World Book Day is marked every March: at local schools kids will be will be dressing up as their favourite story book characters and discussing how to spend the book tokens which have been distributed to all UK schools.

It's a perfect opportunity to celebrate all the joys of reading and publishing.

Its also a chance for us to to consider how our area has fared in literary history...

Few of the greats of the English language canon have troubled our little backwater – although Dorset’s Thomas Hardy has Enfield Connections – via his second wife Emily Florence Dugdale. Their marital union received civic acknowledgement in recent years with the naming of LB Enfield’s new performance space and local history museum The Dugdale Centre – being located in Thomas Hardy House in Enfield Town.

John Keats went to school in Enfield and Charles Lamb and Thomas Hood also have Enfield associations. (The borough have produced a helpful fact sheet on Literary Enfield)

However very little has been written about our area by the literary giants - the nearest perhaps is Charles Dickens who once wrote of  “… a cheerless visit to Tottenham”.

Former Poet Laureate John Betjemen wrote of his time as a Cockfosters School Teacher in his poem Cricket Master (An Incident). Closer to our patch Stevie Smith famously lived most of her life in Palmers Green and drew from her surroundings for her poetry.

Last year marked the centenary of a delightful book- Memories of a Lost Village by Henrietta Cresswell about Winchmore Hill – Hugh Humphrey of N21.net republished the book - which acted as the catalyst for last summer's Fancy Fair on Winchmore Hill Green.

A more modern novel “Small Holdings” by Nicola Baker has a local setting – telling the story of a group of Broomfield Park gardeners.

Haringey too has some more recent literary connections –Dotun Adebayo was at school in Tottenham and Hornsey. He went on to establish the publishing imprint Xpress in the early 90s producing controversial titles such as Baby Father, Yardie and Cop Killer. His Brother Diran Adebayo in the novel Some Kind of Black, was one of the first to write about his heritage as a British-born African; his first novel won him numerous awards.

Comedian Sean Hughes took North London as his setting in an otherwise unremarkable 2001 novel called "It's what he would have wanted".  In one passage he writes about Turnpike Lane, Wood Green High Street and Ducketts Common:

Looking forward this autumn - in the real, rather than fictional - High Road we will see the first Wood Green Literary Festival developed and hosted by The Big Green Bookshop – an ambitious venture to celebrate the diversity of local literature.

Overall however I would have to say my favourite book with a local link is Thomas Burke'sThe Outer Circle: Rambles in remote London – Written in the early 1920s Burke writes about his visits to Londons outlying suburbs, Wood Green, Palmers Green and of course Bowes Park. (You can read the book here)

My favourite quote is this one:

"Bowes Park is Wood Green with its Sunday clothes on. Wood Green is the original Jack Jones; Bowes
Park is Jack Jones "come into a little bit o' splosh."

So make sure to celebrate World Book day - get along to the Big Green Bookshop and treat yourself to a new book - or nip into The Step and browse the Bookswap shelf!

Who have I missed? Which are your favourite local books - or authors - with a local connection?