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Andrew Gardner |
Boris’s Holloway makes up part of walking tour
ONE of the first walking tours of Islington taking in the home of London Mayor Boris Johnson, is being launched next month.
Local historian Andrew Gardner has decided to include “Boris’s Holloway” as part of a cultural walking tour that also includes the haunts of writer George Orwell and politician Joseph Chamberlain.
Mr Gardner recently replaced the late and much-loved Peter Powell as chairman of the Islington Archaeological and History Society, whose own popular literary walks included the homes of such notables as Charles Dickens and Joe Orton.
“I could never replicate Peter’s walks and I wouldn’t want to,” Mr Gardner said. “They were uniquely his own and he’d been doing them for 20 years.
“But history is also my passion and I’ve read enough about Orwell and Chamberlain to be able to talk about them.
“Boris is a bit of an afterthought but worth including in passing because of the interest in him.”
Mr Gardner is emphatic that he won’t be pointing out Boris’s actual house, bearing in mind that the London mayor and his family wouldn’t want voyeurs.
“I’d point to the area where he lives off Holloway Road, the local pub, The Bailey, where he occasionally drank. Boris on his bike is a well-known local figure and he was also president of the Islington Conservative Association.”
Orwell, a socialist, and Johnson, a conservative, both went to Eton, Mr Gardner points out. “There is something in their characters that makes them extremely individualistic and often unable to follow the party line.”
The walk begins at Highbury and Islington station, part of which was rebuilt after being hit by a bomb during the Second World War. It then moves to Highbury Fields and the homes of past and present residents, from writer Nick Hornby and BBC political editor Nick Robinson, to former Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and Joseph Chamberlain.
“I shall be pointing out Chamberlain’s home, where there is a plaque,” Mr Gardner added. “He was born and educated in Islington but made his name as mayor of Birmingham and a senior member of the Liberal Party. His son Neville, of course, became Prime Minister.”
The tour will then move on to Canonbury Square, where Orwell lived from 1945 to 1948.
Mr Gardner said: “Orwell wrote Animal Farm but had tremendous difficulty selling it to a publisher because it was regarded as anti-totalitarian and we were allies with the Russians.
“Orwell, I think, would have been horrified by the way his expression ‘Big brother’ has been used and abused by reality TV. He worked for the BBC when it still had ideals about educating and informing people.”
An administrator for University College London, Mr Gardner lives on the Marquis estate, and was previously secretary of the history society, which has been going for almost 40 years.
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