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

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But those Monopoly streets live and breathe – they open up whole new ways of thinking about our history. 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. Taking London's Monopoly Streets is a brilliantly conceived way into looking at the city's longest lasting feature - those very streets. Well written and very enjoyable book on London's Monopoly streets with fun facts especially for someone that has been playing 'Monopoly' for decades. He has written for the Spectator, Evening Standard, Times, Sunday Times, Telegraph, The Critic, etc etc, and been interviewed across TV and radio.

No Free Parking starts with a brief introduction to how the London Monopoly streets were most likely chosen, before tackling each street (and utilties and rail) one by one.Unfortunately we cannot offer a refund on custom prints unless they are faulty or we have made a mistake. I think based on the cover or the title I expected something more conversational or more colloquial. If you're a fan of Peter Ackroyd books or want to know more about London streets, then you may enjoy this.

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. I did enjoy it, once I adjusted my expectations from 'interesting fun, fact book with history' to 'history book'. All in all, a good and interesting book that I will be keeping on my shelf in case I need to refer back to it.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). And because everyone else has forgotten how dreary the world’s most famous board game is, and is too stuffed with turkey and trimmings to do anything else, we meekly acquiesce. 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. 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. 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.

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. No Free Parking' is an account of London's streets, but it is also a defence and a vindication of them, and of the rich civic life that they have fostered. 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. Highly entertaining’ – The Times’A hymn book to the London street’ – TLSFrom 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.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. 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. Nevertheless, I did find the book very readable and enjoyable and because there's only so many pages for each chapter, you don't get bogged down in too much information. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.