'Roy Porter, a historian of formidable range, turns to urban history in this marvellously lucid, informative and passionate book...Porter's facts are always at the service of the narrative, which has a finely maintained momentum, balancing statistics with the words of historians, diarists and novelists, poets and churchmen: Pepys, Boswell, Fielding, Walpole, Blake, Mayhew, Wells, Woolf, Spark, ...a timely and brilliant book.' - Claire Tomalin, "Evening Standard". 'A vivid celebration of the city, but also an elegy for its decline, bubbling with statistics and anecdote, from Boadicea to Betjeman.' - Richard Holmes, Daily Telegraph Books of the Year.