Necropolis
- 320pages
- 12 heures de lecture
A vivid historical narrative of how London has dealt with its dead from pagan burial rites through the Black Death to the Blitz and the death of Diana.
Le Londres de Catherine Arnold Séries
Cette série explore les histoires singulières et souvent méconnues de Londres. Elle dévoile des chapitres cachés du passé de la ville, peuplés de personnages excentriques et d'événements surprenants. C'est une lecture captivante pour ceux qui aiment découvrir les aspects moins connus mais fascinants de l'histoire urbaine.
Ordre de lecture recommandé
Bedlam
- 306pages
- 11 heures de lecture
An informative and entertaining study of London's lunatic fringe, and how we have dealt with the mad among us from pre-history to the present day.
If Paris is the city of love, then London is the city of lust. This vibrant chronicle explores London's relationship with sex through the ages, revealing how England's capital has been associated with desire and the sins of the flesh for over a thousand years. Richard of Devises, a monk in 1180, noted the prevalence of obscenities, while as early as the second century AD, London was infamous for its raucous festivities and disorderly houses. Award-winning historian Catharine Arnold examines the city's vice-laden history, showcasing how London has always traded in the currency of sex. From pornographic publishers on Fleet Street to courtesans in Haymarket, the streets have witnessed a range of colorful sexual behaviors. Arnold's accessible style takes readers on a journey through London's fleshpots, featuring buxom strumpets, louche aristocrats, and Victorian flagellants. The narrative captures the city's oscillation between sexual exuberance and moral panic, swinging from Puritanism to hedonism. With later chapters delving into Victorian London and the twentieth-century sexual underground, this chronicle presents a fascinating look at the raw and ribald aspects of the city.
Beginning with an atmospheric account of Tyburn, we are set up for a grisly excursion through London as a city of ne'er do wells, taking in beheadings and brutality at the Tower, Elizabethan street crime, cutpurses and con-men, through to the Gordon Riots and Highway robbery of the 18th century and the rise of prisons, the police and the Victorian era of incarceration. As well as the crimes, Arnold also looks at the grotesque punishments meted out to those who transgressed the law throughout London's history - from the hangings, drawings and quarterings at Tyburn over 500 years to being boiled in oil at Smithfield. This popular historian also investigates the influence of London's criminal classes on the literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, and ends up with our old favourites, the Krays and Soho gangs of the 50s and 60s. London's crimes have changed over the centuries, both in method and execution. Underworld London traces these developments, from the highway robberies of the eighteenth century, made possible by the constant traffic of wealthy merchants in and out of the city, to the beatings, slashings and poisonings of the Victorian era. An interesting read full of gory facts and details about London. This paperback book has 340 pages and measures: 19.7 x 12.9 x 2.2cm.
Globe
- 312pages
- 11 heures de lecture
The life of William Shakespeare, Britain's greatest dramatist, was inextricably linked with the history of London. Together, the great writer and the great city came of age and confronted triumph and tragedy. Triumph came when Shakespeare's company, the Chamberlain's Men, opened the Globe playhouse on Bankside in 1599, under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth I. Tragedy touched the lives of many of his contemporaries, from fellow playwright Christopher Marlowe to the disgraced Earl of Essex, while London struggled against the ever-present threat of riots, rebellions and outbreaks of plague.