The best books about London and the dark side of British history

Kate and I have both written about the history of sex work. While mine was confined to London, Kate has gone further afield and researched the hidden histories of sex workers across the globe, charting the lived experience of people who sold sex for a living from Storyville brothels to Chinese flower boats and royal bed chambers.

This authoritative and global history of sex work is enhanced by evocative paintings, archival photographs, and intriguing curios. It really is everything you ever wanted to know about the history of sex work but were afraid to ask! 

I first encountered medical historian Lindsey Fitzharris when she published The Butchering Art, a biographer of pioneering surgeon Joseph Lister. This is another gore-flecked narrative that focuses on facial surgeon Harold Gillies’ pioneering work formulating ingenious surgical innovations and transforming the lives of patients disfigured fighting in WW1.

Plastic surgery has been around since the French Revolution, but attempts at facial reconstruction were limited. Gillies became fascinated by plastic surgery after watching French surgeon Hippolyte Morestin remove a cancer tumor from a patient’s face and cover it with a flap of skin taken from their own neck. In 1916, he requisitioned a ward at Cambridge Military Hospital, Aldershot, to cope with the grotesque procession of disfigured men disembarking from the hospital trains. He assembled a team of retired doctors, medical students, and even a vet to try to give these men their dignity back. A Daily Mail reporter at the time told readers: ‘Nowhere does the sheer horror and savagery of modern warfare appeal so vividly to the mind and senses as in a tour of these wards—a face ravaged by shrapnel cannot fail to arouse a certain amount of repulsion.’ 

I loved this book because Fitzharris never loses sight of the humanity behind the grisly illustrations, reminding us that Gillies’ patients were real people, not members of a freak show, although one patient later spent time with a traveling circus as ‘the Elephant Man.’ This book is a vivid and meticulously researched account of how medicine and art can merge and what courage and imagination can achieve in the presence of relentless horror.

These days, books about London are strewn about thicker than leaves in Vallombrosa, but this was the first definitive book. Writing about London as if it was indeed a legendary person plays to Ackroyd’s great strengths: a sense of history, of place or psychogeography, and a multi-disciplinary approach, incorporating the many voices and experiences of Londoners throughout the ages to capture the soul of this great city. 

By launching this genre, Ackroyd really showed me the way. When I was first commissioned to write Necropolis, I had some misgivings. Would anyone really want to read a book about London cemeteries? Then I went into Oxford Street Waterstones and saw an entire wall of London books, and realized that this was an entirely new genre and one which welcomed me in.

I was also extremely apprehensive when Ackroyd reviewed Necropolis for The Times. I spread the paper out over the ice cream cabinet, with my newsagent looking on anxiously. Then I looked up and said, ‘It’s okay, he likes it!’ 

This beautifully illustrated book about the experience of death in Victorian Britain was a keynote publication in the emerging field of ‘death studies,’ once a niche interest and now an established academic discipline and popular historical topic. Curl’s scholarship is on display in this massive tome, but he wears his learning lightly, and it’s an entertaining read.

This book examines the background of the architecture and customs surrounding death in the 19th century, from the humble working class burial to the spectacular state funerals of the Duke of Wellington (who would have preferred something more low-key) and Queen Victoria herself, the doyenne of Victorian mourning. We learn about the founding of the great urban cemeteries, which were masterpieces of architecture and landscape gardening, and the inevitable development of cremation. In a style as ceremonial as a royal funeral, this book is by turns intriguing, poignant, and amusing. 

Why I love this book? The clue is in the title! It’s not a celebration in a morbid way; instead, it’s an appreciation of the artistry, time, and money that Victorians lavished upon their loved ones as they made their final journey to the next world. It’s very well illustrated. It’s a book I return to again and again and I hope you will, too.

If you’ve ever wondered what an undertaker really does, then Brian Parsons’ history of the trade is an intriguing guide. Reflecting the rapidly changing social times of pre-inter- and post-war Britain, this book details critical episodes in the history of the modern undertaking, including the introduction of embalming, how the enormous task of dealing with the dead from both World Wars was undertaken, coping with the tragedy that was the Spanish flu; and the rise of the Co-operative Funeral Service. Important burials include the burial of the Unknown Soldier, Lord Kitchener’s empty coffin, and the rise of the Cooperative funeral service. 

I’d been familiar with Brian’s work while researching Necropolis, and there were further lessons to be learned from his account of the Spanish flu when I was writing my Pandemic 1918. I recommend this book as a practical but humane account of the development of the funeral industry in Britain. 

I was also impressed by Brian’s willingness to share his expertise. When I was running a course at the University of Westminster, Brian was kind enough to come to talk to my students about the history of undertaking.