Find Your Way Home--Bestselling Sat Navs
Plan ahead and avoid traffic jams with one of our bestselling sat navs from top brands including TomTom and Garmin. We also stock a great range of up-to-date and fully-routable maps for your device, including popular destinations such as France, Portugal, North America and Scotland.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
London of the mind, the heart and the eye is displayed, discussed and dissected in this classic work of 1962 that unites the elegant prose of V.S. Pritchett and the revealing photographs of Evelyn Hofer. Here is a pithy, knowledgeable distillation of the essential London - a panorama of its history, art, literature and daily life. Here is the city that Londoners know, a paraodox of grandeur and grime, the locus of bustling markets and tranquil parks, of palaces and pubs, of docks and railway depots, of the ancient and modern. Great Londoners of the past stalk these pages - Wren, Pepys, Defoe, Hogarth, Dickens and, of course, Samuel Johnson. And here, too, are the faces of the people inhabiting modern London - enigmatic and enduring.
About the Author
V.S. Pritchett, who died in 1997, was one of Britain's foremost short story writers, autobiographers and journalists. A selection from his most remarkable work, THE PRITCHETT CENTURY is published by Vintage. Evelyn Hofer was born in 1937 and emigrated from Germany to New York as a young woman. She has worked with writers such as Jan Morris and Mary McCarthy and exhibited frequently in both Europe and the USA.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
First Sentence
"How Do You Like London?... London, Londres, London?" Mr. Podsnap asked the Frenchman, putting - we notice - capital letters into his accent. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
"How Do You Like London?... London, Londres, London?" Mr. Podsnap asked the Frenchman, putting - we notice - capital letters into his accent. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Reviews
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.co.uk.
5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Cultural Archeology At Its Best
19 May 2003
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Forty-one years ago, V.S. Pritchett went looking for what makes London itself. He wrote this before McDonald's arrived, just before the Beatles and 007 put it on the world's pop map, just as cranes were setting out the beams for glass and steel skyscrapers. Much has happened in the interim, but what Pritchett found explains not only its past but its future. He makes neat work of reconciling the many ironies in a place that reinvents itself every so often without much of a plan, but which also hangs onto traditions, ways of being and a passion for order. This is a tour of neighborhoods, but also of centuries and the historical events and personages that have contributed to the city's enduring character. It moves seamlessly between the concrete image and the abstract idea. Pritchett's prose is crystalline, his insights spooky at times (he describes those new skyscrapers as having a "smashable impermanence" to them). The photographs by Evelyn Hofer are haunting. There will always be a London. This should be required reading for visitors to that city.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
London Re-thought
6 Feb 2010
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is NOT a travel book.
Hofer's photography is iconic, worthy of a special show at the Tate. You will never happen across her vistas walking or driving around London on your own. She has a Dickensian point of view, and an antiquarian sensibility that would scare away the creator of a standard travel brochure.
V.S. Pritchett will not be found in that brochure either. You may have caught him once or twice in the "New Yorker," but not in the "Saturday Evening Post."
His take on London is not so much a perception as it is a meditation. He is in touch with what we all see in London. And his historic perspective is encyclopedic. He evokes the Blitz in the style of an experienced screenwriter. But his real genius lies in his "meditations," his reaction to what he has seen over the years, and in what he imagines his dramatis personae think about it all.
Read it on the plane over the Atlantic, then go see for yourself.
Hofer's photography is iconic, worthy of a special show at the Tate. You will never happen across her vistas walking or driving around London on your own. She has a Dickensian point of view, and an antiquarian sensibility that would scare away the creator of a standard travel brochure.
V.S. Pritchett will not be found in that brochure either. You may have caught him once or twice in the "New Yorker," but not in the "Saturday Evening Post."
His take on London is not so much a perception as it is a meditation. He is in touch with what we all see in London. And his historic perspective is encyclopedic. He evokes the Blitz in the style of an experienced screenwriter. But his real genius lies in his "meditations," his reaction to what he has seen over the years, and in what he imagines his dramatis personae think about it all.
Read it on the plane over the Atlantic, then go see for yourself.
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > History > Britain & Ireland > Ireland
- Books > History > Cultural History > London
- Books > Travel & Holiday > Atlases & Maps > Countries A-Z > United Kingdom > Cities & Towns > London
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
