Way back in 2011, I wrote this blog post about something I’d been sent in the post. It was called Curiocity and was a tiny fold-up magazine that featured arcane trivia on one side and a weird map on the other. I think I was one of the first – if not the first – to write about the project. The first editions were numbered and then they began to appear in alphabetical order, with each letter indicating the theme, often wilfully obscure and tangential. It was a wizard wheeze, and I even contributed to later editions but Curiocity the magazine only got as far as G, when they stopped. I was miffed, partly because I’d not got round to asking how it should be pronounced – “curio city” or curiosity”?
That’s because the pair behind Curiocity – Henry Eliot and Matt Lloyd-Rose – had been approached to write a book. I remember them announcing this to a bunch of us London nerds in a pub in Farringdon. How, we wondered, was this fascinating map concept going to make it into a book? Well, the answer arrived earlier this year with the publication of Curiocity: In Pursuit of London. If it wasn’t for the publication of Up In Smoke, it would probably be the best London book of the year.
I’m not sure when bookshops started having London sections, but I know that I first became aware of the concept of “London writing” in 1999, when Granta published a marvellous London special. Ackroyd’s biography appeared shortly after and a genre was defined. Since then, the concept has exploded. People have always written books about London, but now it has developed into a mini industry all of its own. My bookshelves groan with London books, many brilliant, others less so. There is, in these London bookshop sections, perhaps an over-reliance on ‘secret/eccentric” London-type books, which all seem to contain pretty much the same information just with slightly different covers. But there are also gazetteers on London place names, London maps, London statues, London rivers, London animals, London graveyards, London pubs, London murders, London folklore… my house is packed with these specialist tomes, the best of which are rich in detail and lovingly compiled.
Even so, I’m tempted to chuck them all out because all this information and more can be found in Curiocity. Ostensibly divided into 26 alphabetic themes, the book basically contains all the London trivia, information and history you’d ever require in one place. The esoteric nature is hard to grasp and harder to describe but for example G is for Grids, a chapter that takes in everything from bollards to bikes – and the bike page includes entries on velodromes, cyclist cafes, Queen videos, mass transit cycling events, recumbent hire and the serial number of the most ridden Boris bike. It’s a mix of trivia, history and listing information that reminds me of peak-era themed issues of Time Out crossed with The London Encyclopedia and then given the Burroughs cut-up technique.
What’s particularly edifying is there is no attempt to thin out or dumb down – it’s a total mind dump, with the editors throwing every possible piece of information they can have at the pages and then worrying how to make them stick later. It’s also beautifully illustrated, with special maps created and conceived for the occasion. And while the gargantuan size takes it a long way from the flimsy fold-up map I first received in 2011, it’s gratifying that the spirit of the project has not only survived but been allowed to expand and prosper to the benefit of anybody fascinated by London books and with space enough on their bookshelves for more.
Curiocity: In Pursuit Of London by Henry Eliot and Matt Lloyd-Rose.
The Great Wen 