London : A History (Modern Library Chronicles)

Rating:
Summary: A well written view from the upper deck of the bus..
Review: A.N. Wilson has compressed in less than 200 pages of lucid prose the history of one of the world's most fasicinating cities. The energy in London is palpable. "Bliss was it" to be in that city on any Friday as the tubes crowd with eager, energized bodies at the end of the work week. What's remarkable about London, and a facet of the city that I first learned from Wilon's history, is the extent to which the city has really lacked a stable, governing structure. For the first nine decades of the 19th century, Wilson notes, London had no democratically elected body charged with responsibility for health, transport, waste, parks and so on. Indeed, a recurring theme in Wilson is the struggle, which continues to this day, to identify for London a governing structure. His discussion of the bombing during WWII is worth the price of the book. Less known, and at once interesting and disconcerting, is Wilson's description of the sale of commercial real estate tracts after the war. The way those transactions were managed, or not as the case may be, accounts for much of what Wilson finds disagreeable in the London skyline. Wilson's favorite tourist spot is Sir John Soanne's museum. I have not seen it. For me, it would be hard to rival Winston Churchill's war rooms. This small book does justice to a great city, no small feat.

Rating:
Summary: Maps, Please
Review: Maps. If you're going to do a book on the historical development of London (or any other major city), you must include a few maps so readers not intimately familiar with all of its environs will know what's where and how it developed. Though I've spent a fair amount of time in London, I found myself having to consult maps and other references to give the book the right context. I wound up with a Dorling Kindersley guide my wife bought by my side, which provided pictures, diagrams and other information. It proved to be a perfect complement.

I sympathize with the enormity of the task, summarizing the history of a great metropolis in these few pages. However, this volume seems thinner than others in the Modern Library Chronicles series.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining history
Review: The Modern Library Chronicles Series matches an accomplished author with a given era or place or institution with which he or she has a special affinity. The product is a ?short history,? usually no more than 200 pages. The prose styling is always clean and fluent. It is a worthy series and LONDON is a dependable addition to it.

With only 192 pages of text, and some of those taken up by chapter separations, author Wilson, a novelist and biographer, obviously had to make some choices in what to present. Those seeking Roman Londinium and the settlement it was in the Dark Ages may be disappointed to find that the city?s first millennium is dispatched in about 4 pages. In fact, half the book is devoted to less than the last 200 years. For Wilson, London the city, London the seat of Britain has its roots in the Norman invasion of 1066. Governance, commerce and urban design are recurring topics as Wilson moves through eras, with his chapter titles sharply characterizing the emergent themes he finds within. So it is ?Chaucer?s? London, not ?Medieval? London, and not because of the poet?s artistic legacy; it is his London to suggest the value the crown placed on alliances with tradesmen and moneymakers. It is Stuart and Tudor London, not Elizabethan or Shakespearean, etc., up to the end of the Bowler Hat (1960s and 70s), Cosmopolis, and Silly London (present). Wilson is not hesitant to assail the results of poor planning and dismal aesthetics. Like Charles Lamb, however, who could not think of a place more desirable than London at a time when the streets and Thames stank of sewage and citizens were expiring in a notorious heat spell, he also finds it elegant.

Because this is filled with good information and flows easily, I probably would have awarded it 5 stars were it not for something that is not its fault: I had already read V.S. Pritchett?s LONDON PERCEIVED, which raised the bar high and begs comparison. In that 1962 book, which isn?t that much longer in length, the author walks through London?s neighborhoods, pulling out a balance and depth of vision that ultimately eludes Wilson.