Frommers 1981-82 Guide To London

Frommer’s 1981–82 Guide to London (1981) by Stanley Haggart and Darwin Porter – Simon & Schuster

ISBN: 0671414348
Condition: Good
Published: 1981
Offered by: Crappy Old Books

There was a time when visiting London required a guidebook, a street map, a pocketful of coins for telephone boxes and sufficient patience to navigate the Underground without the assistance of a smartphone informing you that your train had been cancelled due to an entirely unspecified incident.

Welcome to Frommer’s 1981–82 Guide to London, by Stanley Haggart and Darwin Porter, published by Simon & Schuster in 1981, when Britain was governed by Margaret Thatcher, Prince Charles had just married Lady Diana Spencer, and London’s inhabitants were contemplating the future with varying degrees of optimism and industrial unrest.

This wonderfully dated travel guide promises to help the sophisticated, knowledgeable traveller discover the best holiday values in the British capital, an ambition that now seems almost impossibly quaint given the modern cost of accommodation, transport and purchasing a modest sandwich near Buckingham Palace.

Inside lies a fascinating portrait of London as it existed more than four decades ago, when red telephone boxes were still useful, double-decker buses possessed rather more character than electronic equipment, and tourists could explore the capital without being encouraged to download seventeen applications before breakfast.

Hotels, restaurants, attractions, shopping districts and entertainment venues are presented through the wonderfully optimistic lens of early-eighties travel publishing.

Some establishments will have disappeared, others will have transformed themselves beyond recognition, and the prices will undoubtedly provoke a mixture of nostalgia, disbelief and the uncomfortable suspicion that somebody has been quietly inflating everything ever since.

The book’s greatest attraction today is not necessarily its usefulness as a practical guide. Attempting to arrange a London holiday using 1981 accommodation prices would probably end in disappointment, while contacting a restaurant listed under a telephone number from the period could produce some interesting conversations.

Instead, it provides a splendid historical snapshot of a city poised between its post-war identity and the financial, architectural and cultural transformations that would reshape it during the following decades.

The original illustrated cover is particularly appealing, featuring a stylised London skyline, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament in a distinctly early-eighties graphic design. It evokes an age when travel guides were expected to look adventurous without requiring animated graphics or interactive maps.

Condition: Good. A respectable vintage paperback displaying the ordinary signs of age, handling and previous ownership. The illustrated cover shows noticeable rubbing, creasing and wear, entirely consistent with a guidebook that may have accompanied its owner through London’s occasionally unforgiving streets.

Offered by Crappy Old Books, where obsolete travel advice is celebrated, historical hotel prices are viewed with considerable envy, and nobody expects the recommended restaurants to honour their 1981 menus.

An entertaining collectible for enthusiasts of London history, vintage travel guides, early-eighties nostalgia and the peculiar pleasure of discovering how familiar places looked before modernisation got hold of them.

A reminder that London has always been expensive, complicated and faintly exhausting, although at least in 1981 you didn’t need a mobile telephone to find your way around it.

Keep browsing: See more Travel books Other books by Stanley Haggart and Darwin Porter