Free (Kindle) London: A Concise History [Vintage City Building & Inhabitants History]

[ATDrake]

London: A Concise History: From the Romans to the Twentieth Century by the late British author Geoffrey Trease (Wikipedia), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature who was known for his meticulous historical research and contributions to children's literature, is his vintage place history of England's eponymous capital city, from its earliest days as a Roman town, and continuing construction and expansion onward through the centuries to modern times (only as of WWII though, according to a customer review), touching upon its various distinguishing attractions and notable inhabitants, free for a limited time courtesy of publisher Endeavour Press.

This was originally published in 1975 by Thames and Hudson.

Currently free @ Amazon (available to Canadians & in the UK and pretty much everywhere else Amazon sells worldwide, since this is being done via their KDP Select exclusive-or-else program)

Description
Before the Romans crossed the Thames in AD 43 London was barely a cluster of mud huts.

With a bridge and a radiating network of roads, the Romans began creating Londinium. It grew and developed and spread.

From then on the city took on many forms.

The Anglo-Saxon Lundeneric

The London Town of Mayor Walworth and Wat Tyler

Dunbar’s ‘flower of cities all’

Spenser’s ‘most kindly nurse’.

To Dr Johnson, London had ‘all that life can afford’

Whilst 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 extensive and peculiar. Many a native Londoner will find unexpected things in this survey of London’s rich and varied past.