I was able to buy a copy of Fanny and Johnnie Cradocks travel guide to London and The British Isles under their stage name "Bon Viveur". The book was published in 1954 and has a distinctive "old", possibly just "damp" smell, and the quality of its paper is interestingly coarse/ textured.
The book contains recommendations for hundreds of restaurants, cafes, bars etc across the UK, organised by county. I mapped out the locations of the London establishments using google, some of which still exist, most don't, and almost all recommendations are within the West End- Soho- Kensington- areas.
Particularly entertaining is the section labelled "Warnings to Waiters" in which Fanny details that they should "be born without thumbs" and that if they recieved potatoes with their meal despite asking none, their tip would be halved.
Equally diva-ish is the section of restaurants they will NOT be recommending. Here Fanny refers to the cutting of lettuce with a knife: "A howling crime", and wonders incredulously who would dare suggest she enjoy lobster cooked "with whisky".
The effort involved in documenting these restaurants in google maps did not provide any particularly useful result however, but i could perhaps go further to record through street view what exists now in place of some of her favourites- the ruins and fragments left in Fanny's footsteps.
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