London’s last working windmill is grey and stout, sitting plumply in the middle of a quiet park in the shadows of Brixton prison. And it’s here that Emma Barnett suggested we meet, on her morning off from the Today programme, to introduce her latest project – a family business grounded in community and curiosity and a pathological inability to relax.
She organises plastic chairs beside the millstone while I scurry up the ladder – she has declined the brief tour, having been here before. The windmill features in one of a series of colouring books, Colour Your Streets, that she has recently published with her husband, Jeremy Weil. They began with drawings of landmarks in the London areas closest to where they live with their two small children, and have gradually expanded to include books that map the rest of the UK – and soon, hopefully, the world.
