''Has anybody in here got a degree?' demanded the examiner as he opened his introductory talk on the Knowledge of London at the Old Public Carriage Office in October 2008. One or two of us in the room sheepishly raised our hands 'Well, this is harder,' he boomed in his stern cockney accent.' Welcome to a London quiz book like no other, written by a licensed London taxi driver who spent more than four years of intensive study on top of a full time job and countless hours riding around London on a moped learning 320 set routes around a 9km (six mile) radius of Charing Cross, memorising thousands of points of interest from a nondescript Balham boozer to Buckingham Palace. Five sets of quizzes are based on actual set routes beginning with the first they all learn ? Manor House Station to Gibson Square and ending with the last, Copenhagen Street to Charing Cross Station. The book deliberately captures as many of the big sights as possible and the routes get harder. The eagle-eyed reader might spot one or two which might not have scored full marks for being the most direct routes in an actual Knowledge appearance. Here is all the slang and lingo like ten o'clock known in the trade as 'burst time' because the double doors of theatres and concerts are flung open and every back seat of every black cab is quickly filled. Ian Beetlestone takes us on a guided tour around London's 40,000 plus streets with 500 head scratching questions from easy to mind-bendingly difficult. What is Walthamstow's postcode, and what's it got to do with Christmas 1994? Holland Park is home to annual summer season performances of what? Which club, just east of Putney Bridge Station, was the site of the first match in which sport in 1874? Who, reportedly, had notorious premises at 186 Fleet Street in the 18th century? From the Royal College of Music SW7 to Crouch Hill Station N4, London City Airport to Hornchurch or Consort Road SE15 to the Ministry of Defence SW1, for each there is a full page A-Z style colour map and bullet point details and facts throughout these big colourful pages. 184pp, softback.
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