Artist and illustrator Alice Stevenson, who teaches our Drawing course here at the Idler, has spent the last few years walking and exploring the huge, sprawling megacity that is London. Within all the hustle and bustle, Alice has discovered a way of walking that is restorative, enriching and enlightening.She has put her experience, perception and intimate knowledge of the city into a book Ways to Walk in London that is published by September books this week. It acts as unofficial guide to the city, where overlooked architecture is celebrated, unusual perspectives are discovered and paths away from the customary haunts are trodden. Ways to Walk in London is a wonderfully fitting tribute to the complexity of this city – even in one of the most dynamic and bustling environments in the world there are places to escape to.

Below is an extract from the book where we find Alice visiting some of her favourite bookshops.

Bookshops – Hackney, London Fields  

It’s a Saturday and the Broadway Market is in full swing. Donlon Books specialises in the esoteric and unorthodox. It’s a bastion of genuine counterculture in this increasingly cosy and bourgeois street. Inside we inspect an early copy of Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine and I leaf through some zines. Out past the organic food and sourdough bread stalls to Artwords, a slightly more mainstream art, design and coffee table bookshop, which also stocks a beautifully curated children’s selection. There is usually something by Tomi Ungerer on the shelves and I’m pleased to see a copy of Moon Man at the bottom. I feel slightly overwhelmed and become mesmerised by a coffee-table book about shamanic regalia, wishing I could sit down now and draw the feathers and shapes of the masks. A couple of doors down we head into Broadway Bookshop, my favourite and my local. So many afternoons I’ve popped in on route to the post office and come out guiltily clutching a new purchase. Though a very small shop, they always seem to stock everything I could possibly want. Katie discovers a collection of short stories about cats and I have to stop myself buying about five different things.

We walk down to Hoxton Square and into bookartbookshop, which specialises in artist’s books and small press publications. It’s quiet and full of publications of vastly varying sizes. I find a book about limericks and start to read some out loud but stop midway when one becomes too lewd, causing the shop assistant to laugh loudly. I flick through a tiny volume which has obscure commands printed small on each page.‘Borrow a book about airplanes at the library, comb your hair back.’ Books are the second best thing in the world to people, and to be in a bookshop is to be in a space where worlds are contained within small, paper objects, creating an atmosphere which is deeply exciting as well as peaceful and comforting. We walk up to Arlington Way off Pentonville Road to Present & Correct, which largely sells unusual and vintage stationery, but also a marvellous selection of mid-twentieth century children’s books. I swoon over Nature by Alain Gree, a 1960s informative picture book full of beautiful illustrations, and discover a children’s picture book by Saul Bass. I am happy and I need nothing else.

Another day Ross and I walk to John Sandoe, a gem of an independent bookshop on Blacklands Terrace, justoff the King’s Road. Like Broadway Bookshop, while there is little rhyme or reason to its contents, it seems to contain every book you could ever need. I am tempted by a biography of Rasputin but settle for Night Walks by Charles Dickens, republished as part of the Penguin Great Ideas series. Ross buys a thriller about gangsters largely because he likes one of the gangster’s hairstyles on the cover. We cross Belgravia, stopping at a pub, then on through Mayfair to Maggs Bros. on Berkeley Square who deal in rare books. I’m not quite sure what to expect and we are ushered upstairs to a room bursting with antique publications. We are the only people in there, and self-consciously look through shelves of old Japanese books admiring the patterns on the covers. I spot a wonderful painting leaning against a pile of books of a highwayman partly done in felt. It’s a piece of nineteenthcentury folk art, one of ‘The Earth Stopper’ series by George Smart, and belonging to a man who works there. We leave wondering why you’d display a piece of art you owned in a bookshop. I will later see it or a near identical piece by the same artist, displayed at the Folk Art exhibition at Tate Britain.

Reaching the grey painted shop front of Persephone Books, with its simple font, is like reaching my destination on a pilgrimage. I’ve enjoyed many titles but never got around to visit their shop on Lamb’s Conduit Street; in true London style, thinking there’s always another day. Persephone publish out-of-print women writers, and their books have an unmistakeable plain grey cover with a vintage textile pattern printed onto the endpapers. After lengthy discussions with one of the staff I purchase To Bed with Grand Music by Marghanita Laski, about the wife of an officer in the Second World War who lives it up in London having fun with GIs while her husband is stationed in Cairo. The shop is everything I’d hoped, rows of grey books with recommendations and descriptions printed and tacked to the shelves. There are cushions printed in the designs from their endpapers and I feel that I want to stay here forever.

To buy Alice’s book Ways to Walk In London follow the link to the right.