The project participants used a variety of texts written by authors connected with Islington as inspiration for their own work. These texts included:

Islington has a rich literary heritage. Did you know that…

• Douglas Adams lived in Islington and used it as a setting in his novels.
  
  
• In Neil Gaiman's best selling novel Neverwhere Islington is an angel that lives under London, named after the Angel tube station.
  
  
• Holloway Road was the home to the fictional Charles Pooter in the classic 19th Century Novel Diary of a Nobody. The novel introduced the term ‘pooterish’, “ displaying parochial self-importance, over-fastidiousness, or lack of imagination”, into the English language.
  
  
• Martha Grimes' [http://www.marthagrimes.com/html/bio.html] fictional detective, Richard Jury, lives in a flat in Islington.
  
  
• Simon Gray's play Otherwise Engaged is set in Islington. It was written in the 1970s.
  
  
• Nick Hornby's novels About a Boy, Fever Pitch and A Long Way Down are all largely set in different parts of Islington.
  
  
• Jo an Smith’s early crime fiction is based in Islington (one of her characters lived on Liverpool Road).
  
  
• Zoe Heller’s book, ‘Notes on a scandal’, now a film with Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett, is based around an Islington school.
  
  
• Peter Ackroyd’s book ‘The Clerkenwell Tales’ is based in 14 th century Clerkenwell.
  
  
• Andrew Rothstein’s book ‘A house on Clerkenwell Green’ is a history of 37a Clerkenwell Green and activism in the area.
  
  
• In Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, Clerkenwell Green is where Fagin and the Artful Dodger induct Oliver into pickpocketing amongst shoppers in the busy market once held there. Indeed Dickens knew the area well and was a customer of the Finsbury Savings Bank on Sekforde Street, a street linking Clerkenwell Green to St John Street.
  
  
• In 1927 Arthur Machen wrote a short story entitled ‘The Islington Mystery’, he lived in London for a short period and loved to walk through London, especially Islington.
  
  
• The 1920’s novel ‘The Death of the Heart’ by Elizabeth Bowen was set in Islington.
  
  
• The playwright Joe Orton lived at 25 Noel Road with his partner Kenneth Halliwell (who later murdered Joe Orton). Islington Local Studies centre holds copies of the library jackets defaced by Joe and Kenneth.
  
  
• Small Island by Angela Levy has a scene set in Islington Town Hall.

If you are interested in reading work by these writers or finding out more, visit www.islington.gov.uk/Education/Libraries/

To see which writers have lived in Islington, visit: www.islington.gov.uk/Education/LocalHistory/FamousResidents