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Showing Tag: "orwell" (Show all posts)

Some of the London writers featured on the London Literary Pub Crawl.

Posted by Nick Hennegan on Thursday, February 9, 2023, In : Bohemian Britain 

London has been home to some of the most revered writers in history. Here are five of the most famous writers who have lived and worked in the city:

1.  Charles Dickens: The renowned English author was born in Portsmouth, but moved to London in his early twenties and wrote most of his beloved classics, such as Great Expectations, Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol, while living in the city. 

2.  George Orwell: The author of Animal Farm and 1984 spent much of his life in London and his novels we...


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The End of Edinburgh...

Posted by Nick Hennegan on Tuesday, November 27, 2018, In : Nick Hennegan 

For a writer, I've not been writing on here very much!  Mainly due to the creative madness that is the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.  I actually had THREE productions I’d written and directed at the festival this year - A Christmas Carol, Henry V - Lion of England and Hamlet - Horatio’s Tale.  Yes, it was a hectic, but a glorious and intense experience.  Adapting Shakespeare’s Hamlet almost sent me as mad as the gloomy Dane himself. (Or was he mad? Or gloomy?  Or just pretending.  How mad ...


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Summer in the City. Or out of it!

Posted by Nick Hennegan on Monday, August 21, 2017, In : Nick Hennegan 
If you are coming to London to see us, then now is a good time to come. Summers never get TOO hot in the UK - it's not like the sweltering city scape of places like New York.  But us Londoners like to get out of town occasionally.  We've got the Hop fields of Kent on our doorstep.  A little further away, 90-odd miles north-east of London on the Suffolk coast is Southwold. It's a charming place - sometimes known as "Chelsea-on-Sea" because of the number of well-heeled Londoners that go there. ...
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Viva USA!

Posted by Nick Hennegan on Thursday, November 17, 2016, In : Nick Hennegan 
It's hard as a writer not to be effected by politics. George Orwell's life long literary mission was to make political writing an art form and he certainly achieved this. But I like to think I'm an optimist. What has happened in the USA, with the election of a reality star and businessman to the post of President, needs watching by all free thinking individuals. But we also need to understand how many in the world no longer trust 'them' - and see increasing globalisation changing their worlds...

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Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol. in Birmingham!

Posted by Nick Hennegan on Friday, December 11, 2015, In : Nick Hennegan 

It's exciting being back in Birmingham at the Old Joint Stock Pub and Theatre. And last years London sellout version of my A Christmas Carol has done just that again - this time in Birmingham. Here's what I wrote for the theatre programme. 



We all know Charles Dickens' remarkable Christmas story. He wrote it in 1843, just as his fame and success as a writer was fading. The novella has not been out of print since! I first came across the book as a boy. I borrowed a children's version of the sto...


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That's (Animal Farm) showbiz!

Posted by Nick Hennegan on Thursday, February 5, 2015, In : Nick Hennegan 
Bummer!  We had the rights to perform George Orwell's Animal Farm for all of 8 weeks, till the 'principle agent' changed their mind and decided to cancel our license.  It probably means a commercial theatre producer has decided to try a production. Which is good for us fans of Orwell, but not so good for WE fans of Orwell.  



A bit like when we performed 'Under Milk Wood' in the Wheatsheaf in Fitzrovia, London, the pub where Dylan Thomas met his wife.  It was commercially stupid to mount such a...
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Review of 2014.

Posted by Nick Hennegan on Monday, January 12, 2015, In : Nick Hennegan 

We started 2014 in the shadow of the previous year.

My experiment with theatre in a pub, as opposed to Pub Theatre as it's understood in London, had proved very successful in 2013.  I managed to get the rights to produce Under Milk Wood on the 60th anniversary of Dylan Thomas' death.  It proved a success in a number of ways, but mainly though conversations with the excellent veteran theatre director John Adams.  John was not available to direct, but he recommended a former student of his who ...


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London Writers and Poverty. How the Lit Pub Crawl started. Part One

Posted by Nick Hennegan on Friday, August 15, 2014, In : Nick Hennegan 
It's me birthday!  Thanks!  Feel free to send cards. Or cash... :-)

Birthdays are often a time for reflection.  When I first got the idea for the London Literary Pub Crawl, it was because I was taking my M.A. and I was flat broke.  In spite of never having received a grant for education, for reasons known only to the Education Dept I had to fund everything myself.  It was tough - not only the fees, but living in one of the most expensive cities in the world.  But I don't think we'd have done t...
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Class of '13

Posted by Simon Plant on Wednesday, April 17, 2013, In : Nick Hennegan 
If you're coming to see us over the summer, the chances are you might meet one of this talented bunch of actors. If you've already been on the London Literary Pub Crawl, you may recognise the alleyway next to the Newman's Arms, George Orwell's local.

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George Orwell on Writing - in the Newman Arms

Posted by Simon Plant on Monday, April 8, 2013, In : Writers 
One of the pubs we visit on the tour is The Newman Arms. It's a great pub and unusual in that it's one of very few pubs in the area still owned outright by a family, rather than a brewery. I'll go into more detail about the pub in a later post, but I love the place. And it's appeared in some famous films. But perhaps most famously it's where George Orwell used to drink and is widely believed to be the template for the Proles pub in his novel 1984. You can hear some of his description of the p...
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Additional Reading and writers we meet!

Posted by Simon Plant on Thursday, November 8, 2012, In : Nick Hennegan 
We had a query this week from someone wondering what preparation they should make for the tour. Well, it is written assuming no previous knowledge, but works covered on the tour include A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas, 1984 by George Orwell, A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf and various Charles Dickens works. We've also some new work from the niece of Brendan Behan and we get to meet all the above, plus William Blake, Francis Bacon, Jeffrey Barnard a...
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About Us


Nick Hennegan Hello. I'm Nick Hennegan and I started the London Literary Pub Crawl. Most of the blogs on here will be by me. I've always written but my first theatrical success was an adaptation of Shakespeare's 'Henry V' (www.HenryVPlay.com) I founded Maverick Theatre in 1994. (www.MaverickTheatreCompany.com) This pub crawl is really more a promenade theatre performance than a tour and I'm running it with a bunch of enthusiastic local actors and writers. I love sharing my passion for the area and the artists. I also present a weekly radio show, 'Literary London' on Resonance 104.4fm - London's Arts Station and a podcast on our site. If you haven't visited us in London yet, I hope you'll come soon. Have a look at my new site, www.BohemianBritain.com. And feel free to leave comments or email me at nick @ LondonLiteraryPubCrawl.com - I reply to them all and I love to hear from you.

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