FLOWER OF ALL CITIES: The History of London

Founded by the Romans in the middle of the 1st century AD, named by them Londinium, the city was abandoned by the Romans at the beginning of what some still think of as the 'Dark Ages' of the seaborne Saxons and Vikings. In the Middle Ages it was called by some Londinopolis, a city of bustling waterfronts and imposing walls, of praying fires and nodding masts and which the poet William Dunbar in 1501 described as 'the flower of Cities all'. The history of London up to 1666 is a story of Romans, Saxons, Vikings, Normans, Plantagenets, Tudors and Stuarts. Obliterated by the Great Fire, the city's busy, beautiful, dangerous life is described through skilful analysis of the archaeological, pictorial and written records. It features famous figures in British history like Queen Boudicca, King Alfred, Thomas Becket, Wat Tyler, Dick Whittington, Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell and Guy Fawkes. And Chaucer, Bacon, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Donne, Inigo Jones, Thomas Middleton, Milton, Wren, Aphra Behn and Samuel Pepys. Chapters cover Lancastrian and Yorkist history and the Wars of the Roses, social history, building works and archaeological finds and four appendices cover Saxon, Medieval and Tudor Roman walks. The first of many images is a picture of Bronze Age Boudicca's grave at Parliament Hill and an Iron Age hillfort Caesar's Camp at Wimbledon Common. 288pp with dozens of photographs throughout the text plus 16 pages of colour plates.