I was very careful with the language I used

Who can forget the magical tours of England during the Victorian era through the works of novelist Charles Dickens? Be it Great Expectations or A Tale of Two Cities, the English literary legend took readers through the dark and dirty streets of England then, for which he obviously thought the future was bleak. “I walk on those same roads today, but they are nothing like he described,” says Craig Taylor, the Canadian-born author who was recently in the city to release his book,  Londoners. And how apt that Craig has choosen the year of Dickens’s 200th birth anniversary to tell the tale of modern London and story of 85 people who consider themselves to be Londoners. “I have introduced 85 different people such as chefs, policemen, estate agents and artistes in this book. I was interested in listening how they got to this wonderful city and struggled to survive here,” says Craig, who now lives in London.Since he was working with the collective voice of many people, Craig knew that he had to stop putting himself up on a pedestal and survey London. “I knew I had to work with the voices, my own voice had to give way to theirs,” he says. “A lot of humility has also gone into the process of writing this book,” he adds. After conducting thousands of interviews to zero down on the 85 who would feature in his book, Craig made sure he tackled the issue of stereotypes before he started writing his book. “We all have a stereotypical image of a Londoner — a white man in a bowler’s hat with an umbrella. The word Londoner has been appropriated by many different groups,” he explains. But because he ‘loosened’ the definition of the term, it was those who came and grabbed it that eventually made it to the book, he admits.But in the end, one thing was established — he was dealing with real people. “I was very careful with the language I used in order to maintain the person’s image,” he reveals. "This book is full of people lying, lying to themselves, lying to me — full of inconsistencies, full of human beings,” he breaks it down.The cover of his book is definitely an eye-catcher. You can’t help but stop to look at its multi-coloured cover. “The colours represent the variety that London can now boast of,” informs Craig. “You cannot help but bump into at least 30 different cultures each day in London. I wanted that democracy to be part of this book.” ‘He’s An amazing scribe’Charles Dickens was an amazing journalist, says Craig. “He pushed himself into the corners of London that many others didn’t want to go into. He went to horrible slums and spoke to people who were different from him and had different experiences,” he says with evident adoration. If there is one quality that today’s journalists need to borrow from Dickens, it must be the empathy with which he went about his job, according to Craig. Dickens made an entry into Craig’s life very early on, when he was part of the cast that staged Oliver Twist in his elementary school. “The earlier he gets into your bloodstream, the better,” he says. Dickens was a very sensuous writer, Craig opines. “He would create this sort of alchemy where he would see the situation and turn his experience into characters that would last over 100 years!”Craig loves how Dickens would get the readers through numerous emotions just within the first three pages. “I always read the Great Expectations and think to myself that he has nailed the sentiment,” he says. “He lingers because he gives us what we desperately want from stories.”