Alan Hollinghurst’s English Underground

Given his interest in reconjuring lost Englands, it is fitting that Alan Hollinghurst passes his days alongside one of its best-preserved anachronisms. Hollinghurst’s home abuts Hampstead Heath, the great grassy eruption that bestrides north London, its woodland ancient and indifferent to besieging urban sprawl. The Heath has known many uses through the centuries, from Norman pig farm to aristocratic residency to (as memorably depicted in Hollinghurst’s Booker prize-winning novel The Line of Beauty) gay cruising waterpark. Hollinghurst’s home looks out over the base of the Heath’s Parliament Hill, the view of its ascent filling his two large sitting room windows.