five dials. hamish hamilton.
You may have heard of a place in London called Seven Dials, a well-known junction near Covent Garden where seven streets converge. At the centre of the roughly-circular space is a pillar bearing six (yes, six) sundials. By the eighteenth century Seven Dials had become one of the most notorious slums in London and when Agatha Christie penned those mysteries the name was a euphemism for urban poverty.
Author Craig Taylor points out that you’ve probably never heard of a place called Five Dials because it never got to grow up to become respectable.
‘Five Dials was a den of iniquity, a haven for criminals, a slummy, ragged bit of the city cleaved away to make room for the broadening of Charing Cross Road.’
One street had the poorest, the dirtiest, and the lowest houses that part of London could boast of. There was gambling, cards, loose talk, and it was all very close to where Hamish Hamilton now sits on the Strand.
Which is why they chose the name for their new-ish literary magazine.
The introductory issue of Five Dials (featuring Iain Sinclair, Alain de Botton, Rachel Lichtenstein and Gustave Flaubert) is quick to let us know it doesn’t have a real staff. Or proper photographers (doesn’t really need ’em…has Nick Dewar). Or even stationery. Instead, they make due with a few editors and writers and a large bit of cork they tack interesting writing and illustrations to.
It is, in a word, Divine.
It’s also free.
