We had a great time at the Edinburgh Fringe this August. It's the biggest open arts festival in the world! Writer of our London Literary Pub Crawl, Nick Hennegan, wrote one for Edinburgh. And we had a blast. And like our regular weekly London Pub Crawl he met some great new people! 

Most of the Posts are now?yola-link-is-coming=true on www.BohemianBritain.com. Go have a look!


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I found this on the site of our friends at brainpickings.org.  I've written a random diary for years and sometimes felt it was a waste of time.  I also love "writing instruments" and paper and thought I was a bit weird!  Maria Popova and JS puts that right...

John Steinbeck on Writing, the Crucible of Creativity, and the Mobilizing Power of the Impossible
“A good writer always works at the impossible.”
BY MARIA POPOVA



An advocate for the creative benefits of keeping a diary, Virginia Woolf sa...
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I found this on the Quora Website.  I think Point 7 is particularly true... and it's taken me a long time to realise it!

Lev Grossman, Author of the bestselling Magicians trilogy and journalist at Time magazine

1. Get your stuff in on time.

2. Don’t write anything that you wouldn’t say out loud – don’t say “perhaps,” say “maybe.” Don’t say “yet” when you mean “but.” And so on.

3. Read read read, all you can, all the time. Don’t worry about other people influencing ...
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It's the New Year and you should come and visit us in London as soon as you can. Outside of town, check out some of the Literary Festivals we host in the UK.

There are now literary festivals throughout the year in most areas of the country. The largest ones include:

The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival, at the end of March
The Hay Festival, in late May
Edinburgh International Book Festival, in August (Hear Nick Hennegan at the 2015 Festival on our podcast page)
Cheltenham Festival of Literatu...
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As you know, life in the arts here in Soho is a constant financial struggle and I’ve been looking at an author Crowdfunding platform called Unbound as a way of helping out.  As I have both Charles Dickens AND William Shakespeare lined up to provide an introduction to my next book - more about that later perhaps - I’m thinking of using the service, if they’ll have me.
I was checking them out and came across this, from Raymond Briggs’ pitch of a book he’s hosting on the platform.  For ...
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The roots of the Literary Pub Crawl lie in the Fitzroy Tavern. I was doing my Masters at the University of London and looking for a cheap pint.  My mate from Birmingham, filmmaker Andy Bloom, suggested I could get a cheaper pint at the Fitzroy, as the pub was run by the Sam Smiths Brewery and they were considerably cheaper than other pubs in the area.  He also told me about the Writers and Artists Bar at the pub, which certainly appealed.

So I was nursing my cheap pint downstairs and couldn't ...
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Thursday, 2 October 2014

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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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Writers Retreat! New Books!  It's been a busy few months...! So how was your summer? I had a bit of an odd one. But I want to tell you about -   Our new URBAN WRITERS RETREATS   Our first BOOKS   Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas   The London Literary Pub Crawl and how you can buy a bit of the action! The big news is that we are finally starting our  LONDON WRITERS URBAN RETREATS.  Saturday, 28th September, 2013.  11am - 5pm. Then every last Saturday of the month. The Fitzroy Tavern, Charlotte Street, Lon...

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Seamus Heaney died yesterday. It's a loss in so many ways. Probably the finest Irish poet since Yeats, he was sometimes known as "Famous Seamus" because unlike many poets and writers, he wasn't particularly shy and retiring. He was something of a celebrity from an early age and was prepared to stick his head over the parapet to make a comment.



But I identify with Heaney the farm-boy. My folks are from the peat-bogs of Co. Mayo - he was from a Mossbawn farmhouse in County Derry, although he res...

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If you've been on the tour, you'll know that the Fitzrovia leg is more theatrical than the Soho leg. We enact various scenes, including Anthony Burgess (Clockwork Orange, etc) meeting a knife gang in the Duke and Dylan Thomas meeting his wife at the Wheatsheaf. But then Soho becomes a more 'traditional' tour. That's about to change very soon. I've written a number of pieces around our Soho artists and writers and I hope its going to transform what we already have.

I'm very pleased with critica...
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