In Woody Allen’s film Midnight in Paris, aspiring novelist Gil Pender lives out the fantasy of meeting his literary heroes. Transported to the merry-go-round of 1920s Paris, he drinks with Ernest Hemingway, flirts with F. Scott Fitzgerald, and hears his writing praised by Gertrude Stein.
In London, this scenario requires no midnight-striking clock. Instead, look for a set of gray stone steps at the northwest corner of St. James’s Square. Here, the soft tread of writers, thinkers, and actors—Virginia Woolf, Charles Darwin, and Sir Tom Stoppard—has ascended since 1841.
