The Outer Circle: Rambles in Remote London

by Thomas Burke

A travel guide to the outer suburbs of London, written by journalist and comic writer Thomas Burke

Genres: Nonfiction, London

ebook

First published January 1, 1921

About the author

His first successful publication was Limehouse Nights (1916), a collection of stories centered around life in the poverty-stricken Limehouse district of London. Many of Burke's books feature the Chinese character Quong Lee as narrator.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_B...

Reviews

[Lizixer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little literary time travel is always fun, especially if it takes you back in time to your own neighbourhoods. It allows us to see the area we live in as it was, giving us a sense of local history, it gives a little frisson of excitement as long dead train stations or music halls jump out of the page like a glimpse of dinosaurs in Jurassic Park and and also enables to understand that though the faces and buildings may change, how places are perceived and judged seem to change very little over the generations.

Thomas Burke takes us around the 'outer circle', the suburbs that ringed London in 1921: Hackney, Harringay, Crouch End, Lewisham, Eltham and so on. The fun in this is that the North London 'burbs that he wanders around are my stamping ground today and it is most amusing to note that very little changes.
Some examples:

While Highgate's motto reads: "It looks so bad", the motto of Tottenham is "Who cares?...There is a heartiness about [Tottenham] that comes refreshingly to the visitor from Highgate, where heartiness is forbidden"
"The beauties of Wood Green are not to be taken in a random eyeful. Rather a loving search must be made for them"
"Wood Green is the original Jack Jones: Bowes Park is Jack Jones 'come into a little bit o' splosh' "
"Harringay, I learn from the local guide, " is and has been for many years a suburb with a distinct individuality of its own

Burke is an amusing writer, gone and forgotten now I suspect, but with a good ear for dialogue and a careful eye for detail. He takes delight in the more working class areas of London, while finding little of fun and gaiety to be had in the stuffier parts, such as HIghgate:

Hideous stillness broods over all. Providence has given these people pleasant bread, and they accept it with a scowl, as though it were a stone. That mean, middle-class quality of " reserve " has led its people to applaud, as something in itself admirable, a sulky demeanour towards the outer world...There has been much talk lately of a Middle-Class Defence Union. Believe me, these people need no Union for their defence. They are quite capable of looking after themselves

Attention must also be paid to when this book was written, which was one of the things that drew it to me. Comic writing can reveal as much about the society it makes fun of as any serious history book. It opens at the Armistice. London is celebrating the end of a pitiless and destructive war. It is full of service men and the young celebrating. Burke mentions the "collapse of the servant market" which happened as young women released from the drudgery of domestic service by war work looked for jobs in offices, shops and factories rather waiting on the middle classes in suburban villas. Servants or lack of them fill the conversation of the anxious Highgate middle classes in much the same way schools are the topic of choice at their dinner tables now. Burke thinks the lack of servants is a liberation for the middle classes.

At last the hard-up professional man has a socially legitimate excuse for not burdening his home with the Unwelcome Stranger

In another scene which tells you a great deal about the attitude to government post WW1, Burke leaves one of his wandering pals selling Lloyd George dolls

He planked down his little case, and opened it, and produced a small dummy figure of Mr. Lloyd George, carried out, as the dressmakers say, in American leather. He seized this figure by the middle, and pinched it, when it shot out an impudent tongue of red rubber, upon which was printed : " A land fit for heroes."
He had given it but two pinches, when the land- lord bought one, and carried it across the bar. When I left Studdy, he had a clamouring group of ex- Service men about him, holding out their fourpences for a copy of their particular Cenotaph.

This book is available as a free ebook (some scanning errors and one page repeated but nothing to spoil your enjoyment) from the Internet Archive: http://archive.org/details/outercircl...
Recommended for all dwellers of the 'burbs from Tottenham to Tooting and all stations East

[C. B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautiful paean to London's suburbs as they were in the 1920s. As ever with Burke, there are a plethora of presumably fabricated comic encounters, but it's part of his style. Amidst all of this, there are uniquely intimate details about places which are very rarely written about or appreciated even now. Somehow, this book has made me desperate to visit places like Walthamstow, Barking, and Tottenham! I also felt a satisfying flutter when one of my university's most popular pubs was briefly mentioned. Anyway, I highly recommend this book. I think any thoughtful Londoner will get a kick out of it.