London - Catherine Ross

The Romans founded Londinium in AD50 but the earliest human remains in the Thames valley, once the realm of mammoths and polar bears, date back to 450,000BC. Following through the impacts of invasions, revolts and epidemics ranging from the Black Death to cholera, this book shows how, against all the odds, a small malarial settlement turned into Europe's most successful city.

Full of evidence gathered from the Museum of London's extensive archaeological work and written in thematic chapters that explore the changing aspects of life over the last three thousand years and across a variety of maps old and new, London shines a fascinating light on everything from costermongers to the Krays, the building of the Embankment to the destruction of the Blitz.

There are contemporary cartoons and paintings, artefacts that range from the Mayor's golden coach to a leather Roman bikini found in the mud of the Thames and the museum's own vivid reconstructions of ancient markets, temples and bathhouses, making the daily lives of Londoners and the city's chequered history come alive in this book as never before.