The History of London

Besant wrote this one for schoolchildren, and the shape shows it: sixty-three short chapters called Lessons, with notes at the back glossing everything from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the buried Fleet river. He opens by throwing out the old legend that Brutus of Troy founded the city and putting evidence in its place, above all what he calls the lie of the ground, the hills and streams and marshes that explain why London stands where it does. Roman wall and Norman tower, London Bridge and St Paul’s, leprosy and famine, the plague and the Great Fire, trade and the playhouses and the Georgian city. The last lessons bring the story up to the County Council of 1888 and close on civic duty, telling young readers what they owe the past and the present.