Books about London tend to be macrocosmic or microscopic in approach. The macrocosmic or Ackroydian study is vast, discursive and, in the case of Peter Ackroyd at least, jubilantly idiosyncratic. The micro- scopic concentrates on one small aspect of the whole — medieval drainage or Cheapside brothels in the time of Hogarth. James Hamilton and Leo Hollis, in these two curiously similar books, steer a course between the two which is sometimes uneasy but generally successful.
Each author takes a period of London’s history: Hollis between the Restoration and the accession of Queen Anne, Hamilton from 1805 to the opening of the Great Exhibition in 1851. Each argues that their 40 or 50 years were unique in the intellectual, economic and social ferment which transformed the city and set it irrevocably on the path to modernity. Each puts up a formidably good case for his contention.
London in 1665 was just beginning to pick itself up after the moral and physical devastation of the civil war when it was struck by a plague that cost nearly 100,000 lives and then by the Great Fire: 13,200 houses were destroyed as well as 87 parish churches, the Gothic cathedral of St Paul’s and all the major sites of trade and government.
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