Cover Image: The Movie Lover’s Guide to London

The Movie Lover’s Guide to London

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Member Reviews

Prepare-se para ficar morrendo de vontade de viajar para londres e conferir cada uma das locações apontadas no guia.

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I find watching a tv drama or watching a film - I am always curious to find out where the loation is and sometimes this can be difficult so this book is really interesting and you can locate and go and see where the location is. Much easier than trying to find on Google.
The book is quite organised and lists as per film - so if the reader is interested in one film then easy to go through, but some film have a lot of pages and other fewer.
If you are movie buff and are in London - take this book and see for yourself.

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This lives up to the title and provides plenty of background details on how the city of London has been used as background (and foreground) in many movies over the years. Thoroughly enjoyed and hope someone compiles some walking maps based on the intel provided here.

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This was such an interesting read. I love the fact that you can go to places and recognise them from movies that you have seen. I learnt some interesting facts and I cannot wait to go and see them

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I received a copy of this book for a fair and honest review. I love movies and learning about the places they were filmed. This tells me more about the movies I love and the locations that I could visit if I was ever to go to London. That would be amazing and just to stand there in those places. I would like to see more books like this for other locations.

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If you're a movie buff and are living or visiting London and have time to spare this book would be a great companion. It introduces many different locations for scenes throughout the city. Recommend any movie lover looking for a fun alternative activity to the usual day out.

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Movie lovers will know that they have no shortage of fellow film buffs who photograph locations made famous in movies and TV shows. These are usually shared on social media, accompanied by a screengrab of the scene in which it was featured.
This kind of movie trivia seems an obvious choice for a book of photographs, which is why it’s so disappointing that The Movie Lover’s Guide to London feels like an incomplete project. It contains many photographs of buildings and places, accompanied by descriptions of their location and the movies and shows they’ve been in – but the lack of screengrabs or still photos of their silver screen moments is a massive letdown.
Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC.

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An absolutely fantastic guide book for movie lovers who want to visit the filming locations of their favorite movies across the city of London. It's a great city with tons of history, and there are plenty of interesting places to check out from film history.

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Princess Fuzzypants here: If you are like me and try to figure out where something has been filmed, you will enjoy this book. It is great for those who know their way around London and also those who plan to visit and would like to check out shooting locations. Naturally, there is more emphasis on modern locations as so often the older ones have either vanished or changed but it does give an eclectic selection of flicks.

I like the way it breaks down film locations in groups such as British films, Hollywood films and Bollywood films. It also looks at different genres. While it does focus on a selection of different films, it is far from complete but as an addition to any other books on the matter, it will help the tourist who wants to see where their favourite scene was set. Do not be surprised if where they filmed is not where it is supposed to be. After all, this is the movies.

Four purrs and two paws up.

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A lovely and well sectioned book. It takes you to the sites of very well known movies and the lesser known ones as well. There is ample infomation to find you way around.
I do enjoy the multiple tours in the book where if you for example follow the Notting Hill tour, you will visit various places from movies such as Notting Hill, Spectre, Paddington and Love Actually. I thoroughly enjoy this book and can recommend it if you want to bring a little Hollywood into your next trip to London!

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Eu gosto de livros, cinema e Londres. Então, por motivos óbvios, eu achei esse guia muito legal! Se saísse uma edição dele em português eu compraria (já tenho um guia só sobre a cidade e os pontos interessantes de lá e sou apaixonada). Foi muito legal descobrir coisas que eu não sabia sobre os filmes e os cenários em Londres. Espero um dia ser capaz de ir até lá e ver com meus próprios olhos.

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Not a bad book for fans of film, but it's incredibly repetitive and given the file type there are a lot of errors in the ebook so hard to read at points. Would have loved more anecdotes or slightly less repetition of location descriptions.

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This book is a great travel companion to all movie lovers visiting London. The book is divided into two 8 sections - one dedicated to specific movies and then chapters on James Bond, Hollywood, Bollywood, Movie-related sites, Blue Plaque Tour (plaques identifying and commemorating buildings of note), Retro cinema tour, movie pubs, churches and cemeteries, as well as by neighborhood. Some of my favorite films such as Love Actually, Paddington, and Withnail and I are all described here among many others. There are great photos throughout and this book is to be used with Google or Apple Maps by entering the post codes given for each location. This is a fun read.
Thank you to Netgalley and Pen & Sword for an ARC and I left this review voluntarily.

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This book is a good guide to movie locations in London, with interesting anecdotes, and lots of pictures. It includes well-known movies like the James Bond films, Bridget Jones and Shakespeare in Love, and obscure movies set in London.

It didn’t suit me that much, because I wasn’t interested in many of the movies listed here. Most readers will probably find it useful,

I received this free ebook fromNetGalley in return for an honest review.

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It's a good guide to London based on movie location. There's plenty of places, iconic scenes and the coordinates to find the places.
Useful and informative.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

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I was very excited to read this book because of my love of England and English film. There are strengths and weaknesses to this book. The strengths are the color photographs and the precise locations given for scenes under each movie's listing.

