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London has been the focus of countless books and essays. For sonorous eloquence, you still must reach back more than half a century to Henry James’s English Hours and Virginia Woolf’s The London Scene. Today most suggested reading lists begin with V. S. Pritchett’s London Perceived and H. V. Morton’s In Search of London, both decades old. Four more-up-to-date books with a general compass are Peter Ackroyd’s Thames and anecdotal London: The Biography, which traces the city’s growth from the Druids to the 21st century; John Russell’s London, a sumptuously illustrated art book; and Christopher Hibbert’s In London: The Biography of a City. Stephen Inwood’s A History of London explores the city from its Roman roots to its swinging ’60s heyday. Piet Schreuders’s The Beatles’ London follows the footsteps of the Fab Four.

That noted, there are books galore on the various facets of the city. The Art and Architecture of London by Ann Saunders is fairly comprehensive. Inside London: Discovering the Classic Interiors of London, by Joe Friedman and Peter Aprahamian, has magnificent color photographs of hidden and overlooked shops, clubs, and town houses. For a wonderful take on the golden age of the city’s regal mansions, see Christopher Simon Sykes’s Private Palaces: Life in the Great London Houses. For various other aspects of the city, consult Mervyn Blatch’s helpful A Guide to London’s Churches, Andrew Crowe’s The Parks and Woodlands of London, Sheila Fairfield’s The Streets of London, Ann Saunders’s Regent’s Park, Ian Norrie’s Hampstead, Highgate Village, and Kenwood, and Suzanne Ebel’s A Guide to London’s Riverside: Hampton Court to Greenwich. For keen walkers, there are two books by Andrew Duncan: Secret London and Walking Village London. City Secrets: London, edited by Robert Kahn, is a handsome book of anecdotes from London writers, artists, and historians about their favorite places in the city. For the last word on just about every subject, see The London Encyclopaedia, edited by Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert. HarperCollins’s London Photographic Atlas has a plethora of bird’s-eye images of the capital. For an alternative view of the city, it would be hard to better Iain Sinclair’s witty and intelligent London Orbital: A Walk Around the M25 in which he scrutinizes the history, mythology, and politics of London from the viewpoint of its ugly ring road. Sinclair is also the editor of London: City of Disappearances, an anthology exploring what has vanished.

Of course, the history and spirit of the city are also to be found in celebrations of great authors, British heroes, and architects. Peter Ackroyd’s massive Dickens elucidates how the great author shaped today’s view of the city; Martin Gilbert’s magisterial, multivolume Churchill traces the city through some of its greatest trials; J. Mansbridge’s John Nash details the London buildings of this great architect. Liza Picard evokes mid-18th-century London in Dr. Johnson’s London. For musical theater buffs, Mike Leigh’s Gilbert and Sullivan’s London takes a romantic look at the two artists’ lives and times in the capital’s grand theaters and wild nightspots. Rodinsky’s Room by Rachel Lichtenstein and Iain Sinclair is a fascinating exploration of East End Jewish London and the mysterious disappearance of one of its occupants.

Maureen Waller’s 1700: Scenes from London Life