This teaching and learning investigation draws on two adjacent chapters of Zadie Smith's novel (2012). The first chapter delineates one character's journey through north-west London as plotted by the directions feature of Google Maps, while the next chapter focalises this perspective at street level. Ten classes across three year groups conducted…

This paper explores the treatment of London by two authors who are profoundly influenced by the concept of the power of place and the nature of urban space. The works of Peter Ackroyd, whose writings embody, according to Onega (1997, p. 208) "[a] yearning for mythical closure" where London is "a mystic centre of…