Chairman & CEO of Edward Stanford Group Limited, Vivien Godfrey, gives readers an insider's view of the city of London with her foreword from Trope's Above & Across London. Featuring over 170 breathtaking images from photographer Ben Moore, Above & Across London captures the stunning beauty of London as seen from the sky.
London is a city that lives in layers. I know this because I am a Londoner, and I love this city.
At its heart lie the ancient stones of Londinium, a Roman outpost founded nearly two thousand years ago on the northern bank of the River Thames. That same river—broad, tidal, and unhurried—still winds through the city like a spine, shaping the landscape and feeding its growth. It carried trade and empire, ideas and revolutions, immigrants and monarchs. It carried London itself into the modern age. As Joseph Conrad once wrote, the Thames is “the silent highway bearing the burden of men’s dreams.”
From those early foundations, London has expanded outward across the centuries, absorbing surrounding villages and meadows into its orbit. It is a city built not in one grand plan but in countless improvisations—organic, chaotic, resilient. Over time, it became what Samuel Johnson called “a nation, not a city.” From cobbled lanes to soaring towers, from Tudor timbers to steel and glass, every street tells a story. This book of photographs captures the extraordinary variety of those stories—of a city always becoming.
Modern London is a skyline of contrasts: The Shard rises like a fragment of ice above the South Bank, a monument to ambition and architectural daring. The Tate Modern stands nearby, its once-sooty power station skin now reimagined as a temple of art. Further west, Battersea Power Station—once a symbol of industrial might—has been reborn as a gleaming complex of shops, restaurants, and homes. Even the Post Office Tower, once the city’s most futuristic silhouette, is now being transformed into a luxury hotel, yet another chapter in its evolving life. In London, buildings don’t just endure—they adapt.
Yet this city is not merely a monument to steel, stone, and reinvention. It is also one of the greenest capitals on earth. With over eight million trees spread across its parks, squares, gardens, and streets, the United Nations officially classifies London as a forest. From the wild grass of Hampstead Heath to the meticulously kept lawns of Regent’s Park, green space is not just a luxury—it is a birthright. Nature and urbanity live side by side here in a delicate, deeply rooted balance.
London also carries its scars with quiet dignity. The Blitz of World War II left vast swathes of the city in ruin, and yet out of that devastation came innovation. New estates, bold public buildings, and a resilient civic spirit emerged. As Winston Churchill declared during the war, “London can take it.” And take it, she did—surviving not just the bombs, but the challenges of austerity, immigration, reconstruction, and reinvention.
This endurance, this openness to change, is part of why London has always drawn outsiders. It is a magnet for dreamers, dissenters, creators, and exiles. Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital in Soho. Mozart composed symphonies here as a child. From Joseph Conrad to Zadie Smith, from Malala Yousafzai to Freddie Mercury, the city has provided a home for talents from every continent, each of them reshaping it in turn. London listens, absorbs, and transforms.
In the pages ahead, you’ll find a portrait of a city in motion. 172 aerial photographs of London taken by photographer Ben Moore. A city where history is never quite buried and the future never far off. From forgotten alleyways to shimmering new towers, from centuries-old bridges to futuristic station canopies, these images show a place that is both museum and laboratory, archive and engine.
As Virginia Woolf once wrote, London is “a city of shifting glimpses, of sudden disappearances, of inexplicable presences.” And this book, like the city itself, is full of those glimpses—moments frozen in time, layered with meaning.
This is not just a city you visit. London is a city you experience, inhabit, and carry with you. A city that remembers everything and yet is never finished. This book will inspire you to immerse yourself in the great city that is London.
Order your copy of Above & Across London today.
