The House By The Thames by Gillian Tindall
49 Bankside is an 18th century house, the last genuine survivor of what was once a long ribbon of houses overlooking the water. It still stands, opposite St Paul's Cathedral, and next door to the re-built Globe theatre and the new bridge, which takes pedestrians across the Thames to Tate Modern. Earlier, there was a medieval inn, the Cardinal's Hat, on the same site. Gillian Tindall makes the whole area - and its long history - live again. Here are the bear-baiting pits and the brothels, the priests' fish ponds and the bishop's underground prison (the 'Clink'), the theatres of Shakespeare's time, and the iron and coal businesses of the industrial revolution. Rich with anecdote and colour, empathetic, scholarly and textured, this is social history at its most enjoyable. Gillian Tindall excels at description and picking out the most fascinating details. Celebrities from history walk through her pages but her book is, above all, about the families who lived in the house and worked nearby - about those who made their living in boats on the Thames (a living constantly threatened by the building of bridges or the coming of steam-ships), about keeping 19th-century London supplied with gas, about girls at home sewing military uniforms. Readers will identify with these characters from the past, and will become deeply involved in the stories of their daily lives.
Gillian Tindall is well known for the quality of her writing and the meticulous nature of her research. She is a master of 'micro-history', in the sense of taking a 'small' slice of history, examining it closely, and thus making it stand for a 'big' picture. Her most recent book, also about London, was a biography of Hollar, the artist whose maps, drawings and panoramas of the city preserved what London looked like before the Great Fire of 1666. She is also the author of two enduring books on the history of places - The Fields Beneath (about Kentish Town) and City of Gold (about Bombay) - as well as Celestine: 'voices' from a French village and The Journey of Martin Nadaud which saw 19th-century Paris and England through the eyes of a rural stone mason. Gilliam Tindall has also published novels and short stories. She lives with her husband in London.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780701175931 |
| ISBN 10 | 0701175931 |
| Title | The House By The Thames |
| Author | Gillian Tindall |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Vintage Publishing |
| Year published | 2006-03-02 |
| Number of pages | 272 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |