Circle Line

This was 26's major project for 2005, a two-pronged affair which took London's Circle Line as its starting point. Writers were each randomly assigned a station - I was pretty miffed to end up with Euston Square which, on the surface, had nothing whatsoever to recommend it.

We were also partnered with students from the London College of Communication. Here I was fortunate enough to land the highly talented Tommaso de Sanctis and Avital Benezra. After a couple of false starts, we hit upon the idea of an illustrative representation of Richard Trevithick's Catch Me Who Can locomotive, going round a circular track in the middle of modern-day Euston Square, with all the 21st century high-rise, glass-fronted architecture around it. (Trevithick had originally set the track up in the same location in 1808 as a stunt to attract funding.) The result - wonderfully rendered by Tommaso - was surreal, thought provoking and tied-in neatly with the Circle Line.

The second part of the project was to write a chapter inspired by the surrounding area. The Bloomsbury Group quickly came to mind, and it struck me that what really interests people about them is their notorious sexual shenanigans. So I concocted a story about a country ingenue called Algy, who arrives in London and mistakenly gets caught up in an upmarket orgy. Kind of PG Wodehouse meets Marquis de Sade. You can read the full uncensored chapter in From Here to Here: Stories Inspired by London's Circle Line.