Unknown London

Walter George Bell

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(4.5 stars; 11 reviews)

Herein you will find much concerning those things which everybody knows about, but nobody knows — the things you have known about since childhood, and have been content to leave them at that, knowing little of what they are and still less where they are to be found. I have dealt mostly with the big things that London has in its keeping, such as the Domesday Book (can you tell me off-hand where it is to be seen ?); with the Confessor's Shrine (of the crowds who enter Westminster Abbey there is a big leaven who do not even know that it is there); with the massive fragments of London's Roman Wall that still survive; with that spot in Smithfield where martyrs burnt and English history was made; with the Duke of Suffolk's head and its dramatic story; with our Roman baths; with London Stone and odd others. … The City of London — the innermost "square mile" — is the richest ground for historical associations in all our world Empire, and the greater pity, therefore, that it should be unknown. (Summary from the author’s Preface, 1919.) (6 hr 20 min)