Night-pieces

Perhaps no writer of the early 20th century had a better knowledge of London than Thomas Burke (1886-1945), and his collection Night-Pieces (1935) contains eighteen of his most haunting tales of that immense city's dark back alleys, shadowy courts, and mysterious houses. In Burke's London, anything might happen. You might turn round a corner and find yourself back in your childhood. A casual drink with a stranger might end with you - quite literally - losing your head. That pale, slightly sinister-looking man sitting across the restaurant might be a murdered corpse, returned from the dead.…