Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2389 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-03
• Binding: Paperback
• 624 pages

Guardian
`powerful and overwhelming'

Contemporary Review
`...in its many vivid aspects this excellent work which combines thorough research with a capacity not to loose the reader'

BBC Who Do You Think You Are Magazine
`quite extraordinary... The writing is extremely lucid, colourful and, though he does not shrink from the occasional technical word, the author presents his subject in a very readable story'

Customer Reviews

Fascinating - History made real
This book is both informative and entertaining. What I find particularly fascinating are the various similarities to own period. Problems such as overcrowding, street crime - even the fact that statistically at least, crime figures fell during the course of the century, but people "felt" surrounded by it - seems to be remarkably familiar. I for one have to confess to a much more "cosy" image of the Victorian period (probably fuelled by too many middle-class novels and an "Upstairs Downstairs"-type of preconception. So it was most educational to be told how things really were.

simply great
A magical trip thru 19th.century London,it does not falter in its quest to paint a picture with words----an ex-London Cabbie.

As thorough as a text book - as entertaining as a novel
The breadth of this book would be astonishing enough if it wasn't also for it's coherent structure and - most importantly - lively writing. Mr White knows his subject, but he doesn't lose his thread beneath a mountain of statistics or (Peter Ackroyd take note) lose himself in flights of fancy. He brilliantly portrays, above all, the human drama which makes this such an exciting - and unique - period of history.