Everyday Life in Victorian London

Helen Amy • £22.99
amberley-books.com

Everyday Life in Victorian London explores the daily lives of adults and children, aristocracy and middle classes, working poor and the ‘submerged tenth’ underclass. It shows the different faces of London, with its many extremes and contrasts – by day and by night; busy and peaceful; ugly and beautiful; safe and dangerous. It looks at the River Thames and its importance; the City, West and East Ends; at work, leisure, health, hospitals, education, food, clothes, housing, shops and markets, transport and infrastructure, public services, crime, the police and prisons, immigrant communities, and important events such as the Great Exhibition of 1851 and Queen Victoria’s golden and diamond jubilee.

Daily life in the capital will be explored at three levels – above ground (views from hot air balloons), at ground level, and below ground (the sewage system, the underground railway and cemeteries). A central theme is the rapid growth in population throughout the century due to immigration from the countryside and abroad, and the resulting expansion into ‘The Monster City’. The final chapter describes London at the end of the century with improved transport, a newly embanked Thames, a sewage system, housing for the poor, public buildings, hospitals and prisons – a transformed capital of a great empire and the embryo of the London we know today.

The Story of the Big Four Railway Companies

Colin G. Maggs • £14.99
thehistorypress.co.uk

GWR, LMS, LNER and SR: these initials arouse memories of the Cornish Riviera Express, the streamlined Coronation Scot, the streamlined Coronation with its beaver tail, and the Southern Electrics, yet three of these companies only enjoyed a life of 25 years. Colin G. Maggs, who was born in this era and is one of the country’s leading railway historians, is perfectly placed to tell the story of how these Big Four companies came into being and their enormous success following the rundown of the railways during the First World War, which system of neglect led to 26 companies becoming 4. The remarkable, if surprisingly brief, era of the Big Four saw great changes and achievements, including streamlining; speed records; electrifi-cation; diesel power; railway-owned buses and aircraft; and a real sense of cooperation between companies at last.

Voices of the Georgian Age

James Hobson • £22
pen-and-sword.co.uk

This is the story of 17 witnesses to the remarkably diverse Georgian century after 1720. While being very different in many ways, the voices have two things in common: they have an outstanding story to tell, and that story is available to all for free online.

Despite the obvious constraints of surviving evidence, men and woman, rich and poor and respectable and criminal are all covered. Some wrote out their life story with deliberation, knowing that it would be read in future, while others simply put their private thoughts to paper for their own benefit.

This book guides you through their diaries, memoirs and travelogues, providing an entertaining insight in their lives, and a personal history of the period. It is also a preparatory guide for those wishing to read the original documents themselves.