Dulwich

to be – that train and tube journey from our office in grotty old Battersea to the leafy suburbs of Angus’s Hampstead – then I’ve yet to find it. That was an area where the For Sale signs outside the houses cost more than my entire new flat in East Dulwich. After our nervous run-through, interrupted every couple of slides by bar staff collecting glasses and drunks asking to borrow spare stools, Angus seemed to think the presentation was pretty okay – good, even – and he agreed to start making some introductions

Street was not merely the Kentish road, but also the road to Flanders. Where the hills narrow the Thames marshes most there is the natural crossing of Watling Street, first a ferry, then a bridge. This point lies between Tower Hill and the heights of Dulwich and Sydenham. Bermondsey, the isle of Bermond, was a dry spot, rising like a stepping-stone from among the surrounding marshes. The existence of solid ground on the immediate banks of the 1°1 have omitted in this sketch to account for Leith Hill

child. His mother worked in local hotels to support her children for four years, sending Michael to St. Thomas College in Colombo, then moved with them to London where she worked in a boarding house. Michael continued his schooling in England at Dulwich College until 1962, when he emigrated to Canada to join his elder brother Christopher in Montreal. In Canada he studied for a BA in English and history at Bishop’s University, Quebec, and the University of Toronto from 1962 to 1965. In 1964 Ondaatje