Scheda del Libro

Autore: Robert Geoffrey Trease [1909-1998]

Titolo: London, a concise History

Editore: Thames and Hudson

Anno: 1975 (I Edizione, in lingua inglese)

Illustrazioni: 205 fotografie e disegni in B/N

Copertina: Rigida con sovracoperta

Pagine: 224

Stato di conservazione: Più che Buono

Descrizione

L

ondon, we should remember, is an Italian invention. Before the Romans crossed the Thames in AD 43 and consolidated that feat with a bridge and a radiating network of roads, there was not so much as a cluster of mud huts. From then on, as the Roman Londinium, the Anglo-Saxon Lundeneric, the London Town of Mayor Walworth and Wat Tyler, it grew and developed and spread. Dunbar's flower of cities all, Spenser's 'most kindly nurse', which, to Dr Johnson, had 'all that life can afford', became Cobbett's 'Great Wen', and Shelley thought Hell 'a city much like London'.

It is an enduringly fascinating story, with 'a cast of thousands': Fitzstephen, friend of Thomas à Becket, to whom the only inconvenience of London is the immoderate drinking of foolish persons'; Burbage the actor-manager and his fellow player Will Shakespeare; clever, amorous Samuel Pepys; Boswell, whose London Journal is a mine of good quotes; the Prince Regent and John Nash who designed Regent's Park; and many, many more. The story is taken to the lurid, heroic days and nights of the Blitz, the Second Fire of London, and the period of reconstruction that followed.

Geoffrey Trease's knowledge of London is as extensive and peculiar as Sam Weller's and many a native Londoner will find unexpected things in this survey of London's rich and varied past. He is a past Chairman of the Society of Authors, and writer of more than seventy books.