Customer Reviews

City Secrets: London

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LONDON, of the City Secrets series of travel guides, is a little gem that will easily fit into a pocket of your travel vest as you set out to explore what is arguably the world's greatest city.

This volume, small in size but rich in information, divides Britain's capital into thirteen areas according to a scheme that escapes me. However, no matter. Each area, e.g. Hyde Park & Chelsea, The City, Oxford Street & Mayfair, or The East End & Beyond, is preceded by a map on which is marked each point of interest included in that section. And what you will find are both famous and little-known museums, historic buildings, art galleries, libraries, shops, pubs, churches, eateries, parks, squares, streets, memorials, and gardens. Each includes, at least, an address or location and the name of the nearest Underground or rail station. If relevant, there's also a phone number and/or the date the place was founded or constructed. The core of each listing is a short descriptive commentary by a contributing journalist, architect, philosopher, playwright, professor, author, historian, poet, curator, or some other professional of similar dignity. At the end of the book are an Index of Recommended Reading and an Index of Contributors. What you won't find are budget hotels, American fast-food franchises, newsagents, or 24-hour chemists (pharmacies) reviewed by backpacking college students, traveling salesmen, lorry drivers, or tourists from the Midwest. This is a genteel publication.

LONDON is a delightful and uncommonly intelligent sightseeing resource for those of us who've been to the city often enough to have exhausted the usual tourist activities and are left with making silly faces at the Buckingham Palace guard to try and crack his reserve. And besides the information that might be considered usual for each of the listings, the contributors also provide tidbits of arcane information that the casual visitor would likely not know or learn, as in the following example.

Regarding Oxford Street: "Plans drawn up in 1972 to transform Oxford Street into 'a tree-lined paradise' must have fallen down the back of somebody's sofa, because the busiest street in Britain can still ... make you lose the will to live - mainly at Christmas, when bright-eyed shoppers ... spill out of the ground at Oxford Circus and congeal in a fog of bus fumes and freshly roasted caramel nuts ... Nick Leonidas, blinded by yellow fever as a child, has busked here since 1981: five days a week, 52 weeks a year, 11am to 7pm with a half-hour break at three."

LONDON in hand, I'm ready to return to my favorite city - now.

I've lived in London for 30 years and enjoy cycling around the place (an excellent way to get around, incidentally, but it would be irresponsible of me to recommend it to visitors), so I was intrigued by this book and pleasantly surprised at the selection, which contains most of my favourite places and pointed me in the direction of some I wasn't aware of. London is ideally suited to this kind of approach; there's a dislocation between tourist London, mostly centered around Westminster with maybe a trip downriver to St Pauls or the Tower, and the vast city where people live, most of which is unknown territory to tourists. Partly it's that old self-deprecatory British thing....why on earth would anyone want to come to this dump?....so all these marvellous places remain obscure and largely unloved. Take Hawksmoor's churches for instance. If they were in Paris or Rome they'd be set in squares lined with expensive cafes, with postcard stands dotted all over and coachloads of Japanese tourists milling around trying to get the best camera angle. As it's London they're stuck next to busy main roads, or buried away in the middle of nowhere - like St George's-in-the-East, mentioned in passing here, on a desolate stretch of main road somewhere on the way to Limehouse. Which actually suits them as there's something dark and lonely about them anyway, and they really couldn't be anywhere else but London. And that's somehow typical of the place...it's not often beautiful but it's endlessly fascinating. So let me do my bit for the London tourist trade and encourage y'all to come on over. Forget those silly guide books with pictures of beefeaters or the changing of the guard on the cover, and try this instead for a glimpse into a far more interesting and rewarding city.

LONDON CITY SECRETS is a little book of good places to visit the next time you're in England. The authors describe their book as a "highly subjective" collection of recommendations, not an all-inclusive list of places to eat, sleep, visit in London. The folks making the recommendations are artists, writers, historians, and others who live and work in London. They share favorite spots to eat; favorite paintings, sculptures or museums; favorite walks, historical houses and other spots discovered over the years.

LONDON CITY SECRETS is divided into 13 areas: 1/ Trafalgar Square, Soho and Covent Garden; 2/ St James, Westminster, & the Embankment; 3/ Hyde Park & Chelsea; 4/ Oxford Street and Mayfair; 5/ Regent's Park & Camden Town; 6/ Bloomsbury & King's Cross; 7/ Islington & Clerkenwell; 8/ The City (of London); 9/ The South Bank; 10/ Notting Hill & The West; 11/ Hampstead & The North; 12/ The East End & Beyond; and 13/ South of the River.

Because the selections are subjective, the National Gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum are mentioned, whereas the National Maritime Museum is not. Fortnum and Mason is included, Mark's & Spencer is not. Scrubb's prison is listed, the Tower of London is not. Plenty of good places to eat are listed, no good places to sleep are included. Never thought you'd visit Islington? You might find yourself eating at the Smithfield Market, Moro's, or the Quality Chop House. Think the East End is a dump? You might discover a science fiction ride on the nighttime tube.

Symbols are placed next to sites with London Underground stops and places to eat. Plenty of bars, pubs, and other assorted oddball watering holes are included. The various authors, artists, etc. also recommend plenty of additional reading material about favorite spots. LONDON CITY SECRETS is eccentric, esoteric, and entertaining.

This new series is indeed a revelation: I bought "City Secrets London" after being most impressed with "Rome" and "Venice, Florence and Italian Cities", and London edition did not disappoint.

