Baker Street To Brick Lane

Toby Moore has a delightful article in the Financial Times on areas of London that have been irrevocably linked to novels:

"A hazard of living near Baker Street is being asked, quite often, the way to Sherlock Holmes’s house. There are three ways to treat this question. The first is by pretending to be Japanese, too, and acting equally bewildered. The second is to recommend what must have been done already: walk north from the Marylebone Road until reaching 221B. But this is cruel torture and always leads to a building site....What seems striking is that the street name titles we remember often offer a perception of place, one that precedes the author’s involvement there. Charing Cross Road, for instance, was famous already for its second-hand book shops when Hanff was deciding on a title; Piccadilly suggested raffish good living to Wodehouse’s contemporaries; and national newspaper journalists still say they’re 'Fleet Street’s finest', despite being secured in Canary Wharf, Wapping, Kensington or at Southwark Bridge."