This historical gift book is a reincarnation of a guide to the river Thames first published 1829 by Samuel Leigh. The original was a concertina of 45 printed & h&-coloured sheets, glued together to form a magnificent 60ft depiction of the rivers north & south banks or Middlesex & Surrey banks, as they were then from Westminster Bridge to Petersham Meadows in Richmond. Among the buildings that stood along this 30-mile stretch of river in those days were many that no longer exist including the Houses of Parliament before they burned down in 1834, or the factory owned by the father of Isambard Kingdom Brunel but others still stand today. A great deal of the original panorama shows just trees & foliage, so for this book it has been edited down to feature the most interesting sections. These are grouped into 19 villages, each with a short 200-word introduction. The buildings are captioned (in the present tense, for vivid appeal), & there is an AZ detailing landmarks & key buildings in each section. Written in collaboration with local experts & various local history societies, these descriptions are richly informative & include information on the waterway, the landscape, & the people who lived & worked on the banks of the river at the end of the Georgian era.