David Gentleman has lived in London for almost seventy years, most of it on the same street. This book is a record of a lifetime spent observing, drawing and getting to know the city, bringing together work from across his whole career, from his earliest sketches to watercolours painted just a few months ago.

Here is London as it was, and as it is today: the Thames, Hampstead Heath; the streets, canals, markets and people of his home of Camden Town; and at the heart of it all, his studio and the tools of his work. Accompanied by reflections on the process of drawing and personal thoughts on the ever-changing city, this is a celebration of London, and the joy of noticing, looking and capturing the world.

‘David has spent a lifetime depicting with wit and affection a London he has made his own’ Alan Bennett

‘He delivers a poetry of exultant concentration … The surface fusion of the sensuous and the sharply modern is echoed by Gentleman’s imagery’ Guardian

‘The artist and illustrator has been responsible for some of the most-seen public artworks in this country’ The Times

‘Perhaps the last of the great polymath designer-painters’ Camden New Journal

Read a sample here