City of Sin: London and its Vices - Softcover

Arnold, Catharine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1847393721 ISBN 13: 9781847393722

Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK, 2011

Synopsis

If Paris is the city of love, then London is the city of lust. For over a thousand years, England's capital has been associated with desire, avarice and the sins of the flesh. Richard of Devises, a monk writing in 1180, warned that 'every quarter [of the city] abounds in great obscenities'. As early as the second century AD, London was notorious for its raucous festivities and disorderly houses, and throughout the centuries the bawdy side of life has taken easy root and flourished.

In the third book of her fascinating London trilogy, award-winning popular historian Catharine Arnold turns her gaze to the city's relationship with vice through the ages. From the bath houses and brothels of Roman Londinium, to the stews and Molly houses of the 17thand 18thcenturies, London has always traded in the currency of sex. Whether pornographic publishers on Fleet Street, or fancy courtesans parading in Haymarket, its streets have long been witness to colourful sexual behaviour.

In her usual accessible and entertaining style, Arnold takes us on a journey through the fleshpots of London from earliest times to present day. Here are buxom strumpets, louche aristocrats, popinjay politicians and Victorian flagellants -- all vying for their place in London's league of licentiousness. From sexual exuberance to moral panic, the city has seen the pendulum swing from Puritanism to hedonism and back again. With later chapters looking at Victorian London and the sexual underground of the 20thcentury and beyond, this is a fascinating and vibrant chronicle of London at its most raw and ribald.

About this title

Review:

`Is London sexy? Catharine's Arnold's sexual history of the capital begins when Southwark was the "Las Vegas of Londinium", but very soon we have exchanged the slave girls of Roman London for the medieval prostitutes of Gropecunt Lane, and then around 1500 the pox arrives and everyone has painful syphilitic buboes...' --The Guardian

About the Author:

Catharine Arnold read English at Cambridge and holds a further degree in psychology. A journalist, academic and popular historian, her previous books include the novel Lost Time, winner of a Betty Trask award, and the acclaimed Necropolis: London and Its Dead, Bedlam and City ofSin, the first three volumes of her 'London' series. She lives in Nottingham.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1847393721
• ISBN 13: 9781847393722
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384