Table of contents: Leeds is a city with a rich commercial tradition and fine buildings to match. Its prosperity, founded on the wool trade, is reflected in the seventeenth-century church of St John, with its magnificent Jacobean woodcarving and furnishings, while the town's eighteenth-century expansion produced elegant Georgian parades and squares with homes for wealthy merchants. They now stand cheek-by-jowl with solid, proud warehouses and offices of the railway age in a wonderful variety of styles ranging from elegant neo-Grecian to Gothic, Moorish and Egyptian.

A richly illustrated history that explores every aspect of life in Leeds. This new history of Leeds covers all the main political, social and economic developments of the city: The Harrying of the North devastated the surrounding area in 1069; the Civil War saw a battle fought in the town itself; cholera and typhus epidemics raged in the nineteenth century; the building of the Middleton Railway in 1758 established the oldest railway in the world; and Richard Oastler, the Factory King, launched the campaign for the Ten Hour Bill in the Leeds Mercury. Due emphasis is given to the place of the wool textile industry, the principal industry until the twentieth century. The story is brought right up to date, as are recent changes in the townscape. An intriguing look at this great city's remarkable history.