Jonathan Keates’s provides an entertaining guide to the guidebooks of the golden age of travel – the great Murrays and Baedekers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. In his introduction he writes ‘There is, it must be said, a monumentality, a quality almost of the epic, about Baedeker, Murray, their clones and epigones, which absolutely defies us to dismiss them as ephemeral. Though most (if not quite all) of their practical information is no longer useful, the depth of their perspective within their coverage of what Shakespeare calls ‘the memorials and the things of fame that do renoun this city’ (whichever it may be), together with the historical backgrounds they provide, gives each of these books an inalienable seriousness and authority.’

Notting Hill Editions | Hardback 160 pp. |ISBN: 9781907903021