✍ Signed by the author
‘My Friends’ by Hisham Matar
This tender and powerful novel, now out in paperback, is the story of three Libyan men living in London, far away from their homeland. It’s a story of belonging, of shared trauma and ultimately, what it means to be human.
Continue reading ‘My Friends’ by Hisham MatarLast night was a full house at Stanfords as Paul Wood returned to talk about the expanded and revised third edition of his bestselling book, London’s Street Trees: A Field Guide to the Urban Forest .
We are honoured to be featured in the new book from Hoxton Mini Press. In An Opinionated Guide to London Bookshops with text by Sonya Barber and James Manning and photography by Ellen Christina Hancock, you will find a double page spread on Stanfords and 63 other places, including many of our fellow indie bookshop friends. It also contains an introduction and a ‘best for….’.
We think this is a perfect book to arrange a bookshop tour with. If you start at Stanfords you can also buy one of our London maps and plot your bookshop route around London.
London Bookshops is available now from Stanfords for £10.95
We are about to celebrate the 111th birthday of our Stanford’s New Two Inch Map of London and its Environs, 1913.
Published by Edward Stanford Ltd, 12,13 & 14 Long Acre . W.C . 1st July 1913.
This map from our Edward Stanford Cartographic Collection archive shows the capital the year before WW1 broke out at a scale of two inches to one mile.
A thick red line shows the Boundary of the Administrative Country of London while a thinner red line shows the Boundary of the City of London.
Edwardian London saw a great deal of new building development which was halted by WW1 so not too many major changes would have occurred to this map for a few years.
Continue reading Stanford’s New Two Inch Map of London and its Environs. 1913This new map has conveniently arrived on our shelves just in time for International Women’s Day and Mother’s Day.
Explore London through the lens of women’s history. This Women’s History London Map highlights 50 statues, sculptures, blue plaques, gravestones, buildings and monuments – dedicated to women such as Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Virginia Woolf, Aphra Benn, Ada Lovelace and Phillis Wheatley.
With an introduction and descriptions by Katie Wignall, author, city history tour guide and Londoner, and original photography by Jo Underhill, the map guide is a companion to begin exploring the lives of some of London’s most impactful women, and to inspire the next generation to continue their work.
Women’s History London Map is available now for £9.95
Our Map of the Month for April 2022 is the London National Park City- Greater London Area Urban Nature Map by Urban Good.
See London differently and explore its open spaces. This map is a resource to encourage more awareness and more action for people and nature, to help put nearby nature in everyday lives.
It shows London: the world’s first National Park City. The massive map includes all of the parks, woodlands, playing fields, national nature reserves, city farms, rivers, lakes, and all the spaces that contribute to London’s parkland. Some of the most iconic walks through and around London are drawn, such as the London Loop and Capital Ring, along with symbols marking places to swim outdoors, climb peaks, pitch a tent, or go sailing.
Continue reading Map of the Month: London National Park City – Greater London MapDo you live or work in London? In town for a visit? Do you enjoy swimming outdoors and are looking for new places to swim? The new guidebook Outdoor Swimming London takes you on an aquatic tour to bring you 140 best wild swims, lakes and outdoor pools, all in or within easy reach of the capital.
John Weller and Lola Culsán share five of their favourite places to swim on the periphery of London: all accessible by tube, train, boat or bike. Perfect for an adventurous day out.
Continue reading 5 Favourite Outdoor Swimming Spots in LondonLondon Clay is an exploration of the stories that make a city. Written in rich and vivid prose, Tom Chivers leads us on a journey to find the source of his memories, and to discover lost rivers, secret woodlands, the marshes and islands long buried beneath the city he loves.
Here, Tom explains the importance of mapping in his work:
Continue reading London Clay: Journeys in the Deep CityLondon is a city justly proud of its cultural diversity, yet for too long tourists and Londoners alike have had to rely on guides focusing on its white history and landmarks. Now Black London allows us to see this familiar city anew, gathering together the places that tell the story of its Black inhabitants, stretching back to Tudor times.
From Cleopatra’s Needle sitting on the Victoria Embankment, carved in Egypt three and a half thousand years ago, to the Black Lives Matters mural in Woolwich, the city is rich with features that symbolise its Black history.
Here are places worth visiting and revisiting. Get your bearings, revise your history, and be inspired by the work of some remarkable individuals who made London a truly global, modern city.
As well as historical information and recommendations on where to go, there are lots of Black events in London throughout the year. Here are some dates for you to add to diary from Black London by Avril Nanton & Jody Burton:
Continue reading Black London: London’s Black EventsI’m not a practical man: simple DIY tasks fox me, I don’t enjoy ladders, electricity makes me jumpy. I’ll call for technical help when my printer runs low on toner. I have a handyman on speed-dial, a capable wife, and a nearby younger brother for whom these tasks hold no terrors. But for all this I find that one science, or sort of science, Geography, is my friend. It’s not all Geography – specifically it’s a sense of place. My sense of direction, if not exactly unerring, is well attuned to the compass points. I know where I am, and mostly, where I’m going. I love Ordnance Survey maps, whatever their scale, not only for their solid reliable practicality, but for the way they situate me so completely in any landscape, and for their often remarked-upon beauty. I can spread a map on the floor and pore over it for hours, bum aloft, tracing footpaths and rivers, marvelling over contour lines marking hills and steep sided valleys, wondering over derivations of village names, imagining the lost settlements marked in that ghostly gothic script. In short, I know my way around, and I am glad of it.
Continue reading Where is Drury Lane? Getting lost in London by Jon Woolcott
