The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle (1892). Ryder tells of “a friend once called Maudsley, who went to the bad, and has just been serving his time in Pentonville.”

History of Islington (2005) and other titles. The Islington historian, turned 100 this year and lives in Barnsbury.

Medea (2015). The play premiered at the Almeida and was set in a modern Islington home.

Bad Girls: A History of Rebels and Renegades (2018). Davies lives in Holloway and has written about Holloway Prison.

The Lamplighter (1854). Tom Grig’s new beat was “somewhere near Canonbury Tower … In a quiet part of town, where there were some queer old houses.” Oliver Twist (1837), Pickwick Papers (1836) and other titles. In Oliver Twist (1837), Oliver was introduced to pickpocketing by the Artful Dodger, and Mr Brownlow was pickpocketed by Fagin’s gang in Clerkenwell Green. Dicken’s serialised story in ‘Bentley’s Miscellany’ magazine, written under his pseudonym ‘Boz’, was adapted by the manager of Sadler’s Wells Theatre, Mr R Honner, and performed there in 1838. In Pickwick Papers (1836) Mr Pickwick lives at Goswell Street (now Goswell Road). Bleak House (1853), Our Mutual Friend (1864/5), Sketches by Boz, Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People (1836) and other titles. In Bleak House Inspector Bucket first picked up the trail of Honoria, Lady Dedlock “at the Archway Toll over at Highgate”. In his final work, ‘Our Mutual Friend’ Mr & Mrs Boffin’s house is situated by the dust heaps east of Maiden Lane and Reginald Wilfer’s “home was in the Holloway region north of London, and then divided from it by fields and trees”. Dickens describes the May Day revelries and walking around Maiden Lane (now York Way) in 'First of May', one of the short stories in 'Sketches by Boz'.

Robinson Crusoe (1719–22) and other titles. Defoe is buried in Bunhill Fields Burial Ground.

The Garrick Year (1964). In the novel Emma Evans lives near Pentonville Road and walks north from Angel to Islington Green.

The former Poet Laureate, along with other authors, took part in protests outside Pentonville Prison in 2014, against the government ban on prisoners being allowed books in their cells.

Fatlands a Hannah Wolfe mystery (1993). The author lived in Highwood Road.

Foul Deeds in Islington (2010). An account of true crime in the borough.

Four Quartets 1: Burnt Norton, III (1941). Eliot refers to Clerkenwell as one of “The gloomy hills of London, Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney, Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate.” In The Wasteland (1922) Eliot wrote “highbury bore me..’ in the second draft of the poem. His first wife, Vivian, edited it out of the third and final draft.

John Barry - A Sixties Theme (2012). The journalist and author has written widely on music biography and travel and lives in north Islington.