The recorded history of London goes back more than 2,000 years. From that time to the present day the City proper and the ‘villages’ it has absorbed up-river towards Westminster have been constantly evolving and growing, layer upon layer. This continual change has been punctuated by dramatic and destructive events like the Great Fire of 1666 and, more recently, the Blitz, both of which necessitated wholesale reconstruction. It is with the transformation that has occurred in the last 50 years that these two books are concerned.

Using more than 140 ‘past and present’ photographs – including fascinating ‘aerial’ panoramas taken from the top of the Shell Tower,
the Monument and St Paul’s Cathedral – the authors show how much the nature of central London has changed, sometimes dramatically, in just five decades, yet how many of the historic landmarks have resisted the tide of progress. This first volume begins with the post-war optimism of 1951’s Festival of Britain, as the nation tried to shake off the austerity of wartime, and takes us down the mighty Thames to Tower Bridge, then into the historic City and back towards Holborn and Charing Cross.