The Strand

Shortlisted for the Architectural Book Awards 2025
Winner of the Architects' Company Book Awards 2025 Guide category

'An engaging and instructive approach to urban history and more particularly that of London, and a book that gave me great pleasure.'
Jeremy Black, author of A History of London

'The soul and spirit of this highway emerges from the accumulation of detail through the centuries.'
Iain Sinclair, author of London Orbital

'A fascinating exploration of the ever-changing face of London. The Strand combines rigorous scholarship with a rich tapestry of stories, packed with details to surprise and delight. The result is a joy to read.'
Alice Loxton, author of Uproar! Satire, scandal and printmakers in Georgian London

'An essential biography of one of London's key thoroughfares, from its Roman origins to the twenty-first century. The focus upon both changing buildings and personalities, as well as the placing of the Strand in its wider London environment, make this an innovative and readable book.'
Panikos Panayi, author of Migrant City: A New History of London

'An essential biography of one of London's key thoroughfares, from its Roman origins to the twenty-first century. The focus upon both changing buildings and personalities, as well as the placing of the Strand in its wider London environment, make this an innovative and readable book.'
Panikos Panayi, author of Migrant City: A New History of London

'This is an important book, brimful of information on what is arguably one of the most significant streets in London, the route for the capital's expansion over many centuries.'
Gillian Tindall, Times Literary Supplement

'After reading Geoff Browell and Eileen Chanin's concise history of the Strand, you will never walk down that street again without thinking of the hippopotami that wallowed in a primeval swamp at the Trafalgar Square end.'
Ysenda Maxtone Graham, London Review of Books

'A final chapter speculates about the future and brings this survey of a remarkable street not to a conclusion, but to the expectation of further, even possibly apocalyptic, change.'
Richard Chartres, Church Times