Craig Taylor: London Is The Place For Me

So much has been written about London, from Dickens to Ackroyd to Monica Ali to Patrick Hamilton and on and on and more and more. Craig Taylor, the brilliantly funny author of A Million Tiny Plays About Britain has taken on the task of the definitive state of the nation (city). He has interviewed people from all walks of life, from economic migrants to middle-class poshos to refugees to tourists to artists, and everyone you can think of, in order to write Londoners, one of the most authentic books about London.

We spoke to Craig, a jetsetting Canadian, about coming to London, who writes the best London and his sporting motto.

> Dear Craig, how are you?

I am fine, thank you.

> What drew you initially to London?

I arrived in autumn, 2000, to study for a master's degree. I didn't have a great time on the course, but I loved living in the city.

> You talk about it in the book, but could you tell us where you grew up and what made you want to leave?

I grew up in a small village outside a small town on Vancouver Island. From there I moved east, mostly because I wanted to see the country. I finished college and went to a university in Quebec, about an hour east of Montreal. From there I moved to Toronto, which is west but not too far west. From there I moved to London. There was no plan. I guess I have what a Canadian comedian once called 'slightly bigger city syndrome.'

> Having written plays about Britain and its foibles, was there one London story that kickstarted Londoners?

Luckily, I was given assignments that called for interviews when I first started writing for the Guardian. Plenty of those interviews involved Londoners of different sorts. It wasn't hard to notice there were a few interesting stories in the capital. The book grew organically from there.

> Tell us where the greatest city in the world is?

I'll get back to you when I visit them all. London's a front-runner.

> Who wrote the best London, fiction-wise?

The best piece of fiction on London? There's plenty I haven't read. I love Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners.

> What are you currently working on?

I'm working on taking time to read the books I should have read ten or fifteen years ago. I don't want to start another big project yet. I'd like to finish reading The Sound and The Fury first.

8) You're the editor of Five Dials, which has been one step ahead of the curve in terms of being a digital publication. What are your plans for its future?

Five Dials keeps growing. I think we're onto a good thing: a lean, almost ghostly literary magazine that can be edited from anywhere, that can be printed up by its readers around the world, or read on screens big or small. One reader printed and bound the first twenty issues. It was a gorgeous stack of paper.

> What are you currently reading?

The Sound and The Fury. I'm stepping up the pace this year. I've also recently read the following: Speedboat by Renata Adler; Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes; a book called The Glamour of Grammar; Here at the New Yorker by Brendan Gill; The Memory Chalet by Tony Judt (which is heartbreaking); The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath; and The Broken Estate by James Wood. There are so many more books to read.

> How good are you at football, really?

I'm not as fast as I was in 2006, but I'm still vocal when I'm on the pitch. The sound and the fury, I guess.