Favorite Place: Wintry Wanderings Among Chelseaâ€™s Ghosts

Andrew Testa for The New York Times

A view of the Thames from Chelsea Embankment.

I've lived in some historic places over the years — Paris, Greenwich Village, Washington — but it wasn't until I spent a winter in Chelsea a year ago that I felt as if I were inside a diorama. The ur-Chelsea, I mean: London, not the quarter of Manhattan that provided Joni Mitchell with inspiration for a song and, in the process, Bill and Hillary Clinton with a name for their newborn daughter. For historical voyeurism, London's Chelsea is hard to beat, especially if you incline to artist-writer types, or as my late friend Christopher Hitchens would put it, "people of that kidney."

Winter, I should add, is an excellent time for dead-celebrity stalking. In spring and summer, London thrums and buzzes like a hive. Pubs spill onto the sidewalk, tourists swarm (those Americans!) and the lush city parks that inspired the spare landscapes of Thomas Gainsborough resemble Woodstock re-enactments. Even residential Chelsea takes on the look of a Davos confab or world's fair.

Immediately next door to our little rental flat on Embankment Gardens, a sweet little enclave hard by the Thames, was the Chelsea Royal Hospital. In May, it becomes the site of the annual Chelsea Flower Show. As splendid an event as it is, the very acme of the floral monde, I was glad not to have been a collateral part of it. The empty winter streets, brisk but never too-cold air, and golden afternoon sun made for superb and invigorating perambulations.

We were in London because my wife was studying for an advanced medical degree in tropical medicine. Every morning she would bravely tootle off in the dark to catch her bus and the Tube. I was a stay-at-home spouse, banging away at a novel, and feeling rather inadequate to the task, given the density of illustrious literary figures who once lived around the corner.

Every afternoon, when the day's banging away was done and the larder of metaphors and bons mots was finally empty, I'd lace up my sneakers (trainers, as the British call them) and embark on epic walks, culminating with a rendezvous with my darling at the oyster bar at Harrods.

Yes, I know, Harrods: throngs of actual tourists (as opposed to, say, me) and that weird, creepy shrine to Diana and Dodi. Call Harrods a cliché if you insist, but the food courts on the ground floor are my idea of perfect heaven. And sitting at the marble counter with a glass of Sancerre and a dozen Kumamotos sure worked for my darling, after a long day of PowerPoint presentations on loa loa and other revolting filarial nematodes.

Having refreshed, we'd cruise the bright, gaily tiled food courts, gathering up whatnots for supper at home: Scotch eggs, fish pies, aromatic salamis and cheeses, dumplings, fresh-shot pheasant. The food courts are a gastronomic United Nations. On the way out, we'd dip down to the wine department in the basement for a bottle of claret, sherry, Chablis or whatever looked good (and cost less than £10,000).

Then came the mile-and-a-half hump back to Embankment Gardens in the dark, a goodish half-hour, through Hans Place to Pont Street, past Lillie Langtry's old residence. You remember the "Jersey Lillie" — beauty, actress, muse, concubine to the Prince of Wales (among others). She sat for Whistler and traded quips with Oscar Wilde.

Where were we? Down Pont Street and right onto Sloane Street by the Cadogan Hotel, where Wilde was arrested by detectives for "gross indecency." Down Sloane to Sloane Square, then west on the King's Road, epicenter of 1960s Swinging London. Then zigzags down smaller streets and a tree-lined allée that in the late 17th century was the driveway to the Royal Hospital, and down St. Leonard's Terrace toward Tedworth Square, where Mark Twain lived for a time.

Onto Tite Street, the home stretch, with a brief stop at the corner Tesco convenience store, for milk and a half-dozen newspapers, including the guilty pleasure of tabloids shouting "Gotcha!" at the latest naughty cross-dressing member of Parliament or Prince Philip for telling some derogatory anecdote about Princess Di. Bliss.

Christopher Buckley's book of essays, "But Enough About You," will be published in May.

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