For millennia the normal, natural, and pleasurable activity of eating has been surrounded by fear and anxiety. Religious traditions have long decreed what foods are right for their followers to eat, b
Why did London have to wait so long for a main line railway beneath its streets? For a few years in the mid-nineteenth century, Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s broad gauge Great Western trains ran from Read
Explores London both from the viewpoint of the many writers who have used it as a stage for their plots and their characters; and of the readers whose imagination is fired by the knowledge that they a
How the Victorians struggled to overcome diseases such as cholera, typhoid, and scarlet fever in their cities?This is the fascinating story of how?a?small group of dedicated?individuals fought opposit
When Victoria ascended the throne in 1837 London was already the largest metropolis in the world with a population of nearly 2 million, but most of her subjects were still country-dwellers. By the end
There have been more prisons in London than in any other European city. Of these, Newgate was the largest, most notorious, and worst. Built during the 12th century, it became a legendary place—
This book is a repository of intriguing, fascinating, obscure, strange, and entertaining facts and trivia about the history of the British criminal justice system. Armed with this fascinating tome, th
A global guide to sewers that celebrates the magnificently designed and engineered structures beneath the world's great cities.The sewer, in all its murkiness, filthiness, and subterranean seclusion,
Lose yourself in the vast sewer networks that lie beneath the world’s great cities – past and present. Let detailed archival plans, maps and photographs guide you through these subterranean labyrinths
In the sweltering summer of 1858 the stink of sewage from the polluted Thames was so offensive that it drove Members of Parliament from the chamber of the House of Commons. Sewage generated by a popul
