London in the Twentieth Century: A City and Its People

Description

Jerry White's London in the Twentieth Century, Winner of the Wolfson Prize, is a masterful account of the city's most tumultuous century by its leading expert. In 1901 no other city matched London in size, wealth and grandeur. Yet it was also a city where poverty and disease were rife. For its inhabitants, such contradictions and diversity were the defining experience of the next century of dazzling change. In the worlds of work and popular culture, politics and crime, through war, immigration and sexual revolution, Jerry White's richly detailed and captivating history shows how the city shaped their lives and how it in turn was shaped by them.

Professor Jerry White teaches London history at Birkbeck, University of London. He is the author of an acclaimed trilogy of London from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. His more recent books include Mansions of Misery: A Biography of the Marshalsea Debtors' Prison and Zeppelin Nights, a social history of London during the First World War. He was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature by the University of London in 2005 and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

A wonderful book. I passionately urge people to read it from cover to cover -- Roy Porter A fascinating story and an outstanding contribution to the study of London history * Spectator * Succeeds brilliantly ... lucid and engaging * Independent * Engaging, optimistic and enthusiastic, and very funny * Daily Telegraph * White is plainly fascinated by London, and for anyone who shares that fascination his book offers many rewards * Times Literary Supplement *