English Tea Murder by Leslie Meier is a fun quite read!!

My local library had a book sale where I bought books for a dollar a bag!! Bougth several London books!! Im reading "The Queen and Her Court" by Jerrold M Packard right now.

Was written in 80's - Prince Charles has JUST gotten engaged to Lady Diana Spencer!! I am just getting into it but detail family history - room by room of royal residences!!

One question - at Buckingham Palace IS there a side door called Privy Purse Door where people can come in to just sign the guest book??? I know there is a guest book but can't imagine where you can just walk up and come inside and sign a book! IF so please let me know!!

Thank you, Cathinjoetown. I'll look for that.

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Seeing as you mention historical novels, have you heard of 'Where there's a Will, there's a way'. It's a biographical, fact based account written in novel format of the remarkable life story of British social reformer and working class hero, Will Crooks. It's like something out of a Dickens novel. As a poor boy in London's East End, Crooks was sent the Poplar Workhouse. Usually that is enough to finish most people off, but Crooks grew to become chairman of the very board of Guardians that years earlier had been responsible for sending him to the Workhouse and he sets about reforming and humanising the workhouse system. He was also mainly responsible for killing off baby farming in Victorian London. It's quite an eye opender to conditions in London at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. If you like triumph over adversity stories then this is a fascinating read. It's set in Poplar, the same area where the Call the Midwife books are based: http://www.amazon.com/Where-theres-r.../dp/B0089ZA05I

I know this is an old thread but I don't see CJ Sansom's Shardlake series of historical mystery novels set in the time of Henry VIII http://cjsansombooks.com/matthew-sha...find-out-more/. Excellent mystery novels set in London!!

"Brick Lane" by Monica Ali is another good one that I read some time ago.
I found that even though they're old now Jean Plaidy's historical novels were a great way to learn a lot of mainly royalty history.

Any list of novels set in London must include Anthony Powell's magnificent twelve novel cycle, "A Dance to the Music of Time", considered by many to be among the finest English novels of the Twentieth Century. The cycle spans the period from just after the Great War until the late 1960's and is filled with a host of memorable characters. While the scene often shifts outside London, the city remains central to these novels. Essential reading!

Last year I read and enjoyed Below Stairs by Margaret Powell. It's a memoir of a kitchen maid, beginning in the 1920s.

It was originally published in 1968 but reissued in the US in 2012.

Another memoir is The Invisible Wall by Harry Bernstein about growing up in an English mill town in the early 1900s.