18 JANUARY 1930, Page 28

More Books of the Week

(Continued from page 94.) The true Londoner who loves the historical associations of his town will never tire of Defoe's Tour Thro' London (1725) (Batsford, £8 8s.), which Sir Mayson M. Beeton and Mr. Beresford Chancellor have reprinted and edited from the great journalist's Tour Through Great Britain. For in George I's day London was beginning rapidly to expand westward and north-eastward, and Defoe did a rare service in describing with his professional exactitude the town as he knew it. The editors and publishers have enriched their great folio with a wonderful series of maps and prints. Let us give as one notable instance the " Prospect of the North Side of London from near Islington " (1730), which shows Sadler's Wells amid open fields that stretched down to the New River Head and beyond it almost to Holborn. If Defoe could revisit us, he would find all those fields, and similar fields northward for many a mile, built up. Two centuries have wrought the change, and the next two centuries may extend London to St. Albans or further still.