The Eater of Flies locations in London with Richard Gadz
Follow the Eater of Flies on location in London
The Eater of Flies locations in London with Richard Gadz
Take a look at London for it is not what it seems….
Book locations in The Eater of Flies
The Eater Of Flies is a Victorian gothic chiller set in London in 1868. Most of the action takes place in the city’s West End, and in particular the ‘corridor’ between Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square and St. Paul’s Cathedral. In the 1860s, this was the busiest area of London, a 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week hive of activity like no other. It was thronged with people day and night and home to every cultural, social and commercial activity imaginable. Almost literally, all human life was here.
Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square
Book locations in The Eater of Flies
The very rich would frequent the up-market theatres and restaurants, and the working classes would go to the music halls. These became quite respectable and genteel by the end of the century. However, at the time The Eater Of Flies is set they could be raucous places.
A typical theatre in London (Theatre Royal, Drury Lane)
The cheaper seats were downstairs, where you could also eat at tables close to the stage while the gallery above was a little more expensive and often the preserve of men. However, this was not because they excluded women. The truth was that no respectable women would set foot up there as the galleries were often where prostitutes gathered.
Music hall performers had to learn to speak and sing very loudly and enunciate their words very clearly, in order to be heard above the din of diners and revellers.
The Strand
Book locations in The Eater of Flies
Apart from The Strand itself, the area is geographically very different today. The music halls have gone (although many of the West End’s most famous theatres are still much in evidence!) but in particular so have innumerable backstreets. In the 1860s, a warren of narrow thoroughfares off the Strand were filled with slum housing which was just beginning to be cleared.
Royal Courts Of Justice
Book locations in The Eater of Flies
For example, where the Royal Courts Of Justice now stand was an open patch of land in 1868, cleared several years earlier to make way for the new Courts but the subject of endless delays and squabbles over who would get to build them! Those squabbles form part of the book’s plot.
Thanks Richard!
BookTrail Boarding Pass: The Eater of Flies
Twitter: @Frankenwriter
