At the
Guardian, Kathryn Hughes tagged the ten best non-fiction books about London. One title on the list:
London: A History in Maps (2012) by Peter Barber charts the city’s transformation from its Londinium days to the Olympiad of five years ago, by means of maps culled from the British Library’s rich collection. We start with a symbolic view of London from the late middle ages and end with a series of snapshots of where we are now: a census map showing South Asian immigrants living in London in 2001, a pigeon’s eye view of the King’s Cross redevelopment, and a plan showing the extent of the London railway systems in 2012. In addition to the detailed charting of the city’s inner workings, there are extravagant speculations about what London might have been, if only common sense and financial probity hadn’t got in the way of wild imagination.
Read about
the other entries on the list.
--Marshal Zeringue
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