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24.3.04

Which city will be Britain's first World Book Capital

The Sunday Times books section features this story by Peter Kemp centering around a debate at the Oxford Union this Saturday on which British city best deserves the title of World Book Capital. Previous winners have included Antwerp, Madrid and Montreal, but the four literary powerhouse cities of Britain and Ireland, Oxford, which is contending for the 2007 award, and London, Edinburgh and Dublin, will each be championed by a literary lion in the upcoming debate. I think Kemp himself may favour London, as evidenced in this quote:
"The immense size of London (the city of Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, as Patrick Hamilton called his fictional trilogy about it) has given rise to a correspondingly vast spread of literature. Even in Elizabethan times its reach was extending: from A Chaste Maid in Cheapside to The Merry Wives of Windsor. By now, the diversity is dizzying, with books sprouting from almost every cranny. A Scandal in Belgravia, A Murder in Mayfair, The Blackheath Poisonings, Flight into Camden, The Sweets of Pimlico, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Rumpole of the Bailey, The Norwood Builder, The Camberwell Beauty, A Wembley Lad, Upon Westminster Bridge, The British Museum is Falling Down, The Old Men at the Zoo, Brick Lane, London Fields, Hyde Park, The Ballad of Peckham Rye, Kew Gardens, Circle Line, Victoria Line, Paddington Bear, Devonshire Street W1, They Came from SW19: there’s scarcely a postal district or monument that hasn’t found its bard. That the contribution of the London A-to-Z to the world of letters has been formidable is among the many issues likely to be raised during what seems set to be a memorable and entertaining battle of the books at Oxford."