In the world where simplification is all the rage, these little books seem like a welcome greeting from a bygone era. "No nonsense" books they are not: some people may call these guides unashamedly elitist. Most of the contributors seem so knowleadgeable that many readers may feel the whole content is too high-brow for them. I would be disappointed if this impression were to scare readers off. However, author's decision not to dumb down anything has to come at a cost, and if that cost is losing readers who expect a dumbed-down quick cheap-and-cheerful guide to London of Beefeaters and "Buckin'-Ham" Palace, so be it.

Please do not mistake this for a proper guide which will give you general getting-around, hotels, eating-out and tourist highlight guidance. For this, you'll be better off with Eyewitness London. City Secrets is for people who basically know the city but want to find out little quirky things that other people miss (quite predictably and justifiably, because not everyone has time for in-depth look).

City Secrets is all about the stuff that all really good human guides use: nuggets of information, crafty access to places, best-view routes and other things which make all the difference between an average guided tour and a really memorable experience.

Contrary to what many casual travellers believe, London - although not blessed with relaxed Parisian charm or haunting and menacing spell of Florence - can be very cosy, friendly and pleasing to the eye and to the soul. If you think you like London and if you are likely to visit the city more than once in your life, you'll definitely need this book.

"City Secrets London" is a fun read, compiled from writers, journalists, artists and architects take on what's the best of the London they know. Although I've got a house full of books on London and thought I knew most of the secrets, by reading if not by seeing, there were a lot of new things in this slim volume. The writing is so good, the sense of place so immediate, that it feels like a virtual tour of London, without a single photo. I highly recommend it.

You will need time to make the purchase of this book worthwhile. London is gigantic. It's difficult enough to hit the very well documented high points. If you are making your first trip and/or have less than a week, stick to Eyewitness. If you are a repeat offender, disinterested in the main tourist attractions, or have a lot of time, you will not regret this purchase. This guide will get you off the beaten track and provide advice about how to avoid being trampled when you are on it.

This is the quintessential guide for anyone who wants to visit the rare and cool side of London. I found a lot of really wonderful ?off the beaten path? kind of places via this guide. It has great, quirky restaurant suggestions, and tips on getting into strange museums (like the type museum!). A must have for those of us who like to pretend we?re locals and know all the ?secrets? of the city.

The "City Secrets" series is based on contributions solicited from expats and locals living in the city of interest. This distinct approach has two very pleasant benefits to the reader: first, the recommendations are written with style and panache distinct to each contributor (the artists recommend arty stuff and describe how things look), and second, the recommendations are the sort you get from people who live and breathe in the city rather than just the rest of us, who just run-in-see-the-sights-turn-around-run-home.

City Secrets: London is even better than other European entrants (say, the Rome book), because virtually everyone writing for the book seems to be a permanent resident, rather than a on-and-off-again visitor.

So, rather than hotels and a greatest-hits list of museums, you get favorite places to walk, nice places to have a cuppa on the way, museums you would discover only on the third walk down the street. Not all of them are "secrets" in the sense you wouldn't otherwise have known about them, but all of them are worth knowing.

There is a slight tendency toward redundancy, when multiple contributors mention the same destination. But this is a very minor complaint. This little gem of a book should be slipped into your pocket for the plane ride over; it will add more to your vacation than any number of more traditional guides.

This book steered me safely and happily through London. Its recommendations are spot on, and made me wish I could spend months in London to track them all down. If you want to see the odd, off-beat London, buy this book.

The City Secrets series is a useful and reputable series that has covered many major cities of the world. The guides for Rome and New York City were particularly useful to me, not being a resident of either place; thus, I was interested to read the volume on London, a city I like to think I know fairly well, having lived and worked in the place for many years. However, any city the size of London is going to have secrets even from the longest-term resident and frequent visitor, and this book introduced me to many things I didn't know (or didn't know well).

I was pleased to read in the `How to use this book' section that the editors had drawn on people with some good artistic and architectural insights. Regarding them, it says that many are `associated with the Sir John Soane's Museum, the Whitechapel Gallery or the Museum of London.' The Sir John Soane's Museum itself is a lesser-known place - indeed, it is a place many people would walk past, not realising the wonders within, as it blends in so easily with the rest of the block.

The book is divided into 13 parts of London:
1 - Trafalgar Square, Soho & Covent Garden
2 - St James, Westminster & the Embankment
3 - Hyde Park & Chelsea
4 - Oxford Street & Mayfair
5 - Regent's Park & Camden Town
6 - Bloomsbury & King's Cross
7 - Islington & Clerkenwell
8 - The City
9 - The South Bank
10 - Notting Hill & The West
11 - Hampstead & The North
12 - The East End & Beyond
13 - South of the River

Each section starts with a map, which is then keyed to the entries in the section. Streets, tube stops, places to eat, shop, and visit are all included. However, this is not a typical tourist guide. For the part that covers Westminster, for example, the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey are not included. Why should they be, in a book entitled City Secrets? These are no secret places; Buckingham Palace similarly is not highlighted, but Banqueting House, the Horse Guards and the Cabinet War Rooms (indeed, originally intended to be secret!) are highlighted, as places that even residents generally overlook.

Like the city itself, this book is eccentric and eclectic. There is something for everyone in here, and save for the savviest of London cab drivers (they know everything about the place!), this book will hold some new sites and some renewed sites for every reader.