London Through Time

[9781848688933]

Ranging from Somerset House to the Serpentine, Smithfield Market to Selfridges, Michael Foley leads us on a tour of London's most popular landmarks. He shows us that while much of the city is transformed decade-by-decade, London is rooted in its most persistent features. While White City would be unrecognisable to a time-travelling Edwardian, the great memorials, palaces and churches are definitive - and a century is nothing to the houses on Fleet Street that survived the Great Fire of 1666. Obvious patterns emerge - while the traffic on the streets is increasingly relentless, the Thames, once clogged with trading ships, now tends towards the empty. And although the speed of new building work has only accelerated over the years, the twenty-first century pedestrian has a much greener - and arguably safer - journey ahead of her than those Edwardian predecessors. London Through Time is the ideal companion for a leisurely ramble around one of the most diverse, most venerated cities on Earth.