Old Covent Garden ─ The Fruit, Vegetable, and Flower Markets

The magic of the old Covent Garden Market is evoked through Peter Ackroyd's introduction and Clive Boursnell's marvellous photographs, taken over the course of numerous and extended visits to Covent Garden in the 1960s and 1970s. The book includes a preface by Clive Boursnell and the words of some of the market people whom the photographer interviewed at the time.

Clive Boursnell is a renowned photographer of architecture, gardens, landscapes and, above all, people. He turned to photography as the culmination of a career which included classical ballet and working as a woodsman, a farmhand, a miner and prospector and a mountaineer.

London has been the main character in the work of Peter Ackroyd ever since his first novel, The Great Fire of London. His Hawksmoor won the Whitbread and the Guardian Fiction Prize, Chatterton was shortlisted for the Booker, London: the Biography won the South Bank Show Annual Award for Literature. Reviewers commonly categorize him as the Dickens of our day.