Bleeding Heart Square

One of my favorite activities as a member of the American Women's Club of London is our Book Club.  We meet once a month and discuss an interesting book that one of our members has selected.  I selected Bleeding Heart Square for March because the author, Andrew Taylor,  is well-renowned British author and the setting of the novel is in London in the 1930s.

Instead of meeting at the AWC office for our discussion this month, we opted to rehash this murder mystery novel at none other than The Bleeding Heart Tavern in East London.

Though they have several restaurants, we ate 

in the Bleeding Heart Tavern, which featured a choice of typical British pub food such as Gloucester Old Spot Suckling Pig with Crackling or their Famous Tavern Fish Pie for the main course and Apple Crumble with Custard or Bread and Butter Pudding for dessert.  The British call all desserts "puddings" and apparently they call pudding "pudding," too!

Although the butter was presented in cute heart shapes, at least it wasn't red!

If you read the book, you'll recognize some of these places in the book.  Above is the square and below is the Crypt.

Although this book is fictional and the author chose this site for the main location of the setting of the book, the real legend of Bleeding Heart Square is slightly different.  The legend states that there was a great masked ball at the Spanish ambassadors house, whose guests included Lady Elizabeth Hatton, the toast of 17th century London society.  A jilted lover strode into the doors of the ballroom and danced her once around the room and out the doors into a garden.

Unfortunately for Miss Hatton, she was found the next morning in the square in a terrible state - dead and with a mutilated body - the most notable being her heart ripped from her body and lying next to her!

I love a good mystery and wasn't disappointed.  Here are some members of our book group posing in the square.