Despite a somewhat pompous and ostentatious title - which almost put me off this book - The London Rich: The Creation of a Great City, gives a delightful account of how great houses, squares, gardens and more came into being around London's two first cities, the City of London and the City of Westminster. For those sufficiently familiar with London, one can enjoy learning how, when the factories to the south of London (now just over the river) were belching out fumes, Hampstead became a new suburb that enjoyed clean air up on its hill, and how a day's journey took one to Wimbledon, a delightful town quite a distance to the south. Well presented prints and diagrams support the reader's understanding of the somewhat notorious developments around Clapham Common, the building of London's most elegant street of its time, Westbourne Terrace in the 1850s, in a form that stands intact today and the rise and fall of many mansions that can only be imagined today. Beyond the rich and fascinating detail, this book is simply a very good read.

Based on the cover description and limited information available about this yet to be published book, it appears to be destined to be a very important and exciting contribution to our understanding of British social history from 1666 to the present. The book focus on the economic institutions and people that made London a center of world civilization, trade and power for over 400 years. The title alone, "The London Rich" conjures up all of the images of the pomp, circumstance and tradition that we associate with a city that is is a history-lover's delight. While both the role of the rich, and life-styles of the landed gentry and class structure have been addressed recently by Cannadine (1991, 1999), Brewer 1998), Stone (1988) and others in many books, the significant roles played the aristocracy and growing merchant classes in the social, political and economic development of London as a world city has not been the focus of any major text in recent years.