Ben Le Vay's Eccentric London: A Practical Guide to a Curious City

by Benedict le Vay

Book Overview

London is becoming the most cosmopolitan city on earth with massive infrastructure improvements in time for the 2012 Olympics without losing its secrets, its soul -- what someone recently called its endless reserves of cool. Benedict le Vay reveals London's most bizarre and macabre secrets with his novel approach, which doubles both as a thematic guide to the hidden attractions of the streets of London and a compelling insight into the citizens...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1841623946
• ISBN13: 9781841623948
• Release Date: July 2012
• Publisher: Bradt Travel Guides
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.3" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Things I would never know about

I love this book. It has many eccentric things about London. I always thought London only had old historical things, but there are very unexpected modern things too. For example, thanks to this book, we found platform 9 3/4 from the Harry Potter books and have great pictures at it. It gives you excellent directions to the various sites. There are so many things in the book that there was no way to cover them in one trip, but at least we got to see few. It has a shiny cover and makes it a good book to have in the bookshelf to glance it once in a while!

Enjoyable, humorous, fun look at London

This is just a fun, fun book; once you start reading it, it's hard to stop. The author manages to sweep much more into it than you'll find in a mere sightseeing guidebook--historical anecdotes, interesting characters, the author's experience of working as a journalist in the London press, and more. I bought the book with the object of planning walks to interesting sites, with emphasis on "not-major-tourist-attractions," on a future visit to London, and am very happy with it. In fact, the author offers up a number of suggested walks around notable sites, with reference to modern features, geography and history all woven in to one seamless discussion. If you stop to have a drink in each of the notable pubs, you might not finish the walks, so keep yourself to half a pint...

A great starting point.

This book I found was really good for inspiring searches for different things in London. I used it quite extensively for a trip a few years ago. I did have some difficulty locating a few things which I originally attributed to inaccuracies on the part of the writer, but upon further investigation discovered that they did exist as he described them but that I was simply unable to find them (viz. Richard Burton's Tomb in Mortlake, the mysterious Hill Garden in Hampstead Heath). I would advise the reader to research some of the items that he wishes to find on the internet before heading on a wild goose chase. A good supplement to this book is Andrew Duncan's Walking London. edit: On a second trip to London I found both the tomb using better descriptions of it's location on the interweb and by asking an old woman to help me find a particular street, and the Pagola (hill garden) after many hours of wandering Hampstead Heath and seeing other lovely sites (hint: if you find the Spaniard Inn you are getting closer, and to get in to the garden it looks like you are walking rather close to somebody's house (private property) but if you forge ahead you will be happily rewarded).