Robert Dinsdale has been featured on The Book Trail’s Authors on Location series.
In this tour, Robert takes readers deep into the heart of 19th-century London, using the city’s lost rivers as both setting and inspiration. Through evocative prose, he revisits long-buried waterways like the River Fleet and others that once criss-crossed the capital – rivers that now flow unnoticed beneath the modern streets but once shaped its life, legends and stories.
Set in 1861, Once a Monster begins on the tidal mud flats of the Thames near Ratcliffe Highway, where a mudlark named Nell discovers a mysterious, scar-marked stranger whose story hints at mythic ties to the Minotaur. The city that unfolds around them is a labyrinth of Victorian streets, waterways and forgotten histories – a perfect match for the novel’s myth and atmospheric storytelling.
Read the full literary locations piece on The Book Trail. Learn how these hidden London rivers flow through both history and narrative and discover how Dinsdale’s own wanderings inspired the world of Once a Monster.