It’s a frosty start to March, but green shoots are finally appearing in the ground. So it’s a great time to introduce a new book, Green London, written by David Fathers and to be published on 13 March. This is David’s sixth London walking book, following The Regent’s Canal, The London Thames Path, London’s Hidden Rivers , Bloody London and Diverse London.
Like the rest of the series, the book is a compact paper-back book and is full of attractive hand-drawn illustrations and maps from David. Each walk in this particular book takes a number of London’s green spaces (parks, canal towpaths, recreation grounds, historic graveyards or natural woods) and links them together to create a longer walk that is undeniably in London but at the time a walk through the countryside, not the cityscape. Such walks can be constructed because London actually has a great many parks – you are never far from one, no matter where in London you are.
There are 14 such walks, each one detailed over many pages, with several points illustrated, and mapped across each double page. The walks range from the “big hitters” of London’s central Royal Parks – walking from Kensington Gardens through Hyde Park and Green Park to St James Park – to some novel links that even walkers well versed with London’s green links may not know such as linking London Fields, via Victoria Park and Mile End Park, with Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park. Your reviewer, despite living in the area for 15 years and very familiar with the first three greens space, has never visited the last. David’s excellent illustrations and maps both show the walks through each set of parks, as well the detail of each park.
Another starts near Morden Hall Park, and then links several other green spaces and parks nearby. Where is Morden Hall Park? Well, it’s the reason you have been waiting for to finally to visit mysterious Morden, at the far end of the Northern Line
In summary this is a really lovely little walking book for London and Londoners who want to discover the rural space within in London’s urbanity.
Green London is published by Conway, a Bloomsbury imprint, and is out on 13 March from Amazon and all good booksellers.
Thank you to the author and publisher for supplying Mapping London with a pre-release copy of the book.