Category: London
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The Fish Ladder – Katharine Norbury
Bloomsbury Circus, out now Katharine Norbury was abandoned as a baby in a Liverpool convent, raised by caring adoptive parents, and then had a family of her own. The book opens as she starts a series of British nature journeys with her young daughter, prompted by bereavement following a miscarriage. In this nature memoir, Norbury…
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A London Year
Paperback now available – £12.99 365 Days of City Life in Diaries, Journals and Letters – compiled by Travis Elborough & Nick Rennison “With Thelma to the George Inn, Southwark, for a lunch of steak-and-kidney pie, cherry pie and beer. Expected hordes of American tourists but found only English, including three young men with posh…
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The Lowest Heaven, Memory Palace
We’re used to book tie-ins for films, TV shows and grasping celebrities but fiction inspired by an exhibition is a more engaging combination. Alongside Hari Kunzru’s dystopian Memory Palace, written as part of a new V&A exhibition, there’s The Lowest Heaven, a science fiction anthology to coincide with Visions of the Universe at the National…
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The Cuckoo’s Calling: Robert Galbraith
This debut novel by Robert Galbraith was published in the spring and attracted admiring notices from fellow crime writers Mark Billingham and Val McDermid. It’s since emerged that it’s J.K. Rowling using a pseudonym and there are certainly plenty of clues this is an author who might not be a fan of the tabloids (Rowling…
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Generation Loss: Elizabeth Hand
This first book in an edgy new US crime series introduces us to burnt-out punk photographer Cass Neary. Cass is a mess but at least she hasn’t sold out: she’s hooking up with younger men (and sometimes women) in gnarly New York clubs, still listening to Patti Smith and refusing to ditch her ancient Konica…
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Wisden: 150 not out
It’s set to be a thrilling summer of cricket with Test matches against New Zealand, the ICC Champions Trophy and the Ashes Test series against Australia. There’s also a publishing landmark with the 150th edition of Wisden, the cricketers’ almanack, available now priced £50. The annual reference book was first published in 1864 by John…
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Celebrate 150 years of the Tube
Since 1863, vast, silent crowds of people have been heading underground every day to read a book (and maybe go to work). So the 150th anniversary of the London Underground – and the 80th anniversary of Harry Beck’s iconic map – is a good opportunity to pick up some top Tube books here at the…
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Charles Dickens: Dickens at Christmas
If you devoured the works of Dickens with an eye on the seasons, you wouldn’t necessarily single out a festive theme. The Old Curiosity Shop opens with the narrator describing early morning summer roaming through fields and lanes; the journey that begins The Pickwick Papers starts quite specifically at sunrise on 13 May; Dickens’s Night…
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London Hidden Interiors
Special Price: £35 THIS time last year we began excitedly exploring Panoramas of Lost London (still available at the special discount price of £25) and now we’re revelling in London Hidden Interiors. This sumptuous volume will appeal to anyone who loves London and feels a frisson of excitement at the idea of entering a hidden…
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London Architecture: Marianne Butler
Or 2000 years of architectural achievement in smart paperback format for £12.99. Metro Guides have been sending out their compact guides to all things London for quite some time now – cemeteries, gardens, hidden walks, bookshops, markets – seemingly aimed at tourists but perfect for Londoners too. Architecture, a past bestseller, has been recently reissued. …
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Panoramas of Lost London
Special Price: £25 The clue, of course, is in the title. In a similar vein to Lost London, Philip Davies has put together another coffee table tome packed with photographs from the London County Council archive. This, however, is more of a high definition model, with over 180 photos from the first book blown up…
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Londoners: Craig Taylor
Our favourite Canadian in London Craig Taylor has spent the last five years interviewing a massive ragtag army of Londoners, and this gorgeously produced, splendidly jacketed paperback is the glorious upshot of it all. The transcribed oral testimonies of cabbie, currency trader, dominatrix, street cleaner, beekeeper, commuter, squatter, property developer, barrister, hedge fund manager, market trader,…
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London Unfurled: Matteo Pericoli
Matteo Pericoli spent two years travelling along the Thames from Hammersmith Bridge to the [former] Millennium Dome and committing both sides of the riverbank to paper, and this is the result: two 37 foot long pen and ink drawings (a total of over 22 metres for the metrically minded), one for the north bank and…
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London’s Lost Rivers
Paul Talling, £9.99 The man behind Derelict London has been at it again, putting together another pocket sized tour to the bits of London you never knew existed; wet bits, to be specific – rivers, canals, ditches, brooks – long since drained, built over or otherwise consigned to the vagaries of history. A handsome little book…
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Derelict London
Paul Talling, £9.99 An alternative London that eschews the sights and locales we’re all familiar with in favour of the derelict and forgotten landmarks slowly rotting away in front of us.
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The London Compendium
Ed Glinert. £12.99 The tales of hidden London, area by area, street by street, building by building, comprehensively catalogued by a man that has walked them all; riots, murders, rock & roll, espionage, gangs, the lot.
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The London Cookbook
Jenny Linford, £14.99 Food writer Jenny Linford combines her own recipes with those of other food-loving Londoners -delicatessan owners, market stall owners, chefs and restaurateurs – in this celebration of London’s food culture.