are still in business, but PLEASE PLEASE CONFIRM before going to visit anything. On a happier note, the London Stone was in the Cannon Street branch of W.H. Smith’s behind a magazine rack (where I went to see it specially, when writing the book, and where I’d previously seen it by chance when the shop was selling sports gear) but after a temporary stay in the Museum of London it has now been re-housed (back in Cannon Street) in a much grander and more suitably monumental installation. And in the Department of Idiotic Errors, there is a slip in the book on p.37, where I've mentioned heads stuck on poles on Tower Bridge. Well, Tower Bridge is the one that opens, only built by the Victorians (discussed elsewhere in the book) and the one with the heads should of course be the old LONDON Bridge. I suppose it was a sort of Freudian slip (heads, beheadings, Tower) but it then went straight past five or six readers including me. Until I was looking at the finished copy, too late to do anything, and it leaped out... In fact here is a proper old school errata list, like they used to put on the 'Errata Slip': p.32 – For 1291 read 1290. p.37 – Heads on Tower Bridge in the 17thC: Tower Bridge is the one that opens, built by the Victorians, and this should of course be old London Bridge (typed like a Freudian slip; heads, beheadings, Tower). p.44 – Charing Cross and Queen Eleanor: “chere reine” has been a popular folk etymology for Charing Cross, but there was a hamlet of Charing, which is the real origin. p.59 – The Riot Act took effect August 1715 but it was passed by Parliament in 1714, so that is the date of the Riot Act. p.64 – For “Thomas” Lamb read Charles Lamb (Thomas has stuck from Thomas De Quincey immediately above). p.76 – Jay's Mourning Warehouse “on Oxford Street” should be "on Regent Street" (it was on Oxford Circus). p.95 – Eros at Piccadilly and Lord Shaftesbury: the “shaft burying” pun was a popular explanation, but I’m not suggesting it was any part of Alfred Gilbert’s own intention. p.96 – “F.C.” Masterman should be C.F.G. Masterman p.121 – The death toll in the Balham tube disaster during the Blitz should read not “600” but “more than 60” (the exact figure is not agreed). p.140 – Chatterley trial: the famous “wives and servants” question was not from the judge but the prosecuting barrister. p.153 – The policeman killed in the Broadwater Farm riot was not Colin Blakelock but Keith Blakelock. p.235 – Hampton Court: the Great Vine dates not from 1673 but 1768 (the 1673 date has stuck from the listing above). AUSTIN OSMAN SPARE There's an American edition of my Austin Osman Spare book (clunkingly re-titled Austin Osman Spare: The Occult Life of London's Legendary Artist) but NB that's all it is! It is NOT a new book, and it's not co-written with Alan Moore, as some of the Amazon listings have suggested. So if you've already got the UK edition, please don't buy it twice by mistake. WILLIAM S BURROUGHS There is a slip about a synthetic German opioid that Burroughs used in Tangier called dolophine, which I've reported was named after Adolf Hitler: this is widely said, and it's in the Ted Morgan biography of Burroughs (which Burroughs checked, so he probably believed the Hitler dolophine story himself). I now think this is a folk myth, and that dolophine was named after dol for pain, as in tic douloureux and dols (the unit that pain is measured in, like sound is measured in decibels). Still with dolophine, also known as methadone, I was struck that at the end of his life Burroughs was back on the same stuff he'd been using in Tangier (as "dollies"), but I've screwed the point by also mentioning Eukodol (another synthetic German opiod which Burroughs was also using in Tangier). Methadone is dolophine but it is not Eukodol.