Paperback. Pub date: 2000 Pages: 576 Publisher: Penguin Roy Porter. a Historian of formidable range. Turns to urban history in the this marvellously lucid. Informative and passionate book ... On Porter's facts are always at the service of the narrative . which has a finely maintained momentum. balancing statistics with the words of historians. diarists and novelists. poets and churchmen: Pepys. Boswell. Fielding. Walpole. Blake. Mayhew. Wells. Woolf. Spark .... a timely and illiant book . '- Claire Tomalin. Evening Standard.' A vivid celeation of the city. but also an elegy for its decline. bubbling with statistics and anecdote. from Boadicea to Betjeman. '- Richard Holmes. Daily Telegraph Books of the Year.Contents: Formation to Reformation; Tudor London; war. plague and fire; the triumph of town - from Restoration to Regency; commercial city - 1650-1800; culture city-life ...