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An excellent portrayal of London past and present

Advantages: Excellent read.
Disadvantages: None

If anyone is fit to right a biography of London then it is without a doubt Peter Ackroyd. As a native Londoner his passion and fascination with the capital is clear throughout this 79 chapter compendium of London past and present. One of the key things that makes this unique from any other guide book or ‘History of London’ is the order in which Ackroyd has chosen to explore London. Rather than dividing the chapters up to encompass neat districts ...
...sprawling, uncontrollable nature of the city by following a non linear narrative. The chapters are divided into particular topic including crime, pictures and signs, smells, sounds, rivers. Ackroyd explores London through each of these topics journeying through the past to the present and back again. This could have resulted in a very long and very confusing text if it were not for Ackroyds clear and precise prose, he may go off on a tangent but ...

loobylou88 11.12.2009 · Read full review
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Review of London: The Biography - Peter Ackroyd

Telling the history of the nation with enjoyment

Advantages: Well-told history
Disadvantages: None

...says on the cover, though a rather dry academic designation like that might put off the more general reader. As long as it doesn't, fine. Because anybody who has read Marr in the papers, seen him on TV, or enjoyed his various historical documentary series, will need little further recommendation from me. With over 600 pages of closely printed text, this one isn't for the faint-hearted and probably not for the casual reader. But though a serious work, ...
...nation, and the text is a journey through solid fact and not a few amusing anecdotes about the main protagonists. For example, Churchill's retort when a nervous official was sent to summon him from the lavatory because the Lord Privy Seal wanted to see him immediately will make you chuckle. (Shall I tell you? OK, he said he could only deal with one s**t at a time). So will the little domestic contretemps at the Macmillan country home caused by the ...

JOHNV 10.12.2009 · Read full review
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Review of A History of Modern Britain - Andrew Marr

How we used to treat the 'mad'

Advantages: Interesting if grim insight into how the mentally afflicted were treated in ages past
Disadvantages: None really, for those interested in the subject

At the very least, this book is a salutary reminder that every time we read or hear anything about mental health issues, or care in the community, our ancestors used to talk about madness and disease – the two often being inseparable. For hundreds of years, even less than a century ago, people suffering from no more than acute depression were treatedin 'hospital' (I use the terms advisedly) in a manner which sounds horrific today. The illustration ...
...Hogarth's 18th-century series The Rake's Progress, says much about prevailing attitudes and perception at the time. A debtor, his head shaved, is incarcerated and surrounded by a crowd of gaolers and keepers while other unfortunate souls look on. People suffering from what the French called la maladie anglaise were regarded as freaks, little better than criminals. They were dumped in London's Bethlehem Hospital, alias Bedlam, founded in 1247, where ...

JOHNV 06.12.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Bedlam - Catharine Arnold

She became an MP - even with that hair, Lady Astor

Advantages: Well-written, extremely interesting, and the author comes across as genuinely likeable
Disadvantages: None

Who could resist a title like that? And is this some lesser-known Shirley Williams, a former librarian or something? The answer is no. So why the title? Shirley Catlin, as she was born, tells us in the early pages of this memoir that during her childhood her father encouraged her to climb the bookshelves in their Chelsea house, right up to the ceiling. It was a secret between the two of them, as her mother, Testament of Youth Author Vera Brittain, ...
...Apart from Margaret Thatcher and Barbara Castle, Shirley Williams was probably the best-known female politician in Britain of her generation. She recalls her early childhood in the years before the Second World War, and her evacuation to America – where she might have become a child star, in the running for the leading role in the film National Velvet, had she not been beaten to it by Elizabeth Taylor. Yet politics was always in her blood. Her father, ...

JOHNV 25.11.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Climbing the Bookshelves: The Autobiography of Shirley Williams - Shirley Williams

A fascinating history of a very rough trade

Advantages: A very interesting book about an important part of British history
Disadvantages: The specific details about Bristol will not be of interest to all readers

The Trade What is this book about? In short, this book tells the story of the part Bristol played in the transatlantic slave trade. Bristol benefitted hugely from the so-called triangular trade, whereby manufactured goods, weapons, cloth and so on were shipped from Bristol mainly to the west coast of Africa, slaves were taken from Africa to the America’s and the Caribbean and sugar, tobacco and rum were taken from these locations back to Bristol. ...
...there (and partly still is). The slave trade made Bristol – and a small number of Bristolians – rich, although very few slaves were ever seen in Bristol. The book is not purely about Bristol and other trading towns and cities are mentioned – notably London and Liverpool, of course, but also others like Plymouth, Barnstaple and Topsham. The book is in four major parts. The first part looks at the development of Bristol as a port and a trading city, ...

andyk910 18.11.2009 · Read full review
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Review of The Trade - Victoria Coules