PAPERBACKS
Steering a course around the caricature of ‘the Victorian’, Gange teases readers with just a hint of threat buzzing in the crowds of Victoria’s coronation procession before excavating brooding urban crisis and suburbanisation. He then grapples with nationhood and empire, class, religion and gender before robustly tackling the period’s economic decline.
The chapters on religion and empire are masterful, conveying a clear narrative analysis with a sense of chronology and debate. There is a useful further reading section and handy index and the text is peppered with generous glossary boxes explaining jingoism, the East India Company and gothic revivalism – to name but a few.
A central chapter explores how the Victorians saw their own past, present and future. This ties in with Gange’s core message that we need to be aware of the shifting lens through which the Victorians have been interpreted by others, therebyy actingg as “reflections, refractions, rationales and revoca- tions of modern society”. This is an excellent beginners’ guide for students and general readers alike. The Story of London by Stephen Porter Stephen Porter has given us many accounts of London’s past before, but this is his most ambitious yet: a narrative of the city’s history from the earliest times to the present. It is copiously illustrated, often with plates provided by the author himself – including one of the Tabard Inn in Southwark, mentioned in Geoffrey Chaucer’s 14th-century The Canterbury Tales, which your reviewer had never seen before.
As earlyy as the time of Bede in the eighthh century, London had emerged aas a major commercial centre, wiitth politics coming later. Thiss scope means that, despite thhee book’s brevity, there are many uunfamiliar gems. For examppple, the Roman name ‘Londiniuuum’ owes less to Latin than to ann earlier language referring tto ‘a place at the navigable river’. And the Great Fire of 166666, familiar to all from the wwork of Pepys, may have destrrroyed a smaller proportioonn of the City than a conflagratttion in about AD 125.
This is a short book on a big subject, wweell presented.