Lavish, large format picture book about London, with Peter Ackroyd's inimitable text and captions. This is a magnificent pictorial history of London, to tie in with Peter Ackroyd's BBC TV series based on his bestselling book 'London: A Biography'.
The book is divided into three parts:
- Fire and Destiny: London as metropolis; maps and "layering" and "continuities" (the same street through the ages); Roman London; the Great Fire of 1666 and the Blitz of 1940.
- Crowded London: Begins with over-crowding of the city in Elizabethan times; spectacle in the streets (street sellers, street theatre, street fairs, prostitutes etc); the London mob (the Gordon riots, Notting Hill 20th century riots).
- Water and Darkness: London as centre of 19th century empire; the Thames; the urban poor; the homeless; sewage; the building of the underground; the lost rivers (the river Fleet etc) ; the blackout of the 2nd World War; London fog.
