Mrs Dalloway: A June Day in London

Clarissa sets out from her house in Westminster, and the first thing the novel gives us is the sound of the city: a hush, then Big Ben — "First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable." She is crossing Victoria Street, loving it all: the traffic, the omnibuses, the brass bands, "this moment of June." The bell in the Elizabeth Tower marks the hours for everyone in the book, and its "leaden circles" spread through the story, joining characters who never meet.

Visitor guidance: The tower is best seen from Parliament Square or Westminster Bridge.

Walking up through St James's Park, Clarissa meets Hugh Whitbread, an old friend with an important little job at Court, and her mind turns to Peter Walsh, the man she refused to marry thirty years before. He is due back from India any day. Even now, she thinks, she still finds herself arguing with him "in St. James's Park, still making out that she had been right — and she had too — not to marry him." The park, with its lake and pelicans, lies between Westminster and Piccadilly.

Location precision: Clarissa's exact path isn't given; the pin marks the middle of the park.

On Piccadilly, Clarissa stops to look into the window of Hatchards, the bookshop, where a book lies open at a song from Shakespeare's Cymbeline: "Fear no more the heat o' the sun / Nor the furious winter's rages." The lines, a funeral song, come back to her and to Septimus through the day. Hatchards is real and still in the same place: founded in 1797, it has stood on Piccadilly next to Fortnum & Mason since 1801 and claims to be the oldest bookshop in Britain.

Visitor guidance: Hatchards is still a working bookshop at 187 Piccadilly.

Clarissa pushes through the swing doors of Mulberry's, the florist, into the smell of sweet peas, lilac and carnations. Then a violent bang outside: a motor car has drawn up opposite the shop, and passers-by glimpse "a face of the very greatest importance" before a hand draws the blind. Is it the Queen, the Prince of Wales, the Prime Minister? Nobody knows, but the whole street stops. The shop is invented; Bond Street, Mayfair's grand shopping street, is not.

Location precision: Mulberry's is fictional; the pin marks Old Bond Street.

Peter Walsh has called on Clarissa, burst into tears and left. At half past eleven he stands alone in Trafalgar Square, just back from India, unsure why he came — "What is it? Where am I?" Under the statue of General Gordon, his boyhood hero, he notices a young woman and, half in fantasy, follows her up through the West End. Gordon is no longer here: his statue was taken down in 1943 and now stands on the Victoria Embankment, about half a mile away.

On a seat on the Broad Walk, Lucrezia Warren Smith tries to make her husband look at something, anything, outside himself. Above them an aeroplane is writing letters in smoke — an advertisement, perhaps for toffee — and all London looks up to read it. Septimus, who fought in the war and saw his friend Evans killed, sees the letters as signals meant for him. The doctor, Dr Holmes, has told Rezia there is nothing seriously the matter. Peter Walsh falls asleep on a bench nearby.

Location precision: The novel names the Broad Walk but not the seat; the pin marks its midpoint, by the Readymoney drinking fountain.

At twelve by Big Ben, as Clarissa lays her green dress on her bed, the Warren Smiths walk down Harley Street to their appointment with Sir William Bradshaw, the famous specialist with the grey motor car. Sir William worships "Proportion, divine proportion", and in a few minutes he has decided that Septimus must be separated from his wife and sent to a rest home in the country. Harley Street, in Marylebone, has been London's street of private doctors since the 19th century.

Location precision: Sir William's house is fictional; the pin marks the middle of Harley Street.

In the afternoon Clarissa's daughter Elizabeth, seventeen, escapes her tutor Miss Kilman and climbs onto an omnibus. Another penny takes her further: "She would go up the Strand." Riding on top past Somerset House and the churches standing in the stream of traffic, she decides London's serious, busy east end of offices is quite different from Westminster, and that she would like to have a profession — a doctor, perhaps, or a farmer. Somerset House, then government offices, is now an arts centre.

Location precision: Elizabeth rides the length of the Strand; the pin marks Somerset House, which she passes.

Richard Dalloway crosses the Green Park with a bunch of roses, meaning to tell Clarissa he loves her, and enters Dean's Yard as Big Ben strikes; he hands her the flowers and can't say it. That evening Clarissa's party fills the house. Late in the night Lady Bradshaw mentions that a young man has killed himself — Septimus, who threw himself from the window of his Bloomsbury lodgings rather than be taken away. Clarissa slips into a small room alone and thinks about him.

Location precision: The Dalloways' house is fictional; the pin marks Dean's Yard, which Richard walks through on his way home.