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Transcripts for London Revisited

London Review of Books

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 h…

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Recent episodes

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The Monster
2026-10-08 · 25 min
In 1737, Samuel Johnson and his student David Garrick decided to walk to London from Lichfield in search of opportunity. It worked out well for both of them, but for many of the large number who made ...
Coffee, Satire and Bubbles
2026-09-07 · 24 min
The coffee served in London in the 1690s was notoriously unappetising, likened at the time to ‘burnt shoes and charcoal’. Nonetheless it was extremely popular, not least for the energy and locations i...
Pepys, Plague and Fire
2026-08-10 · 24 min
The restoration of the monarchy in 1660 brought a flurry of changes to London life. Women were allowed to appear on stage for the first time, the Royal Society was founded and the West End, with its s...
The Road to Civil War
2026-08-06 · 26 min
When James VI of Scotland arrived in London in 1603 to become the first ‘King of Great Britain’, expectations were high. They were soon disappointed, not least for the Catholics who tried to blow him ...
Shakespeare’s City
2026-06-18 · 16 min
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...
The Protestant Capital
2026-05-18 · 21 min
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 ...
Plague, Rebellion and Guilds
2026-04-20 · 27 min
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...
The Medieval Capital
2026-03-23 · 24 min
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 al...
Mosaics, Archers and a Walled Garden
2026-02-23 · 64 min
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...
Roman Beginnings
2026-01-26 · 73 min
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 yea...

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