Title: LOST LONDON 1870-1945 Author: PHILIP DAVIES Format: Hardback Details: The photographic archive of the former London County Council has been in the possession of English Heritage for over 25 years. The author is the organisation's Planning and Development Officer for London and here he has selected over 500 of the best images from that vast archive. Most were taken to provide a permanent record of areas which were vanishing (particularly those taken after the Blitz, prior to the sites' rebuilding or flattening) and the quality of the images are of the highest quality manageable at the time, and are pin-sharp in their clarity even by modern standards. Primarily the book is concerned with the lost buildings and streets of London, and why some have remained and flourished, whilst others have been swept away, and opens windows onto a vanished past, one which is at once familiar but also hauntingly remote. The 75 years it covers were a period of great transition, from the early railways, coaching inns and horse-drawn travel of the late Victorian age through the arrival of the car, the Underground and buses to the devastation of WWII, and images range from Little Dorrit's lodgings in Marshalsea Prison to the Baldwin's bedroom at 10 Downing Street, the opulence of St James's to the squalor of the East End slums, the top people's shops in the West End to the Docks, and the mansions of Whitehall and their offices of state to Mary Smith of Limehouse, paid sixpence a week to ...
Keywords: london, photo history, old photographs, monuments, london buildings, book reviews, bibliphilebooks
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