Green - The time travellers London handbook

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Michael Joseph is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

First published 2015

Copyright Dr Matthew Green, 2015

Images: Getty images; The Art Archive / Museum of London

The moral right of the author has been asserted

ISBN: 978-1-405-91913-5

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For Marianne

Penning a time-travelling guide to a city that contains all that life can afford, faster than Dr Johnson did his dictionary, has been a colossal task, so I would like to thank all of those who have made it such an exhilarating and rewarding experience.

First, my commissioning editor Fenella Bates, who not only came up with the brilliant idea in the first place, but also infinitely enriched the writing and editing experience with her bundles of enthusiasm, insight and understanding. Much gratitude, too, to my agent and occasional drinking partner Chris Wellbelove who has been, at every turn, both a rock of good counsel and a wellspring of ideas, and to the superhuman Alice Smith, who has furnished the book with witty and wonderful illustrations and maps, responding cheerfully and with good grace to our urgent and ever-stranger picture requests.

I would also like to thank Helen Coyle, whose laser-guided comments greatly enhanced the manuscript; my copy-editor, Trevor Horwood, who streamlined the writing and reined in some of my more self-indulgent flourishes; and Fi Crosby, for her incisive input.

My friends have been a reassuring and bounteous source of encouragement, help and ideas in this, as in my other historical pursuits, and I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to Daisy Leitch, Keiran Goddard, David Heales, Ed Fornieles, Jessie Huth, Will Hammond, Edward Shawcross and Duncan Brown, the latter two being kind enough to read and comment upon some early drafts of chapters. I would also like to express my gratitude to Ian Spurr, who helped with the research for the Victorian chapter, and patiently proofread much of the manuscript; the staff of the British and London Libraries; and Tina Baxter for taking me on a tour of medieval London.

I would never have been in a position to write this book if it werent for my tutors at Oxford University. Of all the academicians who haunt those hallowed quadrangles, I would like to single out my undergraduate tutor, Dr Faramerz Dabhoiwala, and my doctoral supervisor, Dr Perry Gauci, a font of wisdom and generosity. They not only instructed, but inspired me, then as now. I am grateful to Dr Gauci for casting his eye over the eighteenth-century chapter (though any mistakes there, as in all the chapters, are firmly of my own making).

What follows is essentially a series of guided tours through time and as such the book is an evolution and, in parts, distillation of the immersive historic tours that I lead, both digitally and in person, through historic London for Unreal City Audio, an organisation I co-founded with Duncan Brown and Edward Shawcross in 2012. I thank everyone who has ever been on a tour (and stomached our gritty seventeenth-century-style coffee). We are honoured to have so many loyal and enthusiastic followers, but would be nothing without our tireless troupe of actors and musicians, above all the inestimable Mr Jonathan Hansler.

But the biggest thanks of all are reserved for my mother and father, whose unwavering and unconditional support of my pursuits over the last two decades has been the stuff of dreams, my many brothers and sisters, and my one and only fiance, Marianne, who has had little choice but to be my partner in time travel, making brilliant suggestions at every turn, and putting up with endless midnight meals. This book is for her.

Dalston, 2 May 2015

In London, we are all time travellers, however unwitting. Thanks to its habitual juxtapositions of historic and modern buildings, evocative place names and kaleidoscopic diversity of tone and energy, we are liable to find ourselves transported to a different place just by walking round a corner and stumbling across the unexpected. A perfectly preserved Georgian house next to a stark council estate, a fragment of the Roman walls in the hullabaloo of the City. London is peppered with portals into historical worlds you just need to know where to look.

The following chapters will take you on a joyride through 600 years of Londons history, soaking up the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the greatest city in the world, and meeting a plethora of memorable characters, some well known, some not, all of whom capture the zeitgeist of each age. As we slide through time, well watch London crack out of its Roman shell in the medieval period, spread its tentacles in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and, in the Victorian period, evolve into a human awful wonder of God the biggest city the world had ever seen. We will witness some of Londons darkest hours as the Grim Reaper swings his scythe during the Great Plague and vast swathes of the city are razed to the ground the following year. But well also see her resurgent, rising from the ashes, whether of the Great Fire or the incendiaries of the Blitz.

How does it work?

You are the time traveller, I am your guide. Hello. Ill be narrating your experiences and dispensing wisdom as we go. In terms of the mechanism, dont expect to find any wormholes, tears in the spacetime continuum, police call-boxes or whatever else people use to hurtle through time these days. Our time machine is wrapped in the skin of the city, and it will be sensitive to your touch.

The six chapters that follow will begin with you wandering the streets of the present-day city. But then you will find something it could be a building, a street name, a blue plaque that will act as a portal into Londons past. When you open your eyes, you will find yourself in an alien world, surrounded by strange buildings, mysterious sounds and, more often than not, hideous smells. You will be informed of the year and the month and sometimes the exact date. From there, you will have to work your way through hazardous landscapes populated variously by killer rats, religious pyromaniacs, flying pigs, cocky watermen, executioners, vengeful saints, blood-baying xenophobes, bloodthirsty bears, tenacious pornographers, slimy lawyers, the Elephant Man, sharpies, cullies and conniving link boys amongst others.

Our metaphorical time machine is a cranky, capricious thing. You will have no say where you land. You could be spun into any number of worlds. Nor will the chapters be arranged in strict chronological order. Where would be the fun in that? You will have no idea where you are going to land next, and experiencing London in different periods will invite some unexpected juxtapositions and synergies that might otherwise go undetected. Think of each journey as a series of historical quantum leaps into mirror universes, a whirlwind tour of some of the darker and more offbeat sides of Londons history.