Perfect view from the sky

It is an aerial map so detailed you can almost see the corgis roaming in the gardens of Buckingham Palace.

Every landmark, park and alleyway is revealed in minute detail. It is even possible to pick out the pedalos on the Serpentine and the tourists on Abbey Road's legendary pedestrian crossing.

However, the real fascination of the all-new edition of London: The Photographic Atlas is in just how much has changed since the groundbreaking publication of the first edition five years ago.

Then, the London Eye lay on its side by the Thames and there was no Millennium Bridge, Gherkin, London Assembly building or Great Court at the British Museum, and work on the new Wembley Stadium had yet to begin.

The new pictures were taken from an aeroplane at 5,500 feet using a specially modified £250,000 survey camera. Over two-and-a-half years, a team headed by cartographer Tristram Cary compiled more than 2,000 images of the capital in what he calls "a unique historical document".

Mr Cary, who is also working on an atlas of the entire country, said: "The beauty of the atlas is that it records all the changes - it shows you every last car and dustbin. Our idea is to update the images every three years and capture all these changes."

Rowan Moore, the Evening Standard's architecture correspondent, said the atlas showed London's landscape experiencing "one of the biggest periods of change in its history. So many important buildings have gone up since the first atlas.

"The past 10 years have seen the City enjoy a period of economic strength, which has been reflected in a great burst of building. That has been aided by funding from the

National Lottery and Millennium Projects.

"High property values have encouraged developers to speculate on new buildings. In general, London has had much more confidence in itself in the past 10 years, and that has been reflected in a new wave of building."

London: The Photographic Atlas, published by Collins on 6 September, priced £60.