Leicester Square: Ambition, murder and the birth of the Empire.
Leicester Square, the district, tells much of England’s history in one place.
A quarter of a million people pass through Leicester Square every day
It is a world famous London landmark, immortalised in the First War song
Local eighteenth-century notables are commemorated in the gardens, but there is little else to indicate that the Square existed before about 1870
And no easy way to find out, short of consulting the relevant Survey of London volumes (published in the 1960s)
No book has been devoted to it since C L Kingsford’s scholarly study for the London Topographical Society in 1925
It has seen dynastic expansion, social climbing, family feuds and an execution two successive royal courts, promiscuity and excess, the rise of the bourgeoisie, French painters, sinister anatomists, gruesome deaths and a riot …
the first cinema shows in England, the highest-paid performers, the most numerous prostitutes, successive waves of immigration from France, free hospitals …
Leicester Square began the twentieth century with a lurid reputation. Today, we appreciate the cinema premières and night clubs, roll our eyes at the drunks in the street, and understand very little of what is going on behind the façade.
This book tells the story of the area and, in turn, partly of London itself.
Book Author
Hannah Renier grew up in bedsits, flats and houses all over England, and was educated at ten schools before starting a combined degree at University College London and the Slade, from which she dropped out. After a chequered career as a housewife, mother and traveller, during which she read a lot and wrote a guide to dope smuggling that became Most Borrowed Book in the House of Commons Library, she returned to her senses, and a different university. Thereafter she became a scriptwriter and occasionally presenter of corporate videos, mostly designed to instruct bankers.
Around 1990 she reno...
more about Hannah Renier...
Book Reviews
Sorry, no book reviews are available.
