London: A Short History (Universal History) Book

In this short history of London the bestselling author AN Wilson traces London?s colourful and dramatic history over the last 2000 years from being a backwater in the Classical age to an important medieval city, a significant Renaissance urban centre to the modern colossus that it is today. From Roman times to the present, it has been a city which has evolved, if not by mistake then haphazard. It is not a great capital city in the sense that Rome, St Petersburg or Paris are great capitals. There has been no English Peter the Great, or Sixtus the Fifth or Louis Quatorze or Napoleon; hence in London no despot was ever in a position to level the place to the ground and start again, or to plan it according to some great design. It is a city which has rebuilt and reinvented itself in each generation. Its history is one of remarkable resilience ? it has survived great fires, pestilence, civil war, the Blitz ? and of stark contrasts ? pageantry, wealth, poverty, squalor. It has been the home or inspiration for countless writers and artists (Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dr Johnson, Pepys, Hogarth, Dickens). A N Wilson will look at the interaction between the city?s people, architecture, economy, criminal London, low life and high life, beggars and politicians, Royal families, intellectuals to bring alive the history of a city which was once the centre of the greatest mercantile empire the world has ever known and which remains one of the major financial hubs of the world.Read More