August 2011: Esoteric London

Every city is built on stories, scandal, secrets and strife, and London is no exception. In light of this, photographer Roger Dean founded Esoteric London, a blog that skilfully combines photographs of modern London locations with tales about its history. The result is an enlightening and entertaining take on the past and the present of this old and great city of ours.

AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW

Londoners and tourists alike will enjoy this off-beat guide to London, taking in the East End's quirky and Dickensian treasures (Abney Park Cemetery and the Dennis Severs' House) as well as pioneering architecture (Centrepoint), murder and intrigue (Cecil Court) and countless other oft-forgotten London facts and fairytales. If you are particularly interested in a certain topic, say film, wartime, art, crime, fiction or architecture, you can narrow the posts down (at time of writing there are 367 to trawl through), but the best way to enjoy this blog is to read the posts as they come in.

CHARTING THE CITY ONE POST AT A TIME

Esoteric London is an exemplary blog. Simple, interesting, imaginative and well-written, the format of photograph and blurb works well to create a fond appraisal of our splendid city and its bygone days. Sometimes literal, sometimes oblique, each daily blog post is concocted using a mixture of quotes, poetry or nuggets of history to travel through time and the metropolis.