This site is all about how stories add spice to our ideas and feelings about the cities we love. My favourites have long been London, Venice, and Florence and so I made this site, where I list and review all sorts of novels and films set in these three cities. Each city has its indulgent side pages too. These deal with subjects like Venice's cats, London's cakes, and Lost Florence.

I've also been casting my net wider of late and posting reports on my trips to other European cities, as a service to travellers who share my enthusiasm for art, cakes, cats, and ice cream. Fiction features here too. You'll find the trips listed in the handy Trips Menu

To search within this site using Google, enter your search terms
into the box as usual and then type in site:fictionalcities.co.uk

In case you're curious, this is Me
 

My other sites are...
TheChurchesofVenice.com
&
TheChurchesofFlorence.com

These sites also have their own Facebook page...
The Friends of Fictional Cities
and the Churches of Venice and Florence

Click on the link and Like the page for regular updates.


Click here to send me an encouraging e-mail
All suggestions and flattery gratefully received.
 

click on the word NEWS above for more news (with photos!)

click on the titles and trips to read all about them

18.1.2020
As the year slowly gathers steam I am, as a nod to New Year's Resolutions, mostly adding to the London Cakes page!

Happy New Year
Click above to read my year-end bulletin and see my Top 10 reads and listens.

20.12.2019
Technical stuff...in 2019 my site-connected email addresses seemed to get unreliable and so I changed the link to my 'real' email address, and have had notably more site-related communications in recent weeks. This may be a coincidence, but if you sent me an email earlier in 2019 and I've not replied it's likely because I never received it. All of my sites will be moving to new hosting next year, a process begun in recent weeks, and I hope that this will go so smoothly you won’t even notice.

13.11.2019
News of next year's fruitful Spring rush of Venice novels begins with Donna Leon's new Brunetti coming out on 5th March (in time for my birthday again) called Trace Elements, and then in April there's Philip Gwynne Jones's new Nathan Sutherland novel Venetian Gothic.

10.11.2019

10.10.2019
In a bookshop in Bologna last week I spotted a novel called Medici ~ Ascendancy by Matteo Strukul, the first in a trilogy. My first thought was: do we really need another book about the Medici, let alone three? I looked up the author, he's Italian and has an unusual background in crime fiction, comics and computer games, so one might expect something fresh, but his other novels have dealt with Michelangelo and Casanova. What next? Vivaldi and the Pietà girls? Pshaw!

4.10.2019
I'm just back from
Ferrara and Bologna
where I went for the working on Bologna's churches, two cemeteries and some end-of-season gelato. Mission accomplished! It's good to take Autumn trips and so return from the warmth of Italy to the chill of the English autumn, but the contrast this time, between short-sleeves in the evening and air-conditioning in my hotel room and putting the central heating on and searching out the winter coat was too drastic!

 

more news here

June & July 2019
Cardiff  Trips
Mantua & Ferrara Trips
Jo Walton Lent Florence

April & May 2019
Allison Levy House of Secrets Florence
Jess Kidd Things in Jars London
Siena Trips

March 2019
Philip Gwynne Jones The Venetian Masquerade
Sicily Trips
Philip Kazan The Phoenix of Florence

February 2019
Donna Leon Unto Us a Son is Given Venice

January 2019
The Aspern Papers Venice films
Andrea Perego The Laws of Time Venice