Shire has quite recently started producing books in a series called 'Shire Living Histories'. These go into detail about how we worked, played and lived in a variety of eras in Britain. Mid-Georgian Britain is one of these and has proved very popular with fans of the era and also, those purely interested in British History. Jacqueline Riding charts the variety and complexity of life in Britain's capital city and the status of London as the burgeoning hub of nation and empire.
If you haven't yet had the opportunity to pick up a copy of our excellent Mid-Georgian Britain by Jacqueline Riding then perhaps these reviews can spur you into having a look.
Tim Knapman, Waterstones.com
I cannot recommend this little book highly enough. Elegant, witty and teeming with vivid details and illustrations it is the perfect introduction to life in Britain in the mid-18th Century.
Lucy Inglis, georgianlondon.com
The chapters gallop, very necessarily, through the city - almost like a supermarket sweep for the touchstones of Georgian London, and I think it works very well. It is beautifully illustrated with modern photographs, as well as images of sources and very memorably, a syphilitic skull. Riding writes with a balanced, engaging style and is an accomplished historian, all apparent in the assured feel of the text. Sources are not limited to the date range, but those way out (Defoe in 1709, for example) remain relevant to the matter in hand.
This is a good book and one that knows its remit. There have been much bigger books on exactly the same subject, but none fit this amount of information into an impressive 77 pages.
Randall Stephens, histsociety.blogspot.com
Ever wonder what life was like in an 18th-century city? How did people eat, work, and play? What did they think about the world around them? Riding's concise, immensely entertaining book gives a snapshot of an amazing, vanished world.
And finally, the author did a short interview for Randall which you can find at http://histsociety.blogspot.com/2011/01/interview-with-jacqueline-riding-on-mid_24.html
I hope this has gone some way to encourage you to browse the pages of this wonderful book.