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London: More by Fortune than Design, M. HERBERT, John Wiley, Chichester (1998). xv + 237pp. L45.00 (hbk) L16.99 (pbk). ISBN 0 471 97399 8 (hbk) ISBN 0 471 98237 7 (pbk).
Michael Hebbert has written the best book on London since Steen Eiler Rasmussen's London: The Unique City appeared in English 61 years ago - and that against extremely stout competition, including Roy Porter's monumental history four years ago. Into an amazingly short compass - 210 text pages in Wiley's somewhat minuscule neo-Victorian font - he has crammed an amazing amount of encyclopediatype information (and one finds from the preface that he earlier worked on the London entry in the Enclyclopedia Britannica): on London's geography, its history, its economy, its people, its government. It is deeply researched, yet it wears its learning effortlessly. (He must only clear up one muddle, between Harringay and Haringey, in the reprint). But he...