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Books

London fog: from the Big Smoke to the Big Choke

The sour yellow miasma forever (wrongly) associated with Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper had been poisoning the capital for centuries, according to Christine Corton’s London Fog

7 November 2015

9:00 AM

7 November 2015

9:00 AM

London Fog: The Biography Christine L. Corton

Harvard, pp.408, £22.95, ISBN: 9780674088351

‘A foggy day in London town,’ croons Fred Astaire in the 1937 musical comedy A Damsel in Distress, puffing nonchalantly on a cigar as he wanders through a wood that has already been half obliterated by belching Hollywood smoke machines. Today Gershwin’s lyrics conjure up a nostalgic vision of life in the city, involving pale fingers of fog wrapping themselves around lamp posts and the muffled clop of hooves on cobbles.

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