When Thomas Platter, a Swiss tourist, went to see ‘Julius Caesar’ at the Globe Theatre in 1599, it wasn’t Shakespeare’s language that attracted his attention but the ready availability of refreshments and the high quality of the players’ clothes. The revolution in playmaking that he witnessed on the south bank of the Thames reflected widespread innovations in London’s cultural life in the reign of Elizabeth I. For the first time, we can see the city clearly, in the panoramas and maps inspired by Dutch artists. New ideas about history are emerging in the works of Stow and Holinshed. And the growth of trade through piracy, with a new centre of commerce in Thomas Gresham’s Royal Exchange, marks the beginning of England's imperial expansion.

In this episode, Rosemary is joined again by Vanessa Harding to discuss this extraordinary moment in London’s history and some of the reasons behind it, from Elizabeth’s genius for survival to the city’s lack of a university.

Reading by Duncan Wilkins

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Read more in the LRB:

Charles Nicholl on Elizabethan true crime: https://lrb.me/lrep601

Michael Dobson on Shakespeare's life: https://lrb.me/lrep603

Colin Burrow on Walter Raleigh: https://lrb.me/lrep02

At the start of the 16th century London was still recognisably medieval, crowded within its walls, dominated by churches and monasteries and deeply tied to Catholic Europe. By the end of Henry VIII’s reign, much of that world had vanished. The Reformation not only changed the religious practices of its inhabitants, it brought a widespread transfer of property that reshaped the character and activity of the city and turned it into a theatre of power, punishment and debate.

Rosemary is joined by Vanessa Harding, emerita professor of London history at Birkbeck, University of London, to look at the events that transformed London into a commercially expanding and ideologically contested Protestant capital under the Tudors, from the arrival of Caxton’s printing press in Westminster and the beginnings of an aristocratic West End to Mary I’s brutal attempt to restore Catholic England.

Reading by Duncan Wilkins

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

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Read more in the LRB:

Hilary Mantel on England under Mary I: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/lrep504⁠⁠

Lucy Wooding on Henry VIII and the merchants: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/lrep502⁠⁠

Patrick Collinson on Henry VIII's Reformation: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/lrep503

If historians of medieval London had a patron saint, it might well be Edward I. While many English monarchs chose to leave London to its own devices, Edward decided from the start of his reign in 1272 to put pressure on the city to justify its liberties. The result was a profusion of bureaucracy, most notably in the Letter Books, that describe the life of London and its people in vivid detail, from disputes, petitions and regulations to the names of all the city’s apprentices. This record-keeping was good for the city too, reinforcing a powerful system of guilds supporting hundreds of trades and a flourishing merchant and consumer culture.

But when the Black Death arrived in England in 1348, London’s population was devastated, and its social and economic life transformed. In this episode, Rosemary is joined again by Matthew Davies, professor of urban history at Birkbeck, to look at how England’s capital coped both with its rapid rise in the first half of the 14th century and a long period turmoil thereafter, including the Hundred Years’ War, the revolts of Wat Tyler and Jack Cade, and the Wars of the Roses.

Reading by Duncan Wilkins

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Read more in the LRB:

Tom Johnson: No More Baubles: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrep401⁠

When the Angles, Saxons and Jutes began settling across England in the wake of the Roman retreat in the early fifth century, the city they found on the north bank of the Thames was hardly a city at all. Within its walls were the great abandoned ruins of antiquity, ‘the works of giants’ as one Anglo-Saxon poet put it, and little else. For hundreds of years the site was patchily inhabited, but two features indicated its future importance. In 604, the first Bishop of London was appointed, leading to the continuous presence of Christianity and the founding of St Paul’s Cathedral; and down the river, the emergence of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Lundenwic near where Covent Garden is today confirmed the area’s prime position as a trading centre.

By the time Alfred repelled the Danes in the ninth century, London’s value had been realised, and the symbolic movement of the royal court from Winchester to Westminster under Edward the Confessor set London’s trajectory. In this episode, Rosemary is joined by Matthew Davies, professor of urban history at Birkbeck, to trace this story of London through the multiple invasions, grand projects and power struggles that took it from a field of ruins to a flourishing medieval capital.

Reading by Duncan Wilkins

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Further reading in the LRB:

Eamon Duffy on Westminster: https://lrb.me/lrep301

Ferdinand Mount on Henry III: https://lrb.me/lrep304

Tom Shippey on Alfred: https://lrb.me/lrep302

Ysenda Maxtone Graham on the Strand: https://lrb.me/lrep303

Get in touch: [email protected]

After Roman London was hit by a catastrophic fire in about 125 AD, perhaps the result of another local revolt, it entered a new period of sophistication which saw the emergence of elaborate townhouses for its mercantile and administrative elite, richly embellished with mosaics and wall paintings. But the city had stopped growing, and when a devastating plague arrived in about 165 AD, which may well have been Europe’s first encounter with smallpox, it was probably already on a long slow decline caused by its diminishing importance as a trading hub.

To continue Roman London’s story to its eventual fate as an abandoned walled garden, Rosemary Hill is joined again by Dominic Perring, author of London in the Roman World, to consider what objects such as a Greek spell found on the Thames foreshore, and a small bronze archer found in Cheapside, can tell us about the fortunes of the city, and why the construction of the London Wall in the early 3rd century marked a terminal transformation of its role in the Roman Empire.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

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The year London was founded will always be disputed, but the most recent archaeological evidence suggests the Romans had created the first settlement on the north bank of the Thames by 48 AD, five years after their invasion. That early military encampment expanded to become a busy, cosmopolitan supply base until it was burnt down in the Boudican revolt of 60 AD.

In the first episode of her series tracing the history of London, Rosemary Hill is joined by Dominic Perring, archaeologist and author of London in the Roman World, to examine the development of Londinium over its tumultuous first century, during which it grew to a population of 30,000 and it acquired all the recognisable Roman landmarks – forum, basilica, baths, amphitheatre – before facing its second great destructive event around 125 AD.

In their next episode, Rosemary and Dominic consider Roman London’s second revival and the emergence of new belief systems and monuments before its eventual abandonment by Rome at the start of the fifth century.

Reading by Duncan Wilkins

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

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Read more in the LRB:

Christopher Kelly on Roman London: https://lrb.me/londonep1roman2

Tom Shippey on Roman Britain: https://lrb.me/londonep1roman1

From its beginnings as a backwater of the Roman Empire to its heyday at the heart of the British Empire and up to the eve of the Great War, Rosemary Hill charts London’s history through waves of expansion and contraction with the help of historians, antiquaries and archaeologists.

London's past is everywhere beneath its streets, in the geology and archeology of its deep and ancient history, and in its mythic lives, in William Blake's Albion and Cobbett's 'Great Wen', the home of Dick Whittington and King Lud. This will be the London described by Tacitus, Shakespeare and Viginia Woolf, a city shaped by Boudicca, Christopher Wren and Joseph Bazalgette, and a story of countless disasters, recoveries and triumphs unfolding over more than 2,000 years.

Rosemary Hill is a writer, historian and contributor to the London Review of Books. Her books include ‘God's Architect', 'Stonehenge' and ‘Time’s Witness: History in the Age of Romanticism’. 

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