Rating: 
Summary: A guide that gives you pictures rather than just words!
Review: My family and I recently vacationed in London this past summer, and found this guide to be a wonderful resource. It is clear, easy to understand, and covers every aspect of your visit to this lovely city on the Thames. Many travel guides have wordy narratives and microscopic maps, but not this one. Once you open it's cover you will be treated to wonderful full color photos, detailed color drawings, maps, and illustrations. You will be inspired by this book because it literally shows you what you'll see in London, even before you leave home. You will be able to identify sites like St.Paul's, Westminister Abby, Trafalgar Sq, and will actually recognize them when you arrive in London (this is no small feat)! In addition to a liberal amount of practical travel information, many historical facts are provided to whet your interest, and prepare you to absorb more from guided tours or plaques you may read. Finally, even after you return home, you will find yourself looking at this guide to refresh your memory, and to explain some of the finer points when telling friends "what you did on your summer vacation". It is a beautiful book, a great travel guide, and a wonderful keepsake.
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Summary: The best travel guide you could buy
Review: When my wife and I take a trip to Europe, we always buy more guidebooks than any sensible person would want. The one that always gets used - over and over - is the DK Eyewitness Travel Guide. The one for London is excellent but we have also used the guidebooks for Rome and Paris with equally satisfactory results. What is great about these books is the careful combination of text and pictures. The traveller can get a "feel" for the city in advance, so that once on site there is a comfortable familiarity with the terrain. The maps are excellent and the 3-D breakout views of museums and other sites of interest are quite helpful. And the book doesn't skimp on that information that all traveller's need when visiting a foreign country - practical information about currency, custom, emergency help, precautions, transportation, entertainment options, plus lists of recommended hotels, restaurants and sites of interest. And even after the trip, this book stays on the bookshelf to be taken down whenever we need a reminder of what we saw and did. Printed on high quality stock and beautifully illustrated, these guidebooks are a pleasure to browse at any time. If you plan to visit London, and don't know the town well, get this book. You'll be glad to have it before, during and after the trip.
Rating: 
Summary: An index of London, not really a guidebook
Review: I took this book and Frommers to London. This book lists everything,and yet at the same time can be vague when it comes to directions, prices and if something is worthwhile or not. It's an index rather than a guide book. The Frommer's book was as if someone went to London before you did and came back with the good places and sites that you should go to, including restaurant recommendations that I find to be on the money. I'm going to Italy next month and will be taking a Frommer's guide since it gives me prices, times, and what's worth seeing. And...while the individual graphics in this book are good, overall the book is too cluttered.
Rating:
Summary: Best Travel Guide I found
Review: The DK Eyewitness Travel Guide to London was a wonderful resource on my just-completed trip. It's a delight to look at with its wealth of photographs but it also contains solid travel information. For instance: 1) Neighborhood walks through areas such as Chelsea, Whitehall and Westminster 2) A self-guided tour of Westminster Abby. 3) Where to find the most interesting exhibits in the Victoria and Albert Museaum. 4) A great series of street finder maps. Though not quite as comprehensize as the London A to Z series the maps in this book are very good. Much better than other guidebooks I've seen. 5) A great tube map. You need this map to get around the London tube system. I carried my book all over London last week and saw many other people with the same book in their hands in not only the English version but also French, Hebrew, and Japanese. It is an excellent book and I recommend it highly.
Rating:
Summary: You Cannot Go Wrong - These are Great Books for Travel
Review: I first discovered these books by accident on Stockholm. The book I bought by accident was in Swedish but it still useful because of all the photos, cut away views, museum pictures, and maps and historical details. When I got home I bought one in English. I own more than a dozen of different cities and countries in this series. What differentiates these books from the competition is the photos. On a cold day back here in the USA (or Canada) or elsewhere, have a glass of wine and sit in a nice chair or in the garden on a warm day and read this book. For a moment you will be back in London. You are back in a small restaurant overlooking a busy street in the theatre district. Thats how good the photos are! I am still impressed every time I pick up the book. The photos and desicriptions and cutaway drawings are excellent. They cover art galleries, museums, churches, special architecture, history, an a lot more. A solid 430 page effort - lots of stuff to see and absorb. Where does one to begin and describe the things to see and do in London such as the Westminster area, the galleries such as the Tate, Buckingham Palace, Soho, The City, Mayfair, Southwark, on and on. The book includes subway maps, restaurants and more. In other words you get all the travel information as found in other books plus great visuals. The history section is impressive. They have a timeline showing developments cross referenced to photos, people, and things to see all in a detailed section. Great city, the visit made better. Jack in Toronto
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Summary: Great Travel Guide, Beautiful Coffee Table Book!
Review: .
Summary:
Every Dorling Kindersley Guide has been a great and interesting book... and delightful to have and use, even if you are not traveling to that location, but are only interested in learning more! The Guides are well organized in a logical and easy to follow manner. They are beautifully illustrated, well developed with accurate information (it is unusual for hotel and restaurant information to be that accurate), have enough history to help the reader understand the people and cultural background, and have a lot of useful travel information and useable maps in the appendixes. The really great attraction to this book is several fold; it is:
............Very complete
............Easy to read
............Beautifully and artistically completed
............Good shopping, safety and other tips
............Gorgeous photographs too numerous to list. Specifics:
The guides are organized as follows: How to use this guide
Introduction to Historical and Geographical information
Geographical Regions
............Introduction London
........................Intro.
