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, dealing with all sorts of stories set in these three cities. Each city has a few 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. Fictions feature here too. You'll find them listed on 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

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

In case you're curious, this is Me.
 

My other sites are...

  

  

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

click on the titles to read all about them

17.8.2017
You know how it goes - an author emails you to offer you a review copy of his new novel, and after months of shenanigans involving publishers dithering over delivery, changing their minds, and other hiccups and hesitations, you finally get a copy. And it's 1165 pages long! And to be ahead of the game you need to read and review it before October, when it's published. I'm sure we've all been there. The book is Time's Betrayal by David Adams Cleveland, and as I loved his two previous novels I'm confident it'll be worth the time and muscle pain. Expect a review, but not soon.

12.8.2017
Dublin

6.8.2017
Tomorrow we're off to Dublin. Why Dublin? Well, whilst it's not unfair to accuse me of visiting major European art capitals mostlly to feed my obsession with Italian art - that being my main reason for visits to Vienna, Liverpool, Birmingham and even Paris in recent years - in this case the main draw is a big Vermeer exhibition - Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting. This is my first visit, to Ireland and Dublin, so ogling of Georgian architecture and literary pilgrimage spots will probably be indulged in too. And then there's The Book of Kells.

22.6.2017
A guidebook to Verona has just been published in Germany with one of my photos inside! And they paid me for it! I tell you this, with scans, (on my News page) not just to blow my own trumpet but to also blow a big raspberry at Brexit - ffftttpppttt!

19.6.2017
When I read that Richard Russo's new story collection Trajectory contained a novella-length story set in Venice I was immediately interested, and looking forward to a new story from an author whose previous Venice-set stories have been gems. Imagine my disappointment, then, in discovering that the story, called Voice, is just Nate in Venice, which I read and reviewed four years ago, with a new title. What can I say but 'grrrr'?

4-7.5.2017
Urbino

27.4.2017
‘So, Jeff, what’s happening?’ I hear you ask. Well, I’m off on an art historical tour to Urbino towards the end of next week, and then it’s a biggish gap, trip-wise, until a week in Dublin in August, mostly to see the Vermeer exhibition (which is moving from Paris in June), but the Book of Kells is also a draw, and the city itself, of course. The trip-gap will be used to visit more English cathedrals – my project of 2017. Books-wise there's  A Trial in Venice being read and the promise of a review copy of Sansovino's Venice by Vaughan Hart, a rare new translation, and annotation, of the famed guidebook of 1561.

7.4.2017
 Psst, fancy a good read? Well over on the right you'll find that April has already provided a couple of essentials, and my copy of  A Trial in Venice, mentioned below, has just arrived too. In other news, provided by one of the two novels mentioned, it turns out that the long and low arch of pipe amongst the chimneys in the oil refinery in Marghera, visible from the Zattere, is called the Arch of Cracking. Who knew?

24-31.3.2017
Bologna
 

more news here