TRAVEL WRITING. A masterpiece of local history, by the Queen of the genre. Gillian Tindall has acquired a devoted readership through her lovingly researched works, such as the prize-winning The House by the Thames and Celestine: Voices from a French Village. A brilliant evocation of the complex history of London, that city of villages, revealed through this particular study of Kentish Town. A journey through time: from a scattering of cottages along a pre-roman horse track, to a medieval parish and staging post for travellers, onwards into a prosperous Tudor village favoured by gentlemen for their country seats and an 18th century resort of pleasure gardens eventually transformed by a warren of railway lines into a thickly populated working-class district. Fragments of this past can still be found by the observant eye.