The British artist and author Edmund de Waal praises Royal Academy of Arts' chief executive Charles Saumarez Smith’s new book on East London, which is out today (27 April). De Waal describes the RA boss, a resident of the East End since the 1980s, as being “a very good companion on his flaneurial walks, amusing, erudite and engaged in his response to buildings, people and places”. The insider’s guide to exploring the East End, published by Thames & Hudson, features everything from Anish Kapoor’s ArcelorMittal Orbit in Olympic Park, which he writes “looks better close up, like an escaped triffid” to the Dirty Burger that set up shop in an Edwardian building in Stepney’s Mile End Road. Saumarez Smith notes that the gourmet chain is next to the Trinity Almshouse “where you can have flagons of Crate ale and superior, but not expensive, burgers”. The book was borne from the blog that Saumarez Smith started in 2014. He tells The Art Newspaper that he has another book up his sleeve, this time on central London, if things go well with this one.