If you are tired of period guides to London, as I was saying to Dr Johnson the other day, you must be tired of life. Just take a look at John Metcalf’s London A to Z.

No, no that one. This slim volume, recently rediscovered, is a guide to points of interest in the city, rather than a map. Entries run from ACHILLES STATUE (“One of the bigger, bronzier, nuder of Victorian statues”) to ZEBRA CROSSING and ZOOS, brought to life with line drawings by Edward Bawden, who also illustrated the book jacket. Published in 1953 to help the hordes of visitors descending on the British capital during the Queen’s coronation, it was always intended as an idiosyncratic rather than comprehensive guide.

The book’s charm and distinctive voice (despite there probably being multiple contributors and no actual Mr Metcalf) endure in entries such as the ALBERT MEMORIAL: “Long the target, through the 20s and 30s, of the mockery of aesthetes, it is now enjoying a certain vogue amongst the sort of people who use the words ‘quaint’ and ‘charming’”. In the hidden, unchanging world of the INNS OF COURT, writes the author, “the whole fibre of London’s noise comes only faintly to you, muted and muffled by the centuries”.

And on the statue of EROS in Piccadilly Circus: “That this inconsequential statue, balanced precariously on one foot, should stand in the centre of solid London, is a typical paradox of the English character. Anyway, we like it.”

Many of the other entries, of course, offer a window on to a world long gone, from BARROW BOY (“the modern and somewhat more sophisticated counterpart of the Cockney costermonger”) to FLEET STREET (“the newspaper headquarters of an Empire … In it work the people who make news about the people who make news”). Meanwhile, POLICEMEN (Metropolitan and City) are recognisable by “a deliberateness of gait, a slow helpfulness of manner and a near-divine sense of dignity. Impossible to shock or ruffle, you’ll find them, even in the most unlikely circumstances, your friends.” O tempora. O mores.

This timely republication reminds us of a confident, colourful London, a city that can survive and thrive without being in thrall to foreign money. It reminds us of what is lost if you let a city’s buildings become a global reserve currency instead of homes, businesses, nightclubs (skanky, fancy and everything in between). It throws into relief the short-termism of current thinking about London and suggests (though it does not dream of the possibility) that if you hollow out the likes of Soho and overwrite history with glass and steel you lose something precious.

Occasionally, there is a last glimpse of a world that was vanishing even as the book was written. After LOST PROPERTY, for instance, comes LOVELY SWEET VIOLETS – “one of London’s last-remaining street cries – of the septuagenarian flower girls of Piccadilly Circus”. And there are many more that are taking on a spectral aspect in our own time: “There will be a POST OFFICE quite near you, wherever you are”; “There are free PUBLIC LIBRARIES in every borough”; “Under the National Health Scheme, treatment by doctors and at hospitals is free”. That sort of thing.

It offers a record of quaint traditions, striking statuary (the bronzier and nuder the better, in my opinion) and important institutions (from dining clubs to the city guilds – Armourers and Brasiers, Broderers, Cordwainers, Loriners, Paviors, Poulters and more). But what really makes it a period piece is its loving attitude towards the past – teased sometimes, but not mocked, respected but not revered – and towards the present.

This is a London – a world – which is scared neither by the Then or the Now. The then brand-new-and-not-yet-royal FESTIVAL HALL (“an exhilarating example of modern architecture, and acoustically perfect”) is as gloried in as Hampton Court. DELICATESSENS, “many of them with special Continental importations”, are as welcome a presence on the teeming scene as DEBUTANTES, the STONE OF SCONE (“now tucked safely underneath the coronation chair again”) and ST JAMES’S PALACE (“originally founded by Edward I as a hospital for 14 leprous virgins”).

You cannot read a book that looks happily backwards, around and forwards and not want to beat your head against the nearest current policymaker in his hatred of the underleveraged present. Once the city is scrubbed clean of its layers of history, the folk memory of loriners and poulters, and the smell of lovely sweet violets, once the fibre of London is finally buried by this new century, it will have no future because the people who could bring it will have no reason to come.

• John Metcalf’s London A to Z is published by Thames and Hudson.