It wouldn’t tell me about the clothing or habits of everyday citizens from different classes. A nonfiction book about the history of London would probably tell me about Londinium, about Boudica’s siege, William’s Conquest, the Great fire, etc. That being said, I think it’s a good way to learn about the everyday lives of historical populations. Even if they shared the same name, there were a lot of marriages between the families he was mentioning, so I found it quite confusing to discern who was who. I couldn’t get too settled in with the characters, because I was always being pulled back to look at these overarching truths about the historical period I’ve been dropped in.Īnd though the families are occasionally discernible by their webbed fingers or long noses, I found it very difficult to keep track of who was related to whom. At first, I found these moments very jarring. Narrators in novels don’t say ‘like most families of the era, the Bulls wore xxx and lived in yyy.’ Or ‘John would have been quite shocked to learn his family brewery was managed by a woman, 3 generations back’. Though it is structured as a novel, there are many instances where the narrator breaks ‘the fourth wall’ and describes things in a way that you don’t find in a novel. This book is described as a novel, but I think it’s really more of a hybrid between nonfiction and fiction. Kings and conquerors, as you’d expect, but also Chaucer, Dick Whittington, Shakespeare, Marlowe, etc.

All of the families are fictional, but real people are intermingled with their stories. Each chapter follows the lives of a few families, traceable by their distinctive qualities–red hair or webbed fingers–as they adapt to the changing shape of London society. Starting with the earliest Celtic civilizations in the area now known as London, Rutherfurd takes the reader through the important epochs of the city, all the way up through the late 20th century.

What can I say? I was still in high school in 1997. This particular book came out in 1997, so I’m coming to the party a little late on this one. Rutherfurd has used this same format to tackle the histories of New York, Paris, Russia, Salisbury/Stonehenge, and Ireland. Neither a historical nonfiction, nor a straight novel, this book is something of a hybrid. It’s a long book.Īnd wouldn’t it have to be? To begin to encapsulate the several millenia of history centered in and around the 1 square mile that is ‘the City’. It was over 1200 pages on my iPad version. The most important thing to note about this book is that it is really long.

Edward rutherfurd london review