I had the privilege of visiting London for the first time three years ago today, and stepping into Westminster Abbey feels remarkably different now than it did then. Here, the lines between fiction and reality blur. This Monday, standing before Charles Dickens' final resting place brought an unexpected stillness and serenity. Serenity for a man who gave life to so many characters, so many corners of the human soul.
To be buried in such hallowed ground, despite being someone who held no strong religious faith, alongside luminaries like Stephen Hawking, is in itself its own kind of testament - a secular sainthood. I believe that graves are meant to anchor memory, yet Dickens barely needs that - his stories endure. Still, standing there, I didn't think only of the legacy he left behind, but the stories we lost. The Mystery of Edwin Drood was left unfinished, mid-thought, at fifty-eight. Three years ago, I might've moved on quickly. Today? I find myself quietly grieving, not for the man but for the unwritten.
Charles Dickens Grave, Westminster Abbey
Stephen Hawking Grave, Westminster Abbey
As we left Westminster, we passed a protest led by military veterans. Curious, we asked what they were protesting for, and I learned about Soldier F. This British soldier shot and killed two people in Northern Ireland during Bloody Sunday, and attempted to kill five others. My first instinct was simple. Justice should be served. If those victims had been people I loved, I would want accountability. But one of the Veterans reminded us that Bloody Sunday happened half a century ago, and charges have already been dropped four times. Suddenly, my perspective shifted. What if it were someone I loved on trial, being pulled back into something from fifty-two years ago? The past is rarely settled, and perhaps not everything can be cleanly resolved. It was the first of many moments that week that reminded me that truth can have two opposing views.
On Tuesday, as I walked past the Old Bailey Courthouse, I felt a tangle of emotions. On one hand, this is where Charles Darnay was granted his freedom in A Tale of Two Cities. But it's not all sunshine. Real people once stood trial here for crimes as minor as theft and were sentenced to death. In this very courthouse, since 1674, one person might win their life back, while another could be crushed by the weight of this corrupt law. And that person might've been someone's child. Someone's entire world. I feel conflicted. Do I marvel at a literary scene made real, or mourn at the very real pain it mirrors?
“his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honor to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards.”
Old Bailey Courthouse
Wednesday, from Borough Market, we make our way to London Bridge, past the steps where Nancy was murdered in Oliver Twist, and soon we're standing next to the Golden Hinde. Albeit not a Dickensian landmark, we pause anyway. I learned it was an English ship that captured a vast silver shipment from the Spanish and evaded pursuit, taking three years to circle the globe. As Britain fought off the Spanish, it would eventually help England claim its stake in the New World, laying the groundwork for my existence.
But next to me was a classmate whose parents immigrated from Spain. They might see this tale as something entirely different - a moment of loss, of conquest. And yet here we both are, looking at the outside of this replica ship, two perspectives shaped by the same history, yet standing on opposite sides.
Thursday, at the Dickens Museum, the house where he lived from 1837 to 1839, I find myself gravitating towards a volunteer named Mally. We talked for a while, and I learned that Dickens had ten children, and adored them in their infancy, but was a very neglectful father. He sent his sons to boarding schools and didn't bother to bring them back for Christmas. And yet here we are, curating his teaspoons, dinnerware, writing desk, and in my case, even his piano.
He wasn't a saint. Not always kind. However, he wrote with a profound understanding of society and challenged the status quo. Funnily, maybe that's enough?
On Friday, we passed the site where Mary Ann Nichols, the first of Jack the Ripper's victims, was murdered. As someone who is fascinated by mysteries, I've always been intrigued by the Ripper's unknown identity. However, in our seminar, I learned about the book "The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper" by Hallie Rubenhold. Rubenhold reframes the story by not hunting the killer, but by honoring the women whose lives were reduced to the manner of their deaths. Until that moment, I hadn't considered how much focus we place on the mystery, and how little on humanity. Her work reminded me that history, like fiction, can be told through many lenses. Who we choose to center in history matters.
We also visited Dennis Severs' House, where I stepped into a world lit only by candlelight and layered with silence, scent, and suggestion. It was the closest I've felt to experiencing the 18th and 19th centuries from the inside out—seeing what a Dickens character might have seen, hearing what they might have heard. It made me appreciate something as simple as electricity in a way I hadn't before.
Hours later, I stood at Horizon 22, looking out over the entire city from above. London stretched endlessly in all directions—lives intersecting, stories unfolding, each window its own point of view. It struck me: every person I could see from that height carries their own lens. Their own story. Their own unfinished novel.
We can read the same books, walk the same streets, and stand before the identical gravestones, but we each carry our own lens. History doesn't change, but our perspective, and the perspective of the person telling it, does. That could be the gift of travel, of literature, of growing older. We have the chance to return to the same places and see something new. That's the gift of bookpacking.
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”