A Brief History of London: The International City

by Jeremy Black

As the United Kingdom left the European Union, during a period of international and domestic turmoil, London found itself at a turning point. This critical moment presents an opportunity to look back, with a distinctive perspective, a focus on London in its national and, perhaps even more importantly, its international contexts, rather than on the city itself in isolation.

It is the interactions of London that Black considers, and he does so in order to address the question as to why London became the foremost international city, how it sustained that position, and what its future holds.

The book is as much about economics and culture as it is about politics and society. It deals with migration, communications, empire and cultural energy, rather than the mechanisms of parish vestries. London's earlier period is covered, but the principal focus is on the last half millennium, the period during which London became a major trader with the trans-oceanic world, and the ruler of trans-oceanic colonies, while the English language became an increasingly important cultural medium, one centred on London.

The book includes plentiful literary references, quotations from visitors, and boxes covering discrete topics, such as Jack the Ripper.

Genres: Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

Published November 22, 2022

About the author

Jeremy Black is an English historian, who was formerly a professor of history at the University of Exeter. He is a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US.
Black is the author of over 180 books, principally but not exclusively on 18th-century British politics and international relations, and has been described by one commentator as "the most prolific historical scholar of our age". He has published on military and political history, including Warfare in the Western World, 1882–1975 (2001) and The World in the Twentieth Century (2002).

Reviews

[Elif · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s not you, it’s me <\3

[Rebecca]

I’m visiting London next month so I hoped to learn more about its history, but this book was quite dull and I struggled to get into it. To be fair it did have to cover a lot of history in a small amount of pages.

[Nic · Rating 2 out of 5]

just casually leaves out their entire role in the slave trade among other things that would paint london in a bad light beyond its violent past.

[Trevor P. Kwain · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit boring in writing style and quite skewed in its chronology of the city (should be called "History of London in the last 2 centuries"). It did not excite me at all, and even the way most topics were explained, was quite generic and superficial when there's more to tell or more exiciting ways to explain them. The book is also hardly academic; information is glossed over too much, and if you purge the unnecessary paragraph, very little is left. Book could have been shorter. Not recommended.

[Keith Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's very disorganised, but I think it's doomed to be disorganised because it a relatively short book, but it's covering a lot of information, so I don't think it's necessarily poor writing.

It's good to educate you with the what you can read more about from other authors, but not much past that.

[Joey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has some very interesting information, but the way Jeremy Black writes it makes it unnecessary hard to read. The story is incoherent, he can fast forward 50 years and then go back 70 years to fast forward 30 years again.

[Elly Anderson · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was an absolute snore-fest and nothing felt important :/ I probably retained 2.5 pages of this 300+ page book.

But I love you London. You will forever be my favorite. Plus you look cutie on my bookshelf <3

[Kylie Sprott · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although I was consistently impressed with the research, I found this hard to read. It was not as structured as I would have liked & felt quite disjointed. However, I did learn a lot - even if it took me a while to finish it!

[Philip Zaunders · Rating 2 out of 5]

Requires a PhD knowledge of London just to pick up on the million references he makes. This book doesn’t market to those who want an in-depth read but doesn’t write at an entry level either. What is the point of it?

[Robert Baird · Rating 2 out of 5]

A complete mess of a book, every page is a muddled attempt to squeeze in political, geographical and social history- which makes it at best hard to follow at worst completely incoherent

[Sally Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has taken a long time to read and I cannot help think that writing a book on such an interesting city as London couldn't have been tackled differently to make the subect less dry.