A folklorist’s thoughts on stories and place
I was walking through Knightsbridge yesterday and thinking about all the stories embedded in the streets. The history that’s invisible unless you know where to look. The myths that sustain this particular version of London reality.
Knightsbridge is where wealth accumulates. Where power lives. Where the old money and new money come together and pretend they’re the same thing. And all of this is held together by stories. Stories about heritage. Stories about earned success. Stories about the naturalness of hierarchy.
I was reading about London mythology and legend, and what strikes me is how much of what we think of as historical fact is actually just repeated story. The more a story gets told, the more real it becomes. The more real it becomes, the more invisible it is as a story.
That’s what I try to do in my work. Make the stories visible. Show how they’re constructed. Help people see the difference between what actually happened and the myths we’ve built around what happened.
