I understood Miranda Seymour’s lovely description of being at Shelley’s house on Skinner Street, where she found herself “walking the streets of London in a daze. There are no paving stones beneath your feet, no cars, no office blocks. You hear the clatter of iron wheels, smell the horse dung, see, in a sudden swish of black silk and the glimpse of a shawl, Mary and Claire hurrying down a narrow street towards the carriage where Shelly is waiting in 1814, to lead them to adventures such as these two impatient, headstrong young women have only read about in novels.” So walking around, A-Z in hand, locating the Skinner Street house and Shelley’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft’s place of marriage and burial, opened London up to me in a new and wonderful way and I realised the historical wealth of women’s lives that were quietly contained in this great city.