Mind the Gap:

Writing Across London Spaces

Abstract

“Mind the gap”: the phrase is familiar on the London Underground,
as a warning to passengers boarding or leaving trains. The gap in
question is between train and platform. The London Underground
first used the phrase as a warning in 1968, earlier than any other mass
transit system. As a London-specific reference to a boundary, it is
germane to the theme of this essay, which will survey some of the
crossings that have been made between spaces, or over thresholds, in
the modern literature of London. Mundanely enough, the gap on the
London Underground is such a threshold. To talk of a gap, though,
might also be to emphasize the incommensurability of worlds, or the
difficulty of climbing across from one to another. Gaps could be social
as well as spatial distinctions.