The 500 Hidden Secrets of London The Lido Soho In the Eighties Open Water The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Small Island Colours of London: A History Untold London: Stories from Time-Trodden Streets Brick Lane Borough Market: Edible Histories, Epic Tales of Everyday Ingredients Why do book collections matter? Book a consultation with a ~personal curator Contact Quick Links Follow us @ultimatelibrary Join our community
10 Books For A Greater Sense of London
1 Feb 2023
Ultimate Library has made its home in London, an ever-changing, diverse city with a storied history. Innumerable writers have tried to capture the essence of London throughout its almost 2000-year-long existence. Our curators have selected 10 books that explore the richness the city has to offer: food, perspectives, and architecture. These titles are available to buy from South Kensington Books via Bookshop.org. Or to add the full list to your collection, get in touch with our book experts today.
by Tom Greig
Discover a diverse range of under-the-radar, yet outstanding addresses, that will enable you to explore the best of the city away from the crowds. From the top places for an outdoor swim to the most innovative theatre companies, this guide has you covered. Written by a true local, it is both for visitors wanting to avoid the usual tourist spots and for residents keen to track down the city’s best-kept secrets.
by Libby Page
‘A joyous and uplifting debut – a testament to kindness and friendship’ (Sarah Winman), this is the story of Rosemary, 86, and Kate, 26: a pair of dreamers, campaigners, and outdoor swimmers. Rosemary has lived in Brixton all her life, but everything she knows is changing. Kate has just moved and feels adrift in a city too big for her. So, when the lido is threatened with closure, they make a stand, to prove that the pool is at the heart of the community.
by Christopher Howse
A sequel to
Soho in The Fifties
, this is a love letter to the Eighties, a decade that saw the flowering of a daily tragi-comedy enacted in pubs across Soho. These were places of constant conversation and regular rows fuelled by alcohol. Some of the cast were widely known – Jeffrey Bernard, Francis Bacon, Tom Baker and John Hurt. The bite came from the underlying tragedy: lost spouses lost jobs, homelessness, and death. Christopher Howse recaptures the lost Soho he once knew as home, its cellar cafes and butchers’ shops, its villains, and its generosity. He is, ‘such a deft sketcher of people that we feel as if we do know them’ (
Daily Telegraph
).
by Caleb Azumah Nelson
Winner of the Costa First Novel Award 2021,
Open Water
is a stunning, shattering debut novel by 25-year-old British-Ghanaian writer and photographer, Caleb Azumah Nelson. Two young people meet at a pub in South East London. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, and both are now artists trying to make their mark in a city that in turn celebrates and rejects them. Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart by fear and violence.
by Arthur Conan Doyle
Part of Penguin’s beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, this collection includes many of the famous cases – and great strokes of brilliance – that made the legendary Sherlock Holmes one of fiction’s most popular creations. With his devoted amanuensis, Dr Watson, Holmes emerges from his smoke-filled rooms in Baker Street to grapple with the forces of intrigue and treachery.
by Andrea Levy
Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction and possibly the definitive fictional account of the experiences of the Empire Windrush generation. It is 1948, and England is recovering from a war. But at 21 Nevern Street, London the conflict has only just begun. Queenie Bligh doesn’t know when or if her husband will return, so she takes in a Jamaican lodger. Gilbert Joseph joined the RAF from Jamaica but had found his post-war welcome to London colder than expected. When his wife Hortense joins him, she is shocked to find London not what she thought.
by Peter Ackroyd
Think of the colours of London and what do you imagine? The reds of open-top buses and terracotta bricks? The grey smog of Victorian industry, Portland stone and pigeons in Trafalgar Square? Celebrating novelist, Peter Ackroyd paints a vivid picture of one of the world’s greatest cities in this brilliant and original work, exploring how the city’s many hues have come to shape its history and identity. A truly invaluable book for lovers of art, history, photography, or urban geography.
by Dan Carrier
‘Just pick up a copy and set off. You’ll be amazing at what you’ve missed’ (Sir Michael Palin). It is March 2020 and with the city shutting up shop and column inches to fill, journalist Dan Carrier took to the deserted streets of Central London to uncover the forgotten stories the heart of the UK capital holds. Untold London is a consideration and celebration of a city whose famous landmarks and thoroughfares are often taken for granted. Setting out to find lingering evidence of days gone by, Carrier reveals unexpected delights, triumphs, and tragedies alongside plenty of skulduggery and scandal.
by Monica Ali
‘Written with the wisdom and skill that few authors attain in a lifetime’, (
The Sunday Times) Brick Lane
is the story of Nazneen, who, still a teenager finds herself in an arranged marriage with a disappointed older man. Away from her Bangladeshi village, her home is now a cramped flat in a high-rise block in London’s East End. Nazneen knows not a word of English, forced to depend on her husband until the radical Karim steps into her life. They embark on a love affair that forces her to take control of her fate.
by Mark Riddaway
In this series of enlightening and entertaining essays, award-winning food writer Mark Riddaway travels through the centuries to tell the fascinating, surprising, and often bizarre stories of some of the everyday ingredients found at London’s Borough Market. From the humble apples that we’ve grown on these shores for centuries, to more exotic ingredients, like cinnamon, that travel across the world to finesse our food, the book offers a chance to digest the charming stories behind every morsel.
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