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"Bedlam " The very name, derived from a nickname for the Bethlehem
Hospital, conjures up graphic images of naked patients in filthy
conditions, or parading untended wards deluded that they are
Napoleon or Jesus Christ. This common image of madness can be
traced to William Hogarth's 1735 "Rake's Progress "series, which
depicts Bedlam as a freak show providing entertainment for
Londoners between trips to the zoo, puppet shows, and public
executions. That this is still the most powerful image of Bedlam,
more than two centuries later, says much about the prevailing
attitude to mental illness, although the Bedlam of the popular
imagination is long gone. The hospital was relocated to the suburbs
of Kent in 1930, and Sydney Smirke's impressive Victorian building
in Southwark took on a new role as the Imperial War Museum.
Following the historical narrative structure of "Necropolis," this
history examines the capital's treatment of the insane over the
centuries, from the founding of Bethlehem Hospital in 1247 through
the heyday of the great Victorian asylums to the more enlightened
attitudes that prevail today.
Beginning with an atmospheric account of Tyburn, we are set up for
a grisly excursion through London as a city of ne'er do wells,
taking in beheadings and brutality at the Tower, Elizabethan street
crime, cutpurses and con-men, through to the Gordon Riots and
Highway robbery of the 18thcentury and the rise of prisons, the
police and the Victorian era of incarceration. As well as the
crimes, Arnold also looks at the grotesque punishments meted out to
those who transgressed the law throughout London's history - from
the hangings, drawings and quarterings at Tyburn over 500 years to
being boiled in oil at Smithfield. This popular historian also
investigates the influence of London's criminal classes on the
literature of the 19thand 20thcenturies, and ends up with our old
favourites, the Krays and Soho gangs of the 50s and 60s. London's
crimes have changed over the centuries, both in method and
execution. Underworld London traces these developments, from the
highway robberies of the eighteenth century, made possible by the
constant traffic of wealthy merchants in and out of the city, to
the beatings, slashings and poisonings of the Victorian era.
From Roman burial rites to the horrors of the plague, from the
founding of the great Victorian cemeteries to the development of
cremation and the current approach of metropolitan society towards
death and bereavement -- including more recent trends to displays
of collective grief and the cult of mourning, such as that
surrounding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales -- NECROPOLIS:
LONDON AND ITS DEAD offers a vivid historical narrative of this
great city's attitude to going the way of all flesh. As layer upon
layer of London soil reveals burials from pre-historic and medieval
times, the city is revealed as one giant grave, filled with the
remains of previous eras -- pagan, Roman, medieval, Victorian. This
fascinating blend of archaeology, architecture and anecdote
includes such phenomena as the rise of the undertaking trade and
the pageantry of state funerals; public executions and
bodysnatching. Ghoulishly entertaining and full of fascinating
nuggets of information, Necropolis leaves no headstone unturned in
its exploration of our changing attitudes to the deceased among us.
Both anecdotal history and cultural commentary, Necropolis will
take its place alongside classics of the city such as Peter
Ackroyd's LONDON.
In the dying months of the First World War, Spanish Flu suddenly
overwhelmed the globe, killing up to 100 million people. it was one
of the most devastating natural disasters in world history ...
___________ 'Offers us a coherent, well-researched and sanitary
reminder that another pandemic could be just around the corner with
equally horrific consequences.' - Sir Tony Robinson 'Fascinating
... lurid and pacy ... the page-turning fascination of a detective
thriller.' - BBC History Magazine 'A remarkable job ... arresting
and intimate narrative.' - New Statesman ___________ But behind the
staggering figures are human lives, stories of those who suffered
and those who fought back - at the Front, at home, in the hospitals
and laboratories. Digging into archives, unpublished records,
memoirs, diaries and government documents, Catharine Arnold traces
the course of the disease through the accounts of those who
experienced it - from those in high office to the ordinary people:
the troops, nurses, miners, labourers, and many others who were
left with no memorial. 100 years after the disease burned its way
across the globe, this stingingly prescient book examines the
lessons that devastating outbreak taught us - and those we perhaps
did not learn in time, as Covid-19 wreaks havoc across the world in
2020.
The life of William Shakespeare, Britain's greatest dramatist, was
inextricably linked with the history of London. Together, the great
writer and the great city came of age and confronted triumph and
tragedy. Triumph came when Shakespeare's company, the Chamberlain's
Men, opened the Globe playhouse on Bankside in 1599, under the
patronage of Queen Elizabeth I. Tragedy touched the lives of many
of his contemporaries, from fellow playwright Christopher Marlowe
to the disgraced Earl of Essex, while London struggled against the
ever-present threat of riots, rebellions and outbreaks of plague.
Globetakes its readers on a tour of London through Shakespeare's
life and work, as, in fascinating detail, Catharine Arnold tells
how acting came of age. We learn about James Burbage, founder of
the original Theatre in Shoreditch, who carried timbers across the
Thames to build the Globe among the bear-gardens and brothels of
Bankside, and of the terrible night in 1613 when the theatre caught
fire during a performance of King Henry VIII. Rebuilt, the Globe
continued to stand as a monument to Shakespeare's genius until 1642
when it was destroyed on the orders of Oliver Cromwell. And finally
we learn how 300 years later, Shakespeare's Globe opened once more
upon the Bankside, to great acclaim, rising like a phoenix from the
flames Arnold creates a vivid portrait of Shakespeare and his
London from the bard's own plays and contemporary sources,
combining a novelist's eye for detail with a historian's grasp of
his unique contribution to the development of the English theatre.
This is a portrait of Shakespeare, London, the man and the myth.
The life of William Shakespeare, Britain's greatest dramatist, was
inextricably linked with the history of London. Together, the great
writer and the great city came of age and confronted triumph and
tragedy. Triumph came when Shakespeare's company, the Chamberlain's
Men, opened the Globe playhouse on Bankside in 1599, under the
patronage of Queen Elizabeth I. Tragedy touched the lives of many
of his contemporaries, from fellow playwright Christopher Marlowe
to the disgraced Earl of Essex, while London struggled against the
ever-present threat of riots, rebellions and outbreaks of plague.
Globetakes its readers on a tour of London through Shakespeare's
life and work, as, in fascinating detail, Catharine Arnold tells
how acting came of age. We learn about James Burbage, founder of
the original Theatre in Shoreditch, who carried timbers across the
Thames to build the Globe among the bear-gardens and brothels of
Bankside, and of the terrible night in 1613 when the theatre caught
fire during a performance of King Henry VIII. Rebuilt, the Globe
continued to stand as a monument to Shakespeare's genius until 1642
when it was destroyed on the orders of Oliver Cromwell. And finally
we learn how 300 years later, Shakespeare's Globe opened once more
upon the Bankside, to great acclaim, rising like a phoenix from the
flames Arnold creates a vivid portrait of Shakespeare and his
London from the bard's own plays and contemporary sources,
combining a novelist's eye for detail with a historian's grasp of
his unique contribution to the development of the English theatre.
This is a portrait of Shakespeare, London, the man and the myth.
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