The House by the Thames: and the People Who Lived There

The House by the Thames: and the People Who Lived There

by Gillian Tindall (Author)

Synopsis

Just across the River Thames from St Paul's Cathedral stands an old and elegant house. Over the course of almost 450 years the dwelling on this site has witnessed many changes. From its windows, people have watched the ferrymen carry Londoners to and from Shakespeare's Globe; they have gazed on the Great Fire; they have seen the countrified lanes of London's marshy south bank give way to a network of wharves, workshops and tenements - and then seen these, too, become dust and empty air. Rich with anecdote and colour, this fascinating book breathes life into the forgotten inhabitants of the house - the prosperous traders; an early film star; even some of London's numberless poor. In so doing it makes them stand for legions of others and for whole world that we have lost through hundreds of years of London's history.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 272
Edition: New edition
Publisher: Pimlico
Published: 25 Jan 2007

ISBN 10: 1844130940
ISBN 13: 9781844130948
Book Overview: A masterpiece of miniaturist, social history. By closely examining the history of one house, Gillian Tindall tells the story of Southwark and the south bank, the river Thames and indeed of London itself.

Media Reviews
Mesmeric... This book is not just for London enthusiasts. Tindall has demonstrated a genius for a certain kind of social history that, in shining a light on one small place, illuminated a huge amount around... A rare instance of a history book that, in its optimism about the indomitable spirit of the place, raises the hairs on the back of your neck. -- Sinclair McKay * Sunday Telegraph *
Fascinating... Gillian Tindall brilliantly deploys contemporary observations to bring the centuries alive. -- Christopher Howse * Tablet *
Delightful... Tindall's story is truthful and unexaggerated, combining elegantly elegiac prose with imaginative empathy and descriptive power. -- Jessica Mann * Literary Review *
Author Bio
Gillian Tindall is well known for the quality of her writing and the meticulous nature of her research. She is a master of miniaturist history, making a particular person or situation stand for a much larger picture. She began her career as a prize-winning novelist and has continued to publish fiction, but she has also staked out a particular territory in idiosyncratic non-fiction that is brilliantly evocative of place. Her The Fields Beneath: the history of one London village, which first appeared almost thirty years ago, has rarely been out of print since; nor has Celestine: voices from a French village, published in the mid-1990s and translated into several languages, for which she was decorated by the French government. Her two most recent books are The Journey of Martin Nadaud ('haunting and moving...impossible not love for its humanity and integrity' The Times) and The Man Who Drew London Wenceslaus Hollar in reality and imagination ('a book that is both elegant and thoughtful' Sunday Telegraph), also published by Pimlico. Gillian Tindell lives with her husband in London, in a house that is old - though not as old as the house by the Thames that forms the centrepiece of her present book.