Over the past 2000 years, London has developed from a small town, fitting snugly within its walls, into one of the world's largest and most dynamic cities. London: A History in Maps illustrates and helps to explain the transformation using over 400 examples of maps. Side-by-side with the great, semi-official, but sanitized images of the whole city, there are the more utilitarian maps and plans of the parts--actual and envisaged--which perhaps present more than topographical records. They all have something unique to say about the time when they were created. Peter Barber's book reveals the "inside story" behind one of the world's greatest cities.
London has been changing and evolving. It has been renewing or replacing the streets and buildings at its heart and has been spreading inexorably outwards. This book illustrates this process by maps of London; and offers a panorama of London's history by focusing on its maps.
A spectacular, large-format collection of Adam Dant's fine art maps giving a unique view of our history and life today. Artist and cartographer Adam Dant surveys London's past, present and future from his studio in the East End. Beautiful, witty and subversive, his astonishing maps offer a compelling view of history, lore, language and life in the capital and beyond. Traversed by a plethora of colourful characters including William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Mary Wollstonecraft and Barbara Windsor, Adam Dant's maps extend from the shipwrecks on the bed of the Thames to the stars in the sky over Soho. Along the way, he captures all the rich traditions in the capital, from brawls and buried treasure to gin and gentlemen's clubs. Accompanying text by the artist gives the background to each of the handsome cartographic artworks, revealing his inspirations and artistic process and outlining his cultural allusions. Reproduced in large format, the maps invite the reader to study all the astonishing and often hilarious details within, offering hours of fascination for the curious. Published in conjunction with the Spitalfields Life blog, Maps of London & Beyond includes an extensive interview with Adam Dant by the blog's founder The Gentle Author.
In this large-format album, the author presents a survey of the range of maps of London since 1550, and of the social and architectural history they portray. Every map is accompanied by contemporary scenes and views, so that the reader obtains an unravelled picture of the city in all its stages of development. The text and captions provide an anecdotal commentary, full of unexpected and unfamiliar details for those who already know and love the capital, and with a clear outline of London's history for those new to the city.
By documenting and guiding us on the journeys we make every day, maps influence the way we navigate and identify with our surroundings. The Underground, London Transport, and its successor Transport for London, have produced and inspired maps which are navigational, decorative forms of publicity and works of art. This book, which draws on the rich collections of the London Transport Museum, sets out to explore this unique form of visual communication.
A historian recounts the unlikely rise of a world capital, and how its understanding of Asia played a key role. If one had looked for a potential global city in Europe in the 1540s, the most likely candidate would have been Antwerp, which had emerged as the center of the German and Spanish silver exchange as well as the Portuguese spice and Spanish sugar trades. It almost certainly would not have been London, an unassuming hub of the wool and cloth trade with a population of around 75,000, still trying to recover from the onslaught of the Black Plague. But by 1700, London’s population had reached a staggering 575,000 and it had developed its first global corporations, as well as relationships with non-European societies outside the Mediterranean. What happened in the span of a century and half? And how exactly did London transform itself into a global city? London’s success, Robert K. Batchelor argues, lies not just with the well-documented rise of Atlantic settlements, markets, and economies. Using his discovery of a network of Chinese merchant shipping routes on John Selden’s map of China as his jumping-off point, Batchelor reveals how London also flourished because of its many encounters, engagements, and exchanges with East Asian trading cities. Translation plays a key role in Batchelor’s study—not just of books, manuscripts, and maps, but also of meaning and knowledge across cultures. He demonstrates how translation helped London understand and adapt to global economic conditions. Looking outward at London’s global negotiations, Batchelor traces the development of its knowledge networks back to a number of foreign sources, and credits particular interactions with England’s eventual political and economic autonomy from church and King. London offers a much-needed non-Eurocentric history of London, first by bringing to light and then by synthesizing the many external factors and pieces of evidence that contributed to its rise as a global city. It will appeal to students and scholars interested in the cultural politics of translation, the relationship between merchants and sovereigns, and the cultural and historical geography of Britain and Asia.
For the last century A-Z maps have been the trusted and reliable source of mapping for Londoners. As the face of London has changed so have the maps. History of Britain in Maps author, Philip Parker, will outline these changes and reveal how the city has changed over the last one hundred years in this beautiful coffee table book.
"It is the summer of 1854. Cholera has seized London with unprecedented intensity. A metropolis of more than 2 million people, London is just emerging as one of the first modern cities in the world. But lacking the infrastructure necessary to support its dense population - garbage removal, clean water, sewers - the city has become the perfect breeding ground for a terrifying disease that no one knows how to cure." "As their neighbors begin dying, two men are spurred to action: the Reverend Henry Whitehead, whose faith in a benevolent God is shaken by the seemingly random nature of the victims, and Dr. John Snow, whose ideas about contagion have been dismissed by the scientific community, but who is convinced that he knows how the disease is being transmitted. The Ghost Map chronicles the outbreak's spread and the desperate efforts to put an end to the epidemic - and solve the most pressing medical riddle of the age."--BOOK JACKET.
The 24 unique, fascinating, and beautiful maps and views in this book date from the 12th century to the present, including some of the earliest known maps of London as well as topographical maps, views of iconic locations and monuments, transit maps, maps used for advertising, road and bicycle maps, and much more. The images have been carefully selected by photographic historian George Sinclair, who traveled across Europe to mine some of the most obscure historical collections for a wide variety of unique, never-before-published, and visually and historically intriguing images. Every map or view includes the original printing information on the back and is accompanied by brief text that places the image in its historic context and further illuminates its qualities. In addition, Sinclair provides a thoughtful introduction to the collection of images. Printed on high-quality matte paper and exquisitely reproduced, these images are perfect for display in any home, office, library, dorm room, or classroom.
