Discover one of the world's most fascinating and historic cities through 30 dramatic true stories spanning the rich history of London. Author Kevin Jackson takes readers through more than 2,000 years of British history with exciting essays on topics such as London's origins, Richard the Lion-Hearted, Geoffrey Chaucer, Henry V, Shakespeare, Queen Victoria, Jack the Ripper, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, the Beatles, and more. In addition, guided walking tours of London's historic neighborhoods, illustrated with color photographs and period maps, take readers to the places where history really happened.

Discover one of the world's most fascinating and historic cities through 30 dramatic true stories spanning the rich history of London. Author Kevin Jackson takes readers through more than 2,000 years of British history with exciting essays on topics such as London's origins, Richard the Lion-Hearted, Geoffrey Chaucer, Henry V, Shakespeare, Queen Victoria, Jack the Ripper, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, the Beatles, and more. In addition, guided walking tours of London's historic neighborhoods, illustrated with color photographs and period maps, take readers to the places where history really happened.

In its two thousand years of history, London has ruled a rainy island and a globe-spanning empire, it has endured plague and fire and bombing, it has nurtured and destroyed poets and kings, revolutionaries and financiers, geniuses and visionaries of every stripe. To distill the magic and the majesty of this infinitely enthralling city into a single brief volume would seem an impossible task–yet acclaimed biographer and novelist A. N. Wilson brilliantly accomplishes it in London: A History. Founded by the Romans, London was a flourishing provincial capital before falling into ruin with the rest of the Roman Empire. Centuries passed before the city rose to prominence once again when William the Conqueror chose to be crowned king in Westminster Abbey. In Chaucer’s day, London Bridge opened the way for expansion over the Thames. By the time Shakespeare’s plays were being mounted at the Globe, London was a dense, seething, and explosively growing metropolis–a city of brothels and taverns and delicate new palaces and pleasure gardens. With deftly sketched vignettes and memorable portraits in miniature, Wilson conjures up the essence of London through the ages–high finance and gambling during the Georgian age, John Nash’s stunning urban makeover at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the waves of building and immigration that transformed London beyond recognition during the reign of Queen Victoria, the devastation of the two world wars, the painful and corrupt postwar rebuilding effort, and finally the glamorous, polyglot, expensive, and sometimes ridiculous London of today. Every age had its heroes and villains, from church builder Christopher Wren to jail breaker Jack Sheppard, from urbane wit Samuel Johnson to wartime prime minister Winston Churchill, and Wilson places each one in the drama of London’s history. Exuberant, opinionated, surprising, often funny, A. N. Wilson’s London is the perfect match of author and subject. In a one short irresistible volume, Wilson gives us the essence of the people, the architecture, the intrigue, the art and literature and history that make London one of the most fascinating cities in the world.

Discover la dolce vita on this grand tour of Italy's historic capital told through 30 dramatic true stories spanning nearly 3,000 years, plus detailed walking tours complete with easy-to-read maps. From the Curia Pompei, site of Julius Caesar's assassination in 44 BC, to the Borgia Apartments in the Vatican, see the real-life places where history happened in this richly illustrated guide. Along with infamous power games between heroes and villains, you will find Rome's smart and powerful women, such as Agrippina, St. Agnes, Margherita, Artemisia, and more. Then relax like Goethe and Keats at the Café Greco, Rome's chicest coffee bar since 1760, or visit the Palazzo Colonna, the site of Audrey Hepburn's Roman Holiday.

It also provides an annotated edition of the previously unpublished text from Bradford, West Yorkshire Archives MS 32D86/42, while a selection of the most crucial events recorded in the chronicles - such as the Rising of 1381 and Cade's rebellion - is presented in an appendix."--BOOK JACKET.

Three mid-fifteenth-century chronicles of London giving detailed insight into the period, first published in 1905.

Discover one of the world's most fascinating and beautiful cities through 30 dramatic true stories spanning the rich history of Paris. John Baxter takes readers through 2,000 years of French history with tales of the kings, queens, saints, and sinners who shaped the city. Essays explore the major historic events from the martyrdom of Saint Denis near today's Abbesses Métro station to the epic romances of Heloise and Abelard, Josephine and Napoleon, and George Sand and Frédéric Chopin. Learn about the labyrinth of catacombs snaking under all of Paris and the artists who called the seedy Montmartre home in the 19th century. Then see it all for yourself with guided walking tours of each of Paris's historic neighborhoods, illustrated with color photographs and period maps.