Londinio Mogontio
Aug. 30th, 2021 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatsiBook Review: London - A Life in Maps, by Peter Whitfield
Another volume from the exhibitions back-catalogue shelf, this time from the British Library's 2006-7 exhibition (I can't readily find a link in my archives, so maybe I didn't blog about it at the time). Being the British Library, this is quite a bookish volume, and furthermore, it is rather more a history of London's development than a catalogue of cartographic wonder. Nonetheless, it is interesting in quite a few ways: for one, the starting point for extant maps of London is well into the Middle Ages, with only a scattering of images before the sixteenth century, so anything earlier than that is down to archaeology. There are probably three very well-defined transformations in this context: the Great Fire, the advent of the railways, and the Blitz. The first of these offered paths not taken, to redevelop London along European fashions, but the complexity of land ownership and the weakness of the state prevented such radical change. The second saw the advent of the suburbs, with the already-linked London and Westminster spilling over into nearby villages. The third saw the removal of much of the eighteenth and nineteenth century architecture, often replaced with brutalist structures that have not always stood the test of time. The book also goes into details, though: the development of various aristocratic estates on the fringes of the city, the centres of vice in Southwark and the emergence of the pleasure gardens, mostly south of the river; the circumlocutions of royalty from one London location to another; the later replacement and conversions of riverside houses and palaces into hotels; the rise and fall of the docks. Interesting, if not perhaps quite as visually oriented as the title might suggest.
Another volume from the exhibitions back-catalogue shelf, this time from the British Library's 2006-7 exhibition (I can't readily find a link in my archives, so maybe I didn't blog about it at the time). Being the British Library, this is quite a bookish volume, and furthermore, it is rather more a history of London's development than a catalogue of cartographic wonder. Nonetheless, it is interesting in quite a few ways: for one, the starting point for extant maps of London is well into the Middle Ages, with only a scattering of images before the sixteenth century, so anything earlier than that is down to archaeology. There are probably three very well-defined transformations in this context: the Great Fire, the advent of the railways, and the Blitz. The first of these offered paths not taken, to redevelop London along European fashions, but the complexity of land ownership and the weakness of the state prevented such radical change. The second saw the advent of the suburbs, with the already-linked London and Westminster spilling over into nearby villages. The third saw the removal of much of the eighteenth and nineteenth century architecture, often replaced with brutalist structures that have not always stood the test of time. The book also goes into details, though: the development of various aristocratic estates on the fringes of the city, the centres of vice in Southwark and the emergence of the pleasure gardens, mostly south of the river; the circumlocutions of royalty from one London location to another; the later replacement and conversions of riverside houses and palaces into hotels; the rise and fall of the docks. Interesting, if not perhaps quite as visually oriented as the title might suggest.