A prominent weakness, in my humble opinion, was the editing. Lack of precision in grammar or clarity can force the reader to lose concentration. I was frequently jarred from my basic interest in film by a convoluted or imprecise wording, such as I found at the beginning of Chapter 3 on Hollywood. (Who edited this book?) Sometimes the writing is in present tense when it should be in present perfect tense. Sometimes usage of the same adjective is so close that while reading, I lost focus despite my career of reading student writing. It is not easy to bump my attention. I expected a bit more from the caliber of writing. Nonetheless, there is much to recommend this book to British movie lovers. I liked the attention to English sites used in Hollywood or Bollywood films. I also liked the kinds of details (that I was really hoping to find earlier pertaining to the films listed) in Chapter 5, Movie Related Sites.

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A great book with lots of interesting information. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of the book in exchange for a review.

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What a brilliant book. The nostalgia from films in years gone by, with some of my favourites, to new films. All filmed in various parts of the capital. Wether you just read the book, use it as a walking tour or just to explore one area of the capital you will be entranced.
Use it as a guide to explore with and take lots of pictures to show off to friends and family with your film knowledge in relation to London.

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What an absolutely fascinating book this is, I had so much fun reading it.
If, like me, you are a movie buff then you will love this book, but it will also appeal to general knowledge collectors and those who have an interest in the claims to fame that are held by the places in London.
It is a reference book that shares with the reader the key places in London that certain movie scenes were filmed and includes a wide variety of photos too.
This would make a great coffee table book to catch the interest of you friends and family.
This is a great book that I highly recommend.
My thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for allowing me to read this book in return for an honest review,

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Charlotte Booth The Movie Lover’s Guide to London Pen & Sword, White Owl, Mar 2023

Thank you, NetGalley and Pen & Sword, for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.

I imagine having this book starting in a backpack while wandering around London, and then diving for it so often that it has to stay in my hands. Or beside me to read while I’m having a coffee before starting on the next interesting location that it encourages me to pursue. The Movie Lover’s Guide to London is also just a really good read for a person interested in films, locations, excerpts of plots and details of locations associated with this wonderful city. Going to the movies, as well as walking around London, will be doubly interesting with the wealth of information Charlotte Booth packs into this guide.

Do not feel that you will be subjected only to various iterations of Harry Potter and Mary Poppins, although the former appears in locations including Australia House in The Strand (and where, standing in the location, I was told about its fame associated with Harry Potter several years ago). This is one of the more interesting features of the book – for London lovers so many of the locations will be ones with which you are familiar. You will be adding to your connections with locations that seemed so familiar there was nothing left to learn. However, there also many locations that will not be familiarly associated with films – some have changed, some have not been subjected to continual storytelling, and others will be new even to the most avid filmgoer, or London observer.

The introduction is innovative – it is a short history of the camera, the process towards the moving image, sound, colour, 3D and IMAX, purpose-built cinemas and the picture palace in contrast with ‘the fleapit’ and the economic impact of the Covid pandemic. Then we get to the most familiar feature of Sword & Pen publications – the determination to make the material accessible to readers. This does not mean that you will be confronted with a simplistic narrative, rather that you will be provided with an intelligent, detailed and enticing narrative that you will understand and enjoy. Booth begins by explaining how the book can be used. Postcodes rather than maps are used to define areas and precise locations. There are choices about how to approach the topic: firstly, the movie section provides the reader with locations based on the movies they want to follow up; the second is themed tours which can comprise locations associated with a particular genre of movie, or secondly, the areas in which locations can be found.

A short description of the action that takes place is given for each location. So, after placing the British film industry into a financial context by telling the reader briefly about the financial successes nationally and internationally of films such as the Harry Potter franchise, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and Paddington, the use of Senate House, Malet Street begins the movie location tour. Senate House was a location for 1984, and Booth provides both history of the building and a brief commentary on how the building was used in the film. The tour proceeds throughout London, together with location and a brief on plot and scene.

Some locations are used for a variety of films, and booth has chosen to repeat some of the information about the location, which is not necessarily part of the film detail, each time she refers to it (Aldwych Station stands out here). I wondered whether there was a better way to do this – for example, an appendix of frequently used locations with the information peculiar to that location but not the film. However, other readers might be pleased to be able to follow a trail without looking elsewhere in the text.

Tours such as the Blue Plaque Tour and the Retro Cinema Tour, The Movie Pub Crawl and Church Tour demonstrate the variety of information packed into this engaging book. I realised that I had visited many of the locations Booth writes about, without realising that they had served as locations for films I have seen, heard about or not wanted to see. The variety of films and tours covered allows for each of these responses – to be cliched, ‘there is something for everyone’. However, the book is far from cliched, with its combination of fascinating details about locations, scenes and the films that can be investigated with a self-guided tour around London with The Movie Lover’s Guide to London in your hand.

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