ADAM DANT'S POLITICAL MAPS

These 47 quirky maps from a brilliant cartoonist's pen cover subjects such as Paris Argot, debt in Canary Wharf, a timeline of the Presidents of the USA, "Guardians of London's Lost Rivers", a playful fantasy showing the various rivers that run into the Thames through the city, each one pictured with a tutelary deity discharging liquid from a bodily orifice, with no attempt at modesty. "The Critic's Perpetual Drinking Calendar" suggests a reason for raising your glass every day of the year. Famous people's anniversaries include Babe Ruth, Mae West, Orson Welles, Edith Sitwell, Peter Sellers, Aristotle and Julius Caesar (the Ides of March), while notable events include Groundhog Day, Burns Night, Absinthe Day and the invention of the shoelace. "The Universal London Underground Map" substitutes images for names for the benefit of non-English-speakers. Everyone will recognize Eros, but how many tourists will identify a thumbnail of Queen Victoria, locating the railway terminus? Emerging from Covid, the author created a map of London's festivals, including the Fishmongers' Procession to St Magnus (4 June) and the Samhain ritual at Conway Hall (1 Nov). "New York Tawk" is a map of the city's slang, including Hip Flippers, Farcharder, Pharmaganda, and even some terms familiar in the UK, such as Perp, Groovy, or Crashpad. "The Meeting of the Old and the New East End in Redchurch Street" is a detailed drawing of the artist's own street, where at one end estate agents with spiky hair and pointy shoes collapse in a drunken heap, and at the other end a child is harnessed to a waste paper cart. Test your people-spotting skills to find Keira Knightley, Boris Johnson and others. Hours of fun. 32 x 26.5cm landscape format, 128pp, 47 hand-tinted meticulously detailed colour maps.
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