Customer Reviews

Nairn's London (London Library Series)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Jerry Yares (below) is much too hard on this reprint of a classic. I have used it in rambles around the City and Westminster, and found it invaluable. It is also a great companion on a winter night, planning that next trip to London.

Mr. Yares does us all a favor in pointing out the existence of a second, updated edition (1988). If this were a reprint of that edition, I would have given it five stars in a minute. Were there copyright problems? In any case, the 1988 edition is available from Amazon partners. The binding of my copy is old and breaking, and the type is hard on the eyes, but the updates are very valuable.

Buy both, and take this one with you to London; keep the 1988 edition at home for reference.

All I did was write the introduction. I was earlier instrumental in bringing about the revised Penguin edition that he praises.

Lacking "no-stars," under duress I am forced to rate this book one star.

Ian Nairn published the original in 1966. In 1988, Peter Gasson produced a major revision and updating of the original which I bought several years ago at a remainder store.

Now, in 2002, I am about to revisit London. A friend tells me that Roger Ebert, my up until now favorite film critic has revised Nairns. So I buy a copy.

Bad move.

In it is the text from the 1966 original edition, which according to Gasson, in 1988, was then somewhat out of date.

The 107 essential photographs from the original (and from Gasson's revision) "are not reproduced here."

Plus, ". . .Gasson's updatings of Nairn's 'irreplaceable and intensely personal text [presented by Gasson as footnotes]' are, in their turn, sadly and inevitably out of date as well. . . ."

From Ebert's introduction I surmise that neither he nor the publisher had the guts, expertise, insight, sensitivity, energy, or courage to do a creditable update. So they copped out and merely reprinted the original 1966 Nairn's with Ebert's comments pasted in the front.

In my opinion, this book is a waste of your money.

In my opinion, better you should hunt up a copy of Gasson's 1988 revision and spend an afternoon plotting the locations on a good London map and checking out the details in the 2002 Time Out London guide.

I am returning the Ebert/Nairn guide to Amazon next week.

Jerry Yares (jyares@aol.com)