Paris London

Paris Booksellers' Olympic Preparations

Jacqueline Feldman | Paris Review | 9th August 2023

A masterclass in grumpiness. The booksellers of Paris will not be joining in when their city hosts the 2024 Olympics. "I know that during the Olympic Games we will do strictly nothing other than what we’ve been doing for ninety years," says one bookseller. There are other problems to solve, another declares. "Literature, first of all... And then, well. Thought, imagination, reflection, beauty, love" (1,150 words)

Fleeting Encounters In Mrs Dalloway’s London

Luc Guillemot | Datawrapper | 10th August 2023

Virginia Woolf's 1925 novel, mapped. The exercise shows how precisely Woolf placed her characters on the streets between Westminster and Regent's Park. Seeing who goes where also reveals that Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith occupy entirely separate but adjacent regions of the city, with only one character, Sir William Bradshaw, crossing between them (930 words)