One Yellow Eye and London with Leigh Radford

Submitted: 30th July 2025

One Yellow Eye by Leigh Radford

One Yellow Eye is a heartrending and darkly humorous novel about the desperate measures we take to keep the ones we love alive.

One Yellow Eye Leigh Radford

Map of locations in One Yellow Eye

It’s the aftermath of a zombie epidemic that has torn through London. Brilliant biomedical scientist Kesta Shelley is struggling to return to normal. Her friends and colleagues are becoming concerned about her inability to move on and her obsession with her work.

Unbeknownst to them, Kesta is conducting her own medical experiments in the spare bedroom of her flat. The very flat where her husband Tim lies chained to a radiator, the only zombie remaining.

Kesta will risk everything, including another outbreak, to bring Tim back from the undead.

Map of locations in One Yellow Eye

Wapping

Kesta and Tim live in Wapping. This is a quiet and mostly residential area just to the East of the Tower of London and Tower Bridge. Historically, it’s one of the most diverse parts of the city due to its significance as a trading hub when most goods were transported into the city by boat, along the Thames. Located right on the river, it boasts numerous quays, piers and jetties. Not surprisingly, it was a hive of activity for centuries, housing multiple warehouses known as wharves.

Map of locations in One Yellow Eye

During the Victorian era there were over 100 languages spoken in Wapping. Its population – which included London’s original Chinatown – was so diverse.

Traders would bring their wares into Wapping and frequent the many pubs that line the river. All of these were notorious and all competed to be the oldest in the area. They included: The Town of Ramsgate, The Captain Kid, The Prospect of Whitby, all the way up to The Grapes in Limehouse.

Map of locations in One Yellow Eye

These pubs were famous for the pirates and traders who frequented them, Infamous too for the impromptu hangings of those traders who fell foul of the rules which would take place over the river.

Map of locations in One Yellow Eye

The wharves mostly fell into disrepair in the second half of the twentieth century. This was a direct result of trade along the river literally drying up, particularly after the Second World War. Those warehouses that were inhabitable enough were used as squats and studios by artists, designer-makers and musicians. Many of them were converted around the time that Canary Wharf was built (Later 1980s, early 1990s). A few remain as monuments to the past, unconverted, used continually for storage.

Map of locations in One Yellow Eye

The view down Wapping Lane is listed to preserve its historic importance. Wapping is one of the only places in London where many of the streets are cobbled.

Map of locations in One Yellow Eye

Kesta and Tim’s flat is based on New Crane Wharf where I used to live. One of the reasons I chose it is because Wapping can be incredibly quiet. Once you’re inside one of the wharves, you could almost be anywhere in the world. It’s hard to remember that you’re in the middle of bustling London! It felt possible to me, that Kesta could ferry her stricken husband back to their flat. She’d be able to hide him away from prying eyes as in Wapping, no one would come looking.

Map of locations in One Yellow Eye

I highly recommend walking from St Katherine’s Dock right the way down Wapping Lane, then onto Wapping Wall, then following the Thames Pathway through Limehouse. You can visit all these infamous pubs along the way, ending up at The Grapes which today is run by Sir Ian Mackellen. Gandalf’s staff from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, stands in pride of place behind the bar. Walking through Wapping is like stepping back in time.

Map of locations in One Yellow Eye

Strand Underground Station

I first moved down to London for University, studying at King’s College.t The main campus of this is on the Strand, in between Somerset House and the disused Strand Underground Station. I was always intrigued as I walked up from Temple Tube Station, crossing past the iron gates that keep people from breaking into it, to know what it was like inside. There is so much history hiding in plain sight in London, buildings that remain derelict and unconverted, chunks of real estate that somehow retain their sense of mystery.

Map of locations in One Yellow Eye

The Strand always felt sinister to me. It seems crazy that you would build this gigantic tube network and then decommission certain lines or stations after only a few years of use. There must be miles of empty tunnels, acres of cold platform simply gathering dust. I wanted to create a new story for Strand Underground, that imagines a secret laboratory Project Dawn is working covertly behind those locked doors and gates, right next to my old college. I liked the deviousness of that, of scientists working underground, under the cover of darkness, on matters too alarming to ever see the light of day.

Map of locations in One Yellow Eye

University College Hospital, Euston.

This hospital will always have a special place in my heart because it’s where my dad received treatment for many years after he was diagnosed with leukaemia. The area is a mix of new and old hospital buildings, some of which are listed, others which are being converted to include some of the most advanced technologies in cancer care, like proton beam therapy, and one of only two hospitals in the country to offer it (the Christie in Manchester is the other).

Map of locations in One Yellow Eye

This is Kesta’s original place of work, a busy patient-facing pathology department in one of London’s biggest hospitals. It’s also where she attends her mandated Zombie Apocalypse Recovery Group therapy sessions. It’s open and transparent and a stark contrast to the hidden dangers of Project Dawn.