A tale of a smelly city (Restoration London: Everyday Life in the 1660s - Liz)

Member Name: duskmaiden

Product:	Restoration London: Everyday Life in the 1660s - Liz
Date:	14/09/06 (98 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: easy to read, fascinating

Disadvantages: some f facts repeated

If you were to name one of the most eventful periods in London’s long and turbulent history the decade following the Restoration of the throne by Charles II in 1660 would come up near the top of the list. This was the decade of the Great Plague of 1665 followed a year later by the Great Fire of London. It was a time hen the monarch was merry and his mistresses such as Nell Gwyn (the orange seller and actress) were plentiful. Since I have moved to the capital I have become interested in the history of London and I felt this period would be an interesting one to focus on so borrowed Liza Picard’s Restoration from our local library.

Restoration London is a fascinating read. It is a social history of London that uses contemporary sources such as Samuel Pepys’s diary, court records, etiquette books and other fascinating sources. This period is one of the first where this is possible due to a larger number of records and also a higher literacy rate than say the medieval period). I liked this approach of having a narrow time scale in a specific place such as London as the book is not too general or too large. I also think I enjoyed this book as it was a social history. i sometimes find other histories such as political ones quite dry and boring.

The book really brings the period to life as Picard explores all areas of everyday life (especially for what we would refer to as the middle classes). I like how she tries to involve all the senes as she describes the sights, sounds and (the not so nice) smells of London. The book really gave me a good picture of where they lived, what they wore, their relationship with each other (such as the role of women compared to men in the household), how they worked and shopped and how they spent their leisure times. It describes the mundane things such as household chores and cooking to special occasions such as weddings. For those who like the darker, grizzlier dissonant history there are chapters on illness, medicine and also on crime and punishment. Her chapters are thematic and the only faulty I could really find with the book is that sometimes she repeated herself a little bit when information fell into more than one category.

The book is illustrated with black and white plates of contemporary documents and engravings alongside photographs of artefacts from the time.

Liza Picard is not a historian by trade. This book is not to academic in tone and thus would be very accessible to the general reader. However it is not too simplistic so I think this book could easily be used as background reading material for A level or university students studying this period. I liked the detailed footnotes as it meant you could explore the topic further if you so wished.

Liza Picard has written a number of books relating to the social history of London in different eras.(here are ones on Elizabethan, and Victorian London as well as Samuel Johnson’s London in the 18th century. I really enjoyed the one on Restoration London, as it was informative and easy to read. I will certainly be reading some of her other books

This book can be bought on Amazon for £5.99

Summary: fascinating book about an important era in London's past