A Book Lover’s Guide to Covent Garden
What springs to mind when you think of Covent Garden? Perhaps the city’s iconic theatreland, the market, the piazza, street artists, bustling pubs or perfume houses. Yet for lovers of books and stories, it’s also a hidden library carved into the corners and façades.
Follow this gentle literary walk through Covent Garden and the surrounding area, and you’ll find echoes of great authors at every turning…
Agatha Christie & The Seven Dials Mystery
Start your walk around Seven Dials and its cluster of streets connecting Covent Garden and Soho. This very area plays a starring role in Christie’s 1929 novel The Seven Dials Mystery, where the protagonist Bundle Brent descends into a secret society hidden in these streets. Over the years, Seven Dials itself has leaned into this legacy, and in 2019 the area celebrated 90 years of the novel, with book trails and installations to evoke Christie’s intrigue. While Christie never lived here herself, her fictional world gives this corner of London a fascinating extra layer of mystery.
A quick detour: keep a lookout for the Agatha Christie Memorial near St. Martin’s Cross (Cranbourn Street and Great Newport Street) – a bronze, backlit book homage to the Queen of Crime.
Charles Dickens & Wellington Street
Wander south toward Wellington Street, just off the Aldwych, and you’ll arrive at No. 26 Wellington Street, which was once the office of All the Year Round, Dickens’s weekly periodical. He lived above the office and spent many hours here writing, editing and observing London’s bustle through the windows. If you look up at the building today, you’ll see a blue plaque commemorating Dickens’s literary presence.
Dickens had multiple associations with this area: he references Seven Dials in Sketches by Boz, and he was also known to frequent pubs like The Lamb & Flag (on nearby Rose Street) and the restaurant Rules on Maiden Lane, a stone’s through from One Aldwych.
The Mystery of Sherlock Holmes
Step through Covent Garden’s cobbled streets and it’s easy to imagine Sherlock Holmes on the trail of his next great mystery. Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Legacy of Deeds and other Holmes tales often led the famous detective through the bustle of London’s theatres, taverns and shadowed alleys, encapsulating the very essence of Covent Garden. With its mix of glamour and intrigue, this pocket of the city feels like a living backdrop to Holmes’s world, where intellect meets atmosphere and every corner could hold a clue.
Virginia Woolf’s London Walks
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway captures the rhythm of London life, and Covent Garden reflects that same vibrant pulse of the city. Woolf’s characters moved through streets alive with chatter, flowers and market bustle; the same sights and sounds that still define this part of town today. Strolling from Aldwych to the Piazza, you can almost hear the echoes of Clarissa Dalloway’s footsteps, her musings blending with the pulse of the city that inspired Woolf’s most celebrated work.
Stories from the Shadows and the Spotlight: Wilde, Stevenson & Sayer
From Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray to Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Covent Garden’s dramatic flair and decadent charm would have felt instantly familiar. The area’s theatres, gaslit streets and bohemian corners have long drawn writers exploring the dualities of beauty and darkness. A short walk away, on Great James Street, crime writer Dorothy L. Sayers lived and worked; part of the same creative current that has always flowed through Covent Garden’s lanes. It’s a neighbourhood where the boundaries between page and place blur, and where literature feels alive.
Jane Austen: A Literary Neighbour in Covent Garden
No Book Lover’s Guide to Covent Garden would be complete without mentioning Jane Austen, whose ties to the neighbourhood are far closer than many realise. When visiting London, Austen frequently stayed with her brother at 10 Henrietta Street, just moments from One Aldwych and now marked with a blue plaque. It’s easy to imagine her weaving through Covent Garden’s bustling streets, observing society with her trademark wit, visiting theatres and milliners and gathering the sharp, sparkling details that fill her novels.
Walking the Literary Streets
Whether you’re starting at Seven Dials, strolling through Monmouth Street, wandering towards Wellington Street, pausing by plaques and cafés, or imagining Dickens at his window, Christie’s secret societies in alleys, and Sayers drafting her detective scenes, at every turn, the city’s paper-thin layers of stories shimmer through modern façades.
Bring your favourite pocket guide or novel, wear comfortable shoes and let the words and walls talk to you. Covent Garden, for the book lover, is not just a destination… it’s a story in motion.
