Restoration London

Book excerpt: Making use of every possible contemporary source - diaries, almanacs, newspapers, advice books, government papers, even the Register of Patents - Liza Picard shows us exactly how the denizens of seventeenth-century London lived: the streets, houses, and gardens; cooking, housework, laundry, and shopping; clothes and jewelry; cosmetics and hairdressing; medicine, sex, education, hobbies, and etiquette; law and crime; religion and popular beliefs. The London of three hundred years ago is brought wonderfully (and sometimes horrifyingly) to life. In her exact and vivid descriptions of London before and after the Great Fire, the busy everyday activities, and the intellectual horizons and language of ordinary people, Liza Picard brings back to us the living echoes of our seventeenth-century ancestors.