Elizabeth's London: Everyday Life in Elizabethan London: Amazon. Amazon Review Liza Picard's Elizabeth's London completes a trilogy of books on London throughout history, starting with Restoration London and followed by Dr Johnson's London.
From the outset, Picard admits that Elizabethan London proved an even greater challenge to reconstruct, as "few buildings survive", and "artefacts and clothes from the time are rare". Nevertheless, through painstaking detail, Picard wonderfully recreates the crowded chaotic sights and smells of everyday life in late 16th-century London. Her journey starts, like so many admirers of the city from Chaucer to Ackroyd, on the river Thames, "a uniform opaque grey" in Elizabeth's time, but "fairly unpolluted, judging from all the fish in it," and "a superb processional route between the royal palaces. " Review this is a book for ducking and weaving through.... this makes satisfying toilet reading - especially the bits about how private loos in the age of Shakespeare were even nastier than our nastiest public loos today.
London: A Life in Maps: Amazon.co.uk: Peter Whitfield. Nsuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain: Ama. ‘Flanders writes with absorbing detail and elegant analysis.' Sunday Times 'Judith Flanders's wonderfully entertaining book…a vigorously written, fact–filled cornucopia…it has nuggets of interest on every page.' Sunday Telegraph ‘Her account of how the Victorian age democratised pleasure and ordinary convenience should become a classic.’ Independent on Sunday ‘Flanders’s book is suitably fat and fact-packed…this is a generous survey of a world that is both far stranger and far more familiar than the one we think we know.’ 'Flanders is deft at making connections.' ‘“Consuming Passions” tells the story of Victorian leisure and pleasure as an interrelated and intricate set of transformations…a fascinating, bewildering, marvel-crammed quest.’
‘It is a world explored with much wit and insight…Flanders is excellent…It's a rich mix [and]…fluently written…It has every chance of becoming a bestseller.’ ‘A richly detailed work that translates a wealth of research with a light and readable touch.' Mapping London: Making Sense of the City: Amazon.co.uk: Simon Fo. Mapping London: Making Sense of the City is a beautiful, compelling anthology of over six centuries of London maps.
The book tells a different kind of history of the city, tracing the mesmerising evolution of the city through its cartography and exploring the hopes and fears of its inhabitants as history unfolds. The book is a cartographic journey, charting the influence of Roman city planning, Saxon feudalism, Medieval tumult, imperial hubris, contemporary town planning and more on this great metropolis. It includes over 200 maps, from literary imaginings and utopian prophecies to portrayals of London in contemporary computer games, comics and online. Mapping London is split into four sections, each beginning with a short introduction and beautifully illustrated by the maps themselves: London Change and Growth; Serving the City; Living in the City; and Imagining London. Victorian London: Amazon.co.uk: Liza Picard. Dr Johnson's London: Everyday Life in London in the Mid 18th Cen.