Images of Lost London - Softcover

Well, the photographs are so stunningly reproduced that you can almost smell the street life in this amazing collection of photographs. Yes, there are plenty of books on Victorian this and Victorian that and Edwardian this and Edwardian that - and London of course features loud and clear in most of them - but somehow this one has the edge. It's revealing, it's honest, and it's magnificent. The book is BIG - very - and the pages are BIG; the photographs are BIG - and that's one of the lovely things about it. It's a pleasure to look at. The details are as clear as crystal. No need for the magnifying glass here. This is more than nostalgia. This is an important work of social history, because there are all too few volumes that manage to place the reader at the very heart of the subject in quite the way that this one does. Historian Philip Davies is to be congratulated on this handsome book, and it deserves to be popular with both libraries and schools and punters alike, and the price tag is astonishingly modest for the wonders to be found between the covers. It's a splendid companion to the same author's other feast of the past: LOST LONDON. One word of warning: PANORAMAS OF LOST LONDON is backbreakingly heavy: a coffee-table book that weighs more than the coffee table. BUT DON'T LET THAT PUT YOU OFF. It's worth a few visits to the gym and the physio to be able to revel in it again and again. --Green Knight

A glorious and monumental piece of work --Bill Bryson

What a truly magnificent book - a triumph! Great exposition of history, photography and the wonders of London --Sir Terry Farrell

Rare photographs of London's past show people, their homes, offices and shops in pin-sharp detail.