Bryant & May: Peculiar London (Peculiar Crimes Unit)

If you are looking for a London guidebook that takes you into every nook and cranny of the capital, or if you want to learn every quirky fact and bizarre story about the city, then Bryant and May: Peculiar London is for you. Does it offer a geographically logical progression through the city? Absolutely not. Does the index present items in alphabetical order? Absolutely not (there is no index). Then how is the book structured? It’s a series of short chapters with loosely connected snippets, each fascinating in its own right, about the famous and not so famous London sites.

The flood of odd facts, amusing anecdotes, and funny one-liners is presented by Arthur Bryant, a member of the Peculiar Crimes Unit, aided and abetted by his partner, John May. The hilarious banter (mostly ageist jokes) between the two adds significantly to the book’s laugh quotient. The reader should be aware, however, that this compilation is over four hundred and fifty pages long. Still, you can jump into the book at any point without having to know what went before or worrying about what comes after. The book’s title is well chosen: this is indeed London at its most peculiar.