Episode notes
In 1737, Samuel Johnson and his student David Garrick decided to walk to London from Lichfield in search of opportunity. It worked out well for both of them, but for many of the large number who made their hopeful journey to the capital from all over the country in the 18th century, life was more likely to end up like a scene from a Hogarth print, ruined by gin and despair. London had become a ‘great and monstrous thing’ according to Daniel Defoe. However, if you were lucky enough to survive childhood, and gin, and have a bit of money, it was an increasingly pleasant monster, offering…
London Revisited
by London Review of Books · English · History
From its beginnings as a backwater of the Roman Empire to its heyday at the heart of the British Empire and up to the eve of the Great War, Rosemary Hill charts London’s history through waves of expansion and contraction with the help of historians, antiquaries and archaeologists. London's past is
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E8 · 10 Aug 2026 · 24 min
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E7 · 6 Aug 2026 · 26 min
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E6 · 18 Jun 2026 · 16 min
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E5 · 18 May 2026 · 21 min
The Protestant Capital
At the start of the 16th century London was still recognisably medieval, crowded within its walls, dominated by churches and monasteries and deeply tied to Catholic Europe. By the end of Henry VIII’s reign, much of that world had vanished. The Reformation not only changed the religious practices of its inhabitants, it brought a widespread transfer of property that reshaped the character and activity of the city and turned it into a theatre of power, punishment and debate. Rosemary is joined by Vanessa Harding, emerita professor of London history at Birkbeck, University of London, to look at…
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E4 · 20 Apr 2026 · 27 min
Plague, Rebellion and Guilds
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E3 · 23 Mar 2026 · 24 min
The Medieval Capital
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E2 · 23 Feb 2026 · 1 hr 4 min
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E1 · 26 Jan 2026 · 1 hr 13 min
Roman Beginnings
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1 Jan 2026 · 1 min
Introducing ‘London Revisited’
From its beginnings as a backwater of the Roman Empire to its heyday at the heart of the British Empire and up to the eve of the Great War, Rosemary Hill charts London’s history through waves of expansion and contraction with the help of historians, antiquaries and archaeologists. London's past is everywhere beneath its streets, in the geology and archeology of its deep and ancient history, and in its mythic lives, in William Blake's Albion and Cobbett's 'Great Wen', the home of Dick Whittington and King Lud. This will be the London described by Tacitus, Shakespeare and Viginia Woolf, a city…
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