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The Review - BOOKS
Published: 1 May 2008

Farringdon Market, Farringdon Street,
circa 1905

Hats off to a portrait of the city’s past

London: A Century In The City. By Brian Girling.Order this book

THE men all wear hats and stare curiously at the camera, the lens still a novelty on the city streets of the mid-19th century.
In the background, horses pull carriages and adverts praise long-forgotten goods and products.
Despite this, it is a London not long out of living memory, and a new book of photographs reveals a grand city that was the centre of a global empire: London’s Victorian architecture shows it knows its importance on the world stage.
The book features a collection of pictures from the files of the London Metropolitan Archives, and author Brian Girling says it makes clear that London has never sat still.
“Twenty centuries have gone into the making of London, each of them leaving a little of itself for those who followed to build on,” he writes.
“Today the skyline glitters with the great commercial towers of this global power house of a city, yet in the labyrinth of streets, which for most part still follow a medieval pattern, there are
world-renowned buildings and ancient treasures which have survived as the city has evolved and modernised.”
The photographs also dispel myths of a period often considered in the contemporary imagination to be smog-ridden and grimy. Not so, says Girling. He has included a series of colour pictures that make the link between today and the past feel stronger.
“They remind us that the Victorian and Edwardian city was not a place of grey and sepia monochrome but was as colourful and vibrant as it is in the present day,” he says.
DAN CARRIER
• London: A Century In The City. By Brian Girling. Tempus Publishing £14.99

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