........................History
........................At a Glance
........................Through the Year
........................Riverview of London
............London Area by Area, each section includes:
........................Introduction to street by street area
........................Detailed pictorials of area buildings
........................Architectural drawings, pictures, cut-aways of buildings
........................Specific stops, historical monuments, churches, buildings, etc.
........................Four Guided Walks
Travelers Needs - includes full list with rankings and notes
............Hotels
............Restaurants, pubs
............Shops / Markets
............Entertainment
............Children's London Survival Information
............Practical
........................Tourist info., Etiquete, Personal Security and Health
........................Currencies, Telephones, misc info.
............Getting to London
............Getting Around London
............Street Maps
............General Index
............Phrase Book Discussion:
The book begins with "Introducing London", including a complete map, a review, the city's history, and London thought the Year - including events, etc. Areas with an "At a glance" overview, then has subsections of specific blocks, or forums, then specific locations, churches, historical monuments, bridges, galleries, etc. Architectural reviews include various views, and cutaways; given greater understanding and better perspective. They are all attractive, if not works of art - honestly. The travelers' Info. offers good and valid info. on prices, currencies, customs, important words, etc. I used the reviews on hotel's restaurants and nightclubs, etc. and found they were useful and accurate, and helpful with my touring and site decisions. The books are so well thought-out that it has multiple maps, with various lookup tables, and the book's flaps are designed to be used as bookmarks for map pages. Conclusion:
Each book in this series is a great help, and beautiful collectible resource. As the President, CEO of an International Meeting Planning Corporation we have many resources and techniques to learn about places we have meetings / groups at as well as the cities and sights. But, as a traveler, this book really is top notch and I would recommend it to anyone going on a personal trip, or wanting to learn about a city, or location. We have used some of these books to augment our research to investigate cities for our groups.
Rating: 
Summary: Very good and very visual, but lacks more detail
Review: I am going to be travelling to Europe soon and I was looking for new books. I got the eyewitness london guide because of all the images it has. It is a really nice book and really entertaining and the suggested tours are good. My only complain with the book is that it is not so informative about prices like other guides. I would recommend getting this guide just for the visual aspect, but maybe consider buying like the Let's Go London Or Lonely Planet London guide books for budget travellers because they give you ALL the prices informations on everything from transport, restaurants, entrances to sights, etc. For example in London's case, the eywitness guide just mentioons the travel cards to get around but doesn't give information on prices which do come in the Let's Go and LP series.
Rating: 
Summary: Nice graphically, but in terms of utility...
Review: I think the title of my review wraps it all up: the eyewitness guides are a work of graphic art. Their highlight is probably the great work on the maps, both small and large scale, which are of great help as you navigate around the city looking for sights. As a tool for reaching all of the sights you want to see, I would say that the Eyewitness Guide is among the best, with its street map, neighborhood maps and Metro/subway guide. In addition to this, as another positive comment I would say that it is a great guide to take on a trip if you don't have much time and you need information presented in an easy-to-read, simple manner. The drawings and photos, and the way they are laid out, is very appealing. In fact, this guidebook is almost better just for getting an idea of what London looks like than as an actual guidebook to be used in the city itself. The advantages stop there, however. If you really want to get to know a city, you simply need more in-depth historical and cultural information on the sights you are seeing. Most of the locations described in the Eyewitness Guide do not stretch beyond a paragraph or two, which is quite superficial in my opinion. If you really want to know about the history behind the church, monument, museum or park you have traveled so far to see, you will definitely need another guidebook to give you any kind of detail. This flaw becomes far worse when you read the sections on sights outside of the city or in the suburbs (which are many!). The descriptions become utterly superficial. Harsh critique also for the hotel and restaurant information, which is limited to places designed for the rich and famous, or at least the very upper of the upper-middle class. The best guides give you a little info. on all styles of lodging and food, from low budget to luxury, but these guides make little effort to do so, and even the information on the laps of luxury is limited to little symbols, instead of providing descriptions like other guides do. With this combination of characteristics, I think Eyewitness is good to take along for a short trip in which you have little time to spend seeing the city and you don't really care about getting any deep information on what you're seeing. Otherwise, keep looking for another guidebook.
Rating:
Summary: Bringing London to You Before You Go To London
Review: I was an innocent abroad when I first moved to London, and I wouldn't be without this book. Not only did it help me to start to feel at home here, it brought it to life for me. This book is essential if you are visiting for the first time, and is so pleasing to look at that you'll think of it as your travel journal when you return. Whether you're a first timer to London, or you've lived here for years, this book will help you to feel 'at home'.
Rating:
Summary: Eywitness Travel Guide to London
Review: We've used this guide while taking a Boy Scout Troop to London, twice. Each boy had his own copy, and they not only read it, but they used it frequently. They enjoyed using the building 'cut away' pictures to find all sorts of details. It was like a scavenger hunt. Finding the buildings, locations and other things they had read about 'back home' was a thrill. One item they enjoyed was the Hyde Park Speakers' Corner. Not something we would have thought of, but it intrigued the boys when they read about it and they enjoyed it when they got there. This book is a great help to people of all ages who are discovering London for the first time.
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