London : A Short History - Hardcover

A Wilson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0297607154 ISBN 13: 9780297607151

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004

Synopsis

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.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

In its two thousand years of history, London has ruled a rainy island and a globe-spanning empire, it has endured plague and fire and bombing, it has nurtured and destroyed poets and kings, revolutionaries and financiers, geniuses and visionaries of every stripe. To distill the magic and the majesty of this infinitely enthralling city into a single brief volume would seem an impossible task-yet acclaimed biographer and novelist A. N. Wilson brilliantly accomplishes it in "London: A History.
Founded by the Romans, London was a flourishing provincial capital before falling into ruin with the rest of the Roman Empire. Centuries passed before the city rose to prominence once again when William the Conqueror chose to be crowned king in Westminster Abbey. In
Chaucer's day, London Bridge opened the way for expansion over the Thames. By the time Shakespeare's plays were being mounted at the Globe, London was a dense, seething, and explosively growing metropolis-a city of brothels and taverns and delicate new palaces and pleasure gardens.
With deftly sketched vignettes and memorable portraits in miniature, Wilson conjures up the essence of London through the ages-high finance and gambling during the Georgian age, John Nash's stunning urban makeover at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the waves of building and immigration that transformed London beyond recognition during the reign of Queen Victoria, the devastation of the two world wars, the painful and corrupt postwar rebuilding effort, and finally the glamorous, polyglot, expensive, and sometimes ridiculous London of today. Every age had its heroes and villains, from church builder Christopher Wren to jail breaker JackSheppard, from urbane wit Samuel Johnson to wartime prime minister Winston Churchill, and Wilson places each one in the drama of London's history.
Exuberant, opinionated, surprising, often funny, A. N. Wilson's "London is the perfect match of author and subject. In a one short irresistible volume, Wilson gives us the essence of the people, the architecture, the intrigue, the art and literature and history that make London one of the most fascinating cities in the world.

About the Author

A N Wilson was born in 1950. He has written biographies of Jesus, St Paul, Milton and Sir Walter Scott , and Tolstoy won the Whitbread Prize for Biography. He is also the author of 12 novels, including Wise Virgin which won the W H Smith award. He used to be the Literary Editor of the Evening Standard and now writes a regular column for the Standard, Daily Telegraph, and Sunday Telegraph.

About this edition

• Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0297607154
• ISBN 13: 9780297607151
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 166