John Russell's memoir of London goes back to before the great fire of 1666, when the modern city was formed. It looks inside St. Paul's Cathedral, under Wren's great dome, and into Westminster Abbey, where the author spent many midnight hours on fire-fighting duty during World War II and came to know the monuments lining the walls as well as he knew the furniture in his own living room. It offers a privileged peek inside Buckingham Palace as well as a leisurely stroll through John Nash's Regent's Park.

It lives through great days in the House of Commons, eavesdrops at Lady Holland's soirees, and applauds a new Pinter play.

Selected by the author, a gallery of the city's finest recorders illustrates the text, from Canaletto and Zoffany to Rowlandson and Hogarth. Here are Gainsborough and Reynolds, Turner and Monet, Walter Sickert and Lucian Freud, John Thomson and Bill Brandt. Nearly two hundred paintings, drawings, watercolors, architectural renderings, photographs, cartoons, and more serve as visual foils to Mr. Russell's verbal recollections.