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.
V.S. Pritchett, who died in 1997, was one of Britain's foremost short story writers, autobiographers and journalists.