has also mentioned Waterlow Park in the nearby suburb of Highgate and its small lake as an influence. In writing the songs on Village Green, Ray was initially inspired by Dylan Thomas's 1954 radio drama Under Milk Wood, a work which focuses on the townspeople of a small Welsh town on a typical spring day. Miller further connects Ray's writing the works of English author George Orwell. He and other commentators draw particular comparison between Village Green and Orwell's 1939 novel Coming Up for Air, a work which presents a similarly ambivalent view of nostalgia. Journalist and musician Rob Chapman suggests that in addition to Coming Up for Air, Ray's lyrics further allude to other English writings, including Harold Nicolson's short stories, E. M. Forster's Bloomsbury essays and the writings of Philip Larkin. Author Ken Rayes compares the album to the 1925 novel The Great Gatsby by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald, a relationship he thinks is hinted at in the song "Village Green" by the presence of the characters Tom and Daisy, who have the same names as the novel's characters Tom and Daisy Buchanan. Rayes writes that Ray's notion of "an encroaching modern English culture" parallels the novel's motifs of "mythic America and the changing American dream". Recording history 1966–1967 The Kinks first recorded "Village Green" at the beginning of the sessions for Something Else on 24–25 November 1966. They re-recorded the song in February1967. Though the song was recorded during the sessions for Something Else, Ray did not include it on that album in September1967. In November, the Kinks shifted to working on a project tentatively titled Village Green, at that time still envisaged as a Ray solo project. Ray wrote most of Village Green songs from late 1967 into 1968, though he later suggested that several had been half-finished from years earlier. He generally composed songs on his Fender Malibu acoustic guitar in his living room at 87 Fortis Green, North London. The band began rehearsing Ray's new songs at his home in late1967. Around the same time, they stockpiled studio recordings for later use without initially knowing when or in what format they would be released. "Mr. Songbird" and numerous other songs on Village Green may date to around this period. Between late1967 and early1968, the Kinks remained generally inactive as a band; Dave spent time promoting his recent solo single "Susannah's Still Alive", while