A History of London During The Restoration

A tantalizing and thrilling history of London at the time of King Charles II, from the acclaimed co-author of The King's Revenge and The King's Bed.

From the Middle-Ages onwards, London’s notorious Bedlam lunatic hospital saw the city’s ‘mad’ locked away in dank cells, neglected and abused and without any real cure and little comfort. The unprecedented growth of the metropolis after the Industrial Revolution saw a perceived ‘epidemic’ of madness take hold, with ‘county asylums’ seen by those in power as the most humane or cost-effective way to offer the mass confinement and treatment believed necessary.

By the former editor of the London Times, a vivid, evocative, and deeply knowledgeable history of this unique world capital.

Surgery on the heart was explicitly ruled out by the medical teaching of the 1940s. A team of London doctors and scientists led by Russell Brock were determined to challenge and reverse that dogma. Together, they would help to change the history of heart surgery and the chances of survival for future patients. Brock, who had cared for the injured in London throughout the war, was poised to operate on the heart.

The author of The A-Z of London Murders takes readers behind the bars of the city's numerous jails and tells the tales of their most infamous inmates.