With the help of a wonderfully ingenious pattern of inferences — in particular an architectural drawing from 200 years later which happened to include a sketch of Aldgate’s north tower at its margins — Paul Strohm is able to reconstruct the room in which, after a long day weighing bags of wool and writing down columns of figures, Geoffrey Chaucer retired to scratch away at his verse.
If you’re curious about what the father of British Literature’s writing retreat was like, you can head over to The Spectator, where Sam Leith reviews Paul Strohm’s investigation into the apparently grimy matter.
