Books : History : Archaeology

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Books : History : Archaeology

• A History of Modern Britain

  Andrew Marr

  
  
   

• The Six Wives of Henry VIII

  Alison Weir

  
  
   

• Our Times

  A.N. Wilson

  
  
   

• Archaeology: Theories, Methods and Practice

  Colin Renfrew, Paul Bahn

  
  
   

• The Decline and Fall of the British Empire

  Piers Brendon

  
  
   

• London: The Biography

  Peter Ackroyd

  
  When the eminent novelist and biographer Peter Ackroyd finished writing London: The Biography, he almost immediately had a heart attack, such was the effort of his 800-page work about the "human body" that is this most fascinating of cities. And not just any human body either, but "envisaged in the form of a young man with his arms outstretched in a gesture of liberation... it embodies the energy and exaltation of a city continually beating in great waves of progress and of confidence."

  Probably there is no one better placed than Ackroyd--the author of mammoth lives of Dickens and Blake, and novels such as Hawksmoor and Dan Leno and the Lime House Golem which set singular characters against the backdrop of a city constantly shifting in time--to write such a rich, sinewy account of "Infinite London".

  Ackroyd's London is no mere chronology. Its chapters take on such varied themes as drinking, sex, childhood, poverty, crime and punishment, sewage, food, pestilence and fire, immigration, maps, theatre and war. We learn that gin was "the demon of London for half a century", and that "it has been estimated that in the 1740s and 1750s there were 17,000 'gin-houses'." Fleet Street was an area known for its "violent delights" where "a 14-year-old boy, only 18 inches high, was to be seen in 1702 at a grocer's shop called the Eagle and Child by Shoe Lane." By the mid 19th century "London had become known as the greatest city on earth." By 1939 "one in five of the British population had become a Londoner."

  Though London's chapters vary meaning that it can be dipped into at random, Ackroyd is employing a skilful and continuous theme throughout, which constantly links past and present--the similarities of children's games in Lambeth in 1910 and 1999; the obsession with time--"in 21st-century London time rushes forward and is everywhere apparent", while in 18th-century London the church clock of Newgate "regulated the times of hanging." Above all, he insists that the "dark secret life" of the metropolis is as relevant today as it was in perhaps its most appropriate period, Victorian London.

  Again and again Ackroyd returns to the image of London as a living organism, hence his use of the word "biography" in the title. At once awed by and intimate with this "ubiquitous" city, he stresses that "it can be located nowhere in particular... its circumference is everywhere." --Catherine Taylor

  
   

• I Never Knew That About London

  Christopher Winn

  
  
   

• Remember, Remember (The Fifth of November): The History of Britain in Bite-Sized Chunks

  Judy Parkinson

  
  
   

• Black Diamonds: The Rise and Fall of an English Dynasty

  Catherine Bailey

  
  
   

• The Time-traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century

  Ian Mortimer

  
  
   

• Fifty Things You Need to Know About British History

  Hugh Williams

  
  
   

• Thames: Sacred River

  Peter Ackroyd

  
  
   

• A Little History of the English Country Church

  Roy Strong

  
  
   

• Gaunty's Best of British: It's Called Great Britain, Not Rubbish Britain

  Jon Gaunt

  
  
   

• Derelict London

  Paul Talling

  
  
   

• Becoming Queen

  Kate Williams

  
  
   

• Bomber Boys: Fighting Back 1940-1945

  Patrick Bishop

  
  
   

• London in the Nineteenth Century: A Human Awful Wonder of God

  Jerry White

  
  
   

• God's Executioner: Oliver Cromwell and the Conquest of Ireland

  Dr. Micheal O Siochr

  
  
   

• The Road to Wigan Pier (Penguin Modern Classics)

  George Orwell