No Free Parking: The Curious History of London's Monopoly Streets

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In a city of rags and riches, where folk hero Dick Whittington believed the streets were paved with gold, anything could happen - and everything has. I think based on the cover or the title I expected something more conversational or more colloquial. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. From the Roman marching along the ancient Old Kent Road to the rattling newspaper presses of Fleet Street, from Dickensian iron and fog to the neon lights of the twenty-first century, the game of Monopoly has painted London’s story across cheerful coloured tiles.

During every Morrison family Christmas there comes a point when someone is sozzled enough to shout the dread words: “Come on, let’s get out the Monopoly.A mind-numbing hour later some bumptious child is gleefully piling hotels on Mayfair and everyone else is desperately trying to go bankrupt and get the wretched ritual over for another year. Lots of quirky stuff and fantastic quotes plus also some hugely thought-provoking big picture stuff about how London has grown in the way that it has.

This is a clever way of publicising the author's worthy and important crusade for London's heritage and against ill-thought planning authority proposals. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Unfortunately we cannot offer a refund on custom prints unless they are faulty or we have made a mistake.He has written for the Spectator, Evening Standard, Times, Sunday Times, Telegraph, The Critic, etc etc, and been interviewed across TV and radio. In a city of rags and riches, where folk hero Dick Whittington believed the streets were paved with gold, anything could happen – and everything has. From the Roman and Celts marching along the ancient Old Kent Road, to the rattling newspaper presses of Fleet Street, the game of Monopoly has painted London's story across cheerful coloured tiles. To take London’s Monopoly streets as a starting point for an evocation of London urbanism is a witty conceit but it also provides a solid anchor for any constructive understanding of how we human beings live in our streets. Each account is freighted with incident and charm, and the book works beautifully on the level of pure narrative history.

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Well written and very enjoyable book on London's Monopoly streets with fun facts especially for someone that has been playing 'Monopoly' for decades. Boys Smith is one of Britain's leading public intellectuals on architecture and urbanism, championing a revival of street-based traditional urbanism against the 'traffic modernism' of the twentieth century. If you're a fan of Peter Ackroyd books or want to know more about London streets, then you may enjoy this. I love reading about London and this is an engaging and fresh way to do so (especially if like me you were brought up in the Old Kent Road).

I did enjoy it, once I adjusted my expectations from 'interesting fun, fact book with history' to 'history book'.