'During that first year in England, I had a vision of London I cannot recall now...it was a nightmare city that I lived in for a year. Then, one evening, walking across the park, the light welded buildings, trees and scarlet buses into something familiar and beautiful, and I knew myself to be at home.' Doris Lessing wrote those words in 1957, and since then she has continued to observe both London and its inhabitants with the shrewd, sensitive eye of an artist. Representing over three decades of fine writing, London Observed. Stories and Sketches contains eighteen perfect pen-portraits of Londoners and their city.