We all have our favourite places and our favourite stories about them. 
Our idea of these places is usually a mix of experience and imagination, and stories are usually no small contributors to our mental maps.

I love London, Venice and Florence so I made this site, with lists and reviews of all sorts of fiction set in these three cities. Berlin is a later tentative addition.

I've also been writing trip reports for a few years, as a service to travellers who share my obsessions - cats, cakes, churches and scaffolding.
The most recent were Venice in late 2009 and early 2010.

In case you're curious, this is
Me and my other site is...

The Churches of Venice

Click here to send me an e-mail
All suggestions and flattery gratefully received

 

 


click on the word NEWS
above for more news (with photos!)


1.9.2010
Clearing out some drawers I found a pile of old filofax pages, which contained diaries I'd written during my first two trips to Venice, in 1990 and 1992. This offers up the possibility of my adding some formative experiences to my Trip Report pages. I haven't plucked up to read them yet, though - you know how it is with reading old thoughts - and they might not bear repeating. A more uncomplicated pleasure was finding old cards advertising The Mandeer. This long-closed Indian restaurant was my lunchtime haunt of choice on shopping trips in the 1980s. It did a bargain buffet lunch in a labyrinthine  basement behind Tottenham Court Road. The nasty new block opposite the nasty block containing the YMCA was built over it. Oh, the chick-pea curries of yesteryear!

18.8.2010
A bit of a roundup...I've joined Venice in Peril because, well, it was beginning to seem perverse of me NOT to have joined. So I've paid me 50 quid and am now liable to attend sundry talks and shindigs and to tell you all about them.

My next Venice trip is barely a month away. Intentions this time include more islands, a day out to Verona or Padua, keeping up my gelato-a-day rate and another visit to the Lido's ruined Ospedale. Talking of which, I've just spruced up my Ospedale al Mare page with a few new photos and lots of very old ones.

The lean time for Venice-set fiction continues, but The Chamber of Ten by Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon is on its way and looks fantastical, at the very least. Then there's Secret Venice, a guidebook from Jonglez Publishing, which also promises to be something else. Reviews of both coming soon.


21.7.2010
The eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that I haven't had a new author on my new Venice Questions page for a good few weeks. Well that's because tricky negotiations have been going on and I can now reveal...well, regular readers of this site will know how I hesitate to use superlatives like legendary (except in relation  to King Arthur)  but some of the authors I'll be featuring  are veritable gods of Venetian writing. And first up is John Julius Norwich.

19.7.2010
Life is full of surprises, is it not? Last week I learned that this website had been mentioned in Marie Clare magazine. The fact that it was in the July edition, which had been on sale for more than a month - the August edition was out - would seem to suggest that there are not a lot of  Marie Clare readers out there amongst you lot. So thanks to Gail in Brighton for the heads up, and to her hairdresser's for allowing her to tear the page out and send it to me, if they did!

 


more news here
 


9.2010 Thomas Jonglez and Paola Zoffoli Secret Venice Venice
9.2010 Rachel Howard and Bill Nash Secret London London
9.2010 Jonathan Barnes The Somnambulist London
8.2010 C. Golden and T. Lebbon The Chamber of Ten Venice
7.2010 The Venice Questions - John Julius Norwich
7.2010 Mary Lutyens (ed.) Effie in Venice Venice
7.2010 Mary Lutyens Meeting in Venice Venice
5.2010  The Venice Questions - Mary Hoffman
5.2010
Robert Westerby Wide Boys Never Work London
5.2010 Katie Hickman  The Pindar Diamond Venice
4.2010  The Venice Questions - Michelle Lovric  New thing!
3.2010 Donna Leon A Question of Belief Venice
3.2010 Michelle Lovric
The Book of Human Skin Venice
3.2010 Hans Fallada Alone in Berlin Berlin
3.2010 Jon Trace The Venice Conspiracy
Venice
3.2010 Philip Davis Lost London 1870-1945 London
3.2010 Lavie Tidhar The Bookman London
2.2010 Iris Murdoch Under the net London
2.2010 A few days in September Venice films
1.2010
Jason Goodwin The Bellini Card Venice
1.2010 Andrew Losowsky
The Doorbells of Florence Florence
12. 2009 Muriel Spark Territorial Rights Venice
12.2009 Kazuo Ishiguro
Nocturnes Venice
12.2009 Norman Collins
London belongs to me London
11.2009 H. Reyes and K. Derbyshire
eds. city-lit Berlin Berlin
11.2009 Ashkin Ozcan 
The Second Venice Venice
11.2009
Mickey Friedman Venetian Mask
10.2009
David Hewson Lucifer's shadow Venice
10.2009 The Abandoned
Ospedale al Mare page Venice
9.2009 P. M. Pasinetti  
Venetian Red Venice
9.2009 Peter Ackroyd
Venice: Pure City Venice
8.2009 Louis Begley
Venice for Lovers Venice
8.2009 Ariana Franklin
City of Shadows Berlin
8.2009 Vasco Pratolini
A tale of poor lovers Florence
 





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Venice // Florence // London // Berlin

Copyright © Jeff Cotton 1998-2010
More than a decade of great stuff, mostly.