Unknown London - Hardcover

Bell, Walter George

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1125282738 ISBN 13: 9781125282731

Publisher: Spring Books, 1966

Synopsis

Unknown London was published shortly before the First World War. Walter Bell's thesis is that London is full of artifacts which have links to fascinating stories, but that people do not comprehend their importance. This failure occurs for a mixture of reasons. Sometimes an artifact is ignored because the glamour of another experience overwhelms it. An example he gives is an altar in a great cathedral, which goes ignored among the tombs of kings and poets. Often, the object is ignored simply because its history is superficially unknowable. In Bell's pre-internet life, a person seeing a block of odd masonry could only discover it was a chunk of Roman wall through academic research or folk history. Bell's artifacts did not, in many cases, survive the Blitz. This makes his book the final record of them: the point where his stories preserve a lost oral tradition. Bell himself does not know this, of course, but it adds an extra layer of tragedy to the book for modern readers.

About this edition

• Publisher: Spring Books
• Publication date: 1966
• ISBN 10: 1125282738
• ISBN 13: 9781125282731
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Illus. With Photos