eishiya reviewed London Hidden Interiors by Davies, Philip
Inspiration for a world city
4 stars
London Hidden Interiors is massive. It covers 180 places in London in over 400 large, full-colour pages. The text is a mix of history, architectural review, and trivia. Unlike Davies's books of historical photographs where he is limited by the available images, the segments often an illustrated mini-tours of each place, with first-hand impressions on top of that. The photographs are often on the small side, but still look good, and there are many half- and full-page images.
As to be expected, most of the places are Georgian and Victorian and many are ecclesiastical, but there's a surprising amount of breadth nonetheless. There are shops, eateries, offices, manufactories, infrastructure, and places of worship for several religions, there are mediaeval, Tudor, interwar, and even 21st century structures, there are meticulously restored, cleverly adapted, and dilapidated buildings, private and public, listed and unlisted.
I was fortunate to read this while looking into …
London Hidden Interiors is massive. It covers 180 places in London in over 400 large, full-colour pages. The text is a mix of history, architectural review, and trivia. Unlike Davies's books of historical photographs where he is limited by the available images, the segments often an illustrated mini-tours of each place, with first-hand impressions on top of that. The photographs are often on the small side, but still look good, and there are many half- and full-page images.
As to be expected, most of the places are Georgian and Victorian and many are ecclesiastical, but there's a surprising amount of breadth nonetheless. There are shops, eateries, offices, manufactories, infrastructure, and places of worship for several religions, there are mediaeval, Tudor, interwar, and even 21st century structures, there are meticulously restored, cleverly adapted, and dilapidated buildings, private and public, listed and unlisted.
I was fortunate to read this while looking into potential places to visit in London, it gave me more than I have time for. The places are ordered in such a way that places near each other in the book are not far apart physically (at least until it gets into the suburbs), which made it convenient for this task. The interiors it covers are "hidden" mostly in that they're not well-known or often seen, though many are open to the public at least in part.
My primary hope for this book, however, was as art reference. It has a lot of overlap with Unseen London, but rather than being redundant, I think the two books complement each other well. If you have to pick one, get this one - though the photos are smaller, the coverage is better, with more images of each building. Similarly to my opinion on Unseen London: if you're looking for specific buildings or specific eras, skip this one, but if you're looking for ideas for different kinds of buildings to show in a story, London Hidden Interiors is good to have.