Van Gogh In London

When I researched Vincent van Gogh's stays in London in the 1870s I did what always works best for me. Get out there on the ground and visit the place, walk through it, smell the air, look at the buildings, savour its atmosphere. It always surprises me that when I visit a location for a book that's when the inspiration starts to flow.

So I headed for London and walked around the areas that Van Gogh had visited when he worked for Goupil's London Art Gallery and later as an assistant at a school. When Van Gogh was 23 he wrote from London to his parents, describing his own experience of the city. Here's an extract of the letter, 'Tomorrow I must be in the remotest parts of London: in Whitechapel - that very poor part of London which you have read about in Dickens... then to Lewisham.' He wrote part of the letter as he undertook this long trip on foot, even resting in a cabbage field to complete his account!

When I explored Whitechapel, with its surprisingly quiet maze of narrow streets, and buildings that still bear violent gouge marks in the brickwork from bombs that fell in WW2 I took some camera footage. This came in useful for describing buidlings and so on. Here's a clip of fairly raw video, which gives you an idea of Whitechapel (Jack the Ripper territory) and how it is today, but most of the buidlings you see will have existed when Van Gogh explored those backstreets.