London the Biography
Peter Acroyd
822 pages, including index
Published in 2000

As the title says, this is as much a biography as a history of London. While the broad outline of the book is set in chronological order, the (short) chapters themselves concern themselves less with chronology and more with commonality of experience. Each chapter shows how the various conditions and subjects of living in London changed and stayed the same throughout its history.

Broad themes of living in the city pop up again and again in different centuries and chaptes: housing, crime, theatre and entertainment, the people of London, civil unrest, etc. Acroyd makes extensive use of quotations from earlier works about London as well as extracts from contemporary writing about the city. People like Dr Johnson, Tobias Smollet, Henry James, James Boswell, Charles Dickens and others are quoted often, to give an impression of live in London at any given time.

This is an impressive and entertaining book, though not one most people are capable of reading straight through. After a while the enormous amount of information and anecdotes just overwhelms you.