Book Description

Roy Porter, a historian of formidable range, turns to urban history in this marvellously lucid, informative and passionate book... Porter’s facts are always at the service of the narrative, which has a finely maintained momentum, balancing statistics with the words of historians, diarists and novelists, poets and churchmen: Pepys, Boswell, Fielding, Walpole, Blake, Mayhew, Wells, Woolf, Spark, ... a timely and brilliant book.

CLAIRE TOMALIN, EVENING STANDARD

A vivid celebration of the city, but also an elegy for its decline, bubbling with statistics and anecdote, from Boadicea to Betjeman.

RICHARD HOLMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH BOOKS OF THE YEAR