Books: 700-Year Newsreel

THE STREETS OF LONDON — Thomas Burke—Scribner ($3.75).

The Streets of London is a rich distillation of writings on London by Londoners of every century. Distiller Thomas Burke, who discovered Limehouse as a boy, is now 53, a gentleman of letters; and his book is sometimes a little fat-mouthed with life-ran-very-high-in-those-days antiquarianism. But his subject has recently become titanic.

Only the masked violence of time can finally destroy London. But its streets, now being more monstrously manhandled than ever in their history, are bound to emerge from this war profoundly altered in shape and...