It remains one of the most memorable frames from my previous visit to London. By the second week of my stay in that city, commuting by the tube had become a comfortable and convenient way to move around. I heard the voiceover inform tube commuters that our next halt was Baker Street. And with a lot of excitement I gladly hopped off the tube at the station. Like a child in a candy shop, I gazed at the wonderful visual tribute that was plastered along the walls and the approach all the way to the main street outside the station. There were rows and rows of silhouette frames that celebrated Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s world-famous sleuth, Sherlock Holmes. I stood there for a few moments to soak in my little achievement of having ticked off the name of another literary classic from my must-see list. This was a visit that went straight into my bank of memories. London was filled with many such fascinating salutes to their literary heroes, where homes of greats like Charles Dickens, Dr Samuel Johnson, Virginia Woolf and Alfred Lord Tennyson were thrown open to experience as a literary tourist.

They had more such valuable initiatives, including the circular Blue Plaque scheme by English Heritage and the square blue plaques of The City of London Corporation. In fact, the former’s initiative that started in 1860 is believed to be the oldest in the world. These plaques installed in home and office addresses, commemorate the lives and times of not just English stalwarts, visionaries and campaigners but also those who came to England from elsewhere, including a long list of Indians, from Mahatma Gandhi to Dadabhai Naoroji and Raja Rammohan Roy. A plaque that caught our attention, installed at 10, Howley Place, was to honour Lokmanya Tilak who lived at this address in 1818-19.