The Making of Modern London

19 Dec 2009 - Borders

Another Borders closing sale bargain. I didn't even know this book existed before I found it. Subtitled "A people's history of the Capital from 1815 to the present day" it is just that, an excellent survey of the time period, broken into four long sections which are in turn based on four separate books. Each section has themed chapters, so we learn about the West End, the East End, transport, shops, policing, immigration etc across each section of the time period, which works really well. As well as history gleaned from official records, we also have letters, diaries and eventually oral history from people who lived through the times (because the originals were published in the 1980s, these go back a bit further show more than a similar project could do today) and these give it an excellent lively flavour and truth. Good illustrations and an obvious love for London and enthusiasm for history make this big fat book an enjoyable read, even after wallowing around in the social history of the 20th century as much as I have been doing recently! show less

In this work on London, much better reading than his London’s Thames, Weightman is back into the excellent, flowing writing and solid construction of the tale he previously evidenced in his works The Frozen Water Trade (http://www.librarything.com/work/327327) and his exciting tale on Marconi and his “Magic” Box (http://www.librarything.com/work/456154).

Originally, the four volumes of The Making of Modern London were the basis of a Thames TV Documentary (hence the secondary author, film maker Steve Humphries) and were published as four separate books. It covers the period of the late Victorians but comes up through the histories of the building of the railways, the massive London Docks and the slums, to the Coronation of Queen show more Elizabeth and the decline of the British Empire. London suffered immensely during the wars and to the blight of poverty, the Blitz of Hitler’s bombers added homeless thousands, separated families and left just bombed, fire-scorched rubble where once whole communities lived.

The slow recovery, the swing to the Labour Party and with the slow introduction of better health-care and decent housing London then recovered yet again and boomed into the ‘swinging sixties’ and consumerism of the 70s.

This is a well written and intimate story of London, from villages and open fields to the city that still thrills and charms its visitors and inhabitants. As Dr. Johnson once remarked, London is life … and this book is one of its great autobiographies. show less