I’ve always loved maps in books. Until now, only one of my own has had a map, and that was Bearkeeper. On the first page was a map of London in 1601, showing the locations of the Globe, the Bear Gardens, London Bridge, and a few other important places mentioned in the text.
The sixth Dragonsitter is also set in London, which gave me an excuse to ask my publishers to put a map in the front of that book too. I was delighted when they said yes, and Garry Parsons has drawn this lovely map:
Looking at these two maps side by side, you can see that in many ways London hasn’t changed very much over the past four hundred years. There is the river, and there is London Bridge, and there are the main roads spinning out of the centre and heading in every direction, bringing visitors in and out of the city.
Of course Shakespeare didn’t have the Shard, the London Eye, the Natural History Museum, or many of the locations featured in The Dragonsitter to the Rescue. But I like to imagine that he would have been able to find his way around the modern city fairly easily by sticking to the river and spotting a few landmarks which have survived the past four centuries.
