London. Portrait of a City (Multilingual Edition)

Pay attention to the size

We just received this book. It is a heavy, quality coffee table book. Amazing photographs vintage to new - high quality paper, spine, beautiful cover. This is truly a work of art - we love London and lived there on/off for many years. This book reminds us what an amazing city London is. A terrific, well priced gift for anyone who loves this city. I am going to purchase 2 more for friends who traveled to London for their first time this summer and vow to visit again. A GREAT book on this city!

This book is fun! It's oversized format and compilation of interesting historical and cultural photos provides an amazing insight into London over the years, and is perfect for thumbing through or displaying as a beautiful coffee table book. This book is a great addition to anyone's library, especially if they have visited or lived in London. Large and heavy, it's a wonderfully laid out and curated book.

This is a wonderful pictorial history of London. Photos from years back are so interesting to look at. An added bonus is that the photo descriptions are in three different languages. I first saw the book on display in Pottery Barn and thumbed through it but soon put it down when the clerk told me it was $79.99. Imagine my delight to find it so much more affordable on Amazon.

Great book. Looks beautiful.

I saw this book at Pottery Barn and loved it. Probably because the cover was so terrific looking with the bold colors. I put it in our son's room on the shelf with others and it looks fabulous.

a very small ' book' not what i wanted for the coffee table

LONDON: A PORTRAIT OF A CITY; A beautiful book depicting the history of a beautiful city, the photography is splendid, which gives the reader a wonderful sense of the changes that have taken place in London over the years.

This is a tremendously large book at 552 pages, measuring 270 x 352 x 54mm and weighing over 3.3kg. It is crammed full of photos showing the culture, society and architectural changes in London from 1837 to the present day.The accompanying text is written in three languages, which is slightly irritating as you feel some pages are irrelevant. Having said that, the text is very interesting and adds background and information to the photos. The images themselves are very sharp and clear - some are black and white and some are in colour. Most images are half page in size, although some are full double page.Divided into five chapters, the first is "The Monster City" (1837-1901). A wonderful aerial image of the 1851 Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace shows a wide range of the wonderful things that were on display. There are two fantastic images of Tower Bridge, one from 1893 during the final stages of construction, and the other from 1894 on it's opening day. And, there is an incredible photo of a jam-packed overflowing Haymarket Theatre - everyone is dressed in evening attire eagerly awaiting the performance.Next, "Modern Times" (1902-1938) has a colour image from 1928 of an iconic double-decker red bus. And, a photo of Nelson's Column being cleaned from 1905 is great. A slightly distressing but nevertheless interesting image is of the Ivory Floor from St Katharine Docks from 1913 - ivory tusks are piled up having been imported from the Empire countries."The Consequences Of War" (1939-1959) focuses on World War II and it's impact on London. An unusual and quirky photo of the bombed Holland House from 1940 shows members of the public browsing through books left undamaged in book cases despite the widespread devastation. There is a wonderful picture of the VE Day celebrations from 1945, and a sparkling double page colour image of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation from 1953."The Party And The Morning After" (1960-1981) has an amusing photo of The Beatles posing for a "Life" magazine cover. The front cover image of the book is shown again - a stylish woman standing in front of a fast moving red bus. And, the 1966 England World Cup football team meets Sean Connery whilst he is filming "You Only Live Twice". It is a lot of fun seeing Connery talking with Bobby Moore - the epitome of success in the "Swinging Sixties".The final chapter "New Perspectives" (1982-Present Day) has a sombre 1997 image of the gates of Kensington Palace overflowing with floral tributes to the recently deceased Princess of Wales. An alluring Kate Moss is photographed during a photo shoot, and fashion photographer Mario Testino's image of "Cool Britannia" from 1996 with some of Britain's young music and fashion celebrities.Overall, this is a wonderful book, and is a great resource for people who live in London or are visitors. It clearly shows how London has changed over the centuries, and should be treasured for years to come.

A well-chosen selection of photos of London from the earliest days of photography to the early 2000s covering all aspects - people, places, buildings, transport, etc. In most cases the captions include photographer, location and year.I was knowingly getting the much cheaper small paperback but a warning to those who may not have noticed: you can see from the page count that the paperback edition, as well as being a reduced height and width, has only about a third of the pages compared to the hardback edition.At the time I write this there is nothing in the general description to make this clear, and also many reviews that mention the size of the sumptuous hardback have been copied over to the paperback as if they are the same book.They are not - ensure you buy the one that meets your needs.

There have been many photo books on London but this one is in a class of its own. The range of images, the quality of reproduction, the elegant lay-out, the smart photo captions, the plethora of clever quotes from books and films, make this an amazing visual history of London. The Victorian and Edwardian images, many in colour, work beautifully on the big page. The range of subject matter is marvellous: 510 large pages covering architecture, social life, infrastructure, immigration, politics, law, finance, popular culture and sub-cultures. The photos of the royal family and state occasions are often from subversive angles. My one small regret is there is nothing from Erwin Fieger's beautifully photographed 1962 book, "London - city of any dream".

I don't tend to have too many words to say when it comes to reviews, as I know from the website that I moderate that one persons pleasure is another persons pain etc, however - I can say for this item that so long as you're remotely interested in London and it's pictoral history that this contains fantastic pictures, some of which I can say I haven't seen before, brilliant print quality, and - as others have said - multi lingual text that does not get in the way of the images, lead this to be a compelling read / view that you cannot put down...A brilliant subject and brilliant presentation - well worth the money - especially at Amazon's discounted price.

Perused and enjoyed by so many visitors. Large solid coffee table book with a range of old and new photo insights, with annotations ,into the great city- always something new to look at on revisiting.