A shallow but extremely broad look at all the various aspects of life in 1750-1770ish London. The book is divided into 3 sections on the poor, the middle classes and the richest (with the last section being very short relatively) and each chapter focuses on a particular aspect of life for them. She covers a lot of topics although obviously nothing at greater length than a couple of pages. Although there were obviously times I'd want more detail I never felt like I was being left on the hook and it'd be impossible to really cover everything in detail. The picture she paints is pretty miserable and it's a wonder anyone, even the richest, lived very long. The book is mostly based around primary sources, particularly from The Gentleman's Magazine, with her dry commentary livening things up and connecting. It works well. There are some genuinely funny stories repeated - my favourite was probably the story of "Mr Manpferdt", a supposed centaur advertised in a handbill.

The only criticisms I have are minor - every so often it feels a bit jarring to read some 18th century bigotry and not have push back from the author, although she does much of the time. As said before it's shallow by necessity but gives a good idea of the broad sweep.

As she's not a historian by trade and she's covering so many different topics which obviously nobody could be an expert in all of I wonder how much of the analysis and stuff is backed up by modern historiography but obviously it's not reasonable to expect 100% accuracy to modern research. Just something to keep in mind I guess ( )

Useful survey of daily life in London at all levels of society. Based on much original research. There is perhaps too much anecdote and too little synthesis, but this does not pretend to be a work of deep scholarship ( )

A fascinating book looking at London in the 18 Century. It is split into four sections, and split into lots of chapters covering all manner of subjects. The original source material is based on numerous books that Pickard has combined into this volume.

Parts of the book will make you shudder, especially the medical section. It bring home how bad things were in London in this time period, from the dirt, the smells, the adulterated food, the arbitrary justice and the polarisation between rich and poor.

If you like history and like London then you'll like this ( )

"When a man is tired of London he is tired of life;
for there is in London all that life can afford"
Samuel Johnson

Liza Picard is a lawyer by training who, since retirement, has written a series of social histories of London. As far as possible she uses primary sources for her books rather than other people's research (although this is unavoidable to some extent). Dr Johnson's London covers the period from 1740-1770 and focuses on the life of ordinary folk at the time; the lives of the poor and the middle class (known as the 'middling sort' at the time) take up the majority of the book with only a few brief chapters at the end devoted to the rich and upper class. This tries to cover a lot of ground in a relatively short book so it reads more like a collection of fascinating facts about the period rather than a more analytical work but Picard's style is often dryly humourous and I found the facts contained in the book very fascinating so I didn't really mind the lack of depth. Reading about the life of everyday folk in the mid-eighteenth century also made me feel very grateful that I was born at the end of the twentieth century!

A couple of minor criticisms: firstly a map of London at the time would have been wonderful; secondly, 75% of the endnotes printed at the back of the book were just references to her sources but about 25% of them contained amusing comments or anecdotes and there's no way to know which one a particular footnote will be without flipping to the back of the book. So, of course, I had to check every single footnote. It would have been so much better if the footnotes containing further information could have been incorporated into the main body of the text in some way.

I'd recommend this as an introduction to the period but not if you're looking for something with a lot of depth and analysis/commentary. ( )

New to Liza Picard's writing I so enjoyed this very readable historian I ordered the rest of her titles. The book portrays the lives of the common 'man in the street' as well as many facts of the period.

As a regular reader of History, I find Liza's slightly lighter approach refreshing - even her footnotes are humorous and enlighten the reader, rather than confuse.

A fascinating insight to the period and to more history on a city I love.