Sixty years after its first publication, Blue Guides is issuing this reprint of its 1953 guide to London. It includes the original street and transport maps, floor plans of the major attractions, and detailed descriptions of a great city recovering after six years of war and the destruction of many of its buildings. In 1953 there was a young Queen on the throne and the city was poised on the brink of decades of transformative change. There is much in this book that shows a very different London – from the vanished Gnu Paddock of London Zoo to the eclipse of the great Docks of the East End – and yet the seeds of modern London are all here.

The original writers of the Short Guide to London enthusiastically embraced the change that was in the air and this guide captures that moment when London wavered on the edge of modernity.