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RR 2017/237London: A Life in Maps [New edition] Peter Whitfield British Library London 2017 224 pp. ISBN 978 07123 5607 7 £14.99
Samuel Johnson famously declared "[...] when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life". The reading public does not appear to tire of books about London: there has been a proliferation in recent years, including Peter Ackroyd's London: A Biography (Ackroyd, 2002), Jerry White's books on London in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Liza Picard's series of books, books on specific streets or areas of London and London in fiction.
London: A Life in Maps gives a different dimension, providing views and insights that are not experienced when working in or walking through a city, or reading about the lives of its citizens. This edition of London: A Life in Maps is redesigned and updated, the original having been published in 2006. Peter Whitfield is regarded as a leading expert in the field of map history and has published other works (The Mapping of the Heavens , The Charting of the Oceans , The Cities of the World , Travel: a Literary History ). Eleven years from its original publication date, there is justification in an updating, as the fascination with and study of urbanism is popular, reflected in the offering of human geography in universities and modules that examine the city in relationship with literature and art.
Whitfield notes that early maps or views of "the prospects and panoramas of the city" might not be naturalistic, might have been manipulated to present the features attractively (p. 8). Nevertheless, to have even a stylized image of London from the sixteenth century is thrilling and Whitfield enables the study and understanding of the city from that period to the twenty-first century. This book is packed with maps and images: Whitfield's first paragraph is entitled Picturing London, and that signifies the riches to come in this book: the reader is presented with a plethora of panoramas, maps, paintings and photographs that tell the story of the growth of London. The book is also about the people who have inhabited London since the earliest...