Feb 17, 2009 Posted by booktiger on Feb 17, 2009 in Historical Fiction, Sagas | 0 comments

London – Edward Rutherford

I have set myself a task this year (along with trying to complete 75 books) to finish all of the books that I have started at some stage in the past few years. In many cases, I don’t remember the story so I am going back and starting the book again. But my thought is, if I have started it, at least give it another try.

London is one of those books. In fact, I believe I have started it a couple of times and a flight to and from Australia seemed the perfect opportunity to get this 1300+ page tome finished. Sure enough, I read half of it on the way to Australia, and the rest of it on the way back so it fitted just nicely into the flight.

To try and lay out the entire history of London in a single book is a mammoth task. This style of book is Rutherford’s trademark. He starts at the very beginning – in this case back at the time of the Celts, before the Romans even arrived on these shores. He starts by introducing a family with a distinctive physical trait. You are treated to a story of that family, and the history surrounding them like a mini snapshot of time. When the story is complete, you jump ahead in time – sometimes by only a few years, sometimes by several centuries. You then meet the ancestors of the characters from the previous story, and how the fortunes have changed and the world has changed with them.

What I like about the writing is that you very rarely lose track of who is who. I did find myself referring to the family trees printed in the front of the book quite frequently, just to remind myself who had descended from whom, but the author made an effort to be quite clear, and to briefly fill in the intervening years so you never feel like you have missed anything. Some of the stories were brief – others were more in depth. But all were ‘finished’, so although you left a character you had got to know well, you felt satisfied with the snapshot you had been given.

There were two important things I gained out of this book. The first was that the characters were incidental really – the true hero of the book was the city itself. It was the city which grew, developed and changed. It was the city that went through crises, survived and came back stronger than ever. It was the city which withstood attacks and continued to evolve. Although I enjoyed the individual stories of the different families, I enjoyed the history more than anything. The book was fabulously researched, the author clearly spending a lot of time at the Museum of London discovering a wealth of hidden history. London is a fascinating city with centuries of past. A visit to the Museum of London is a great way to discover that. Reading this book is another.

The second thing I realised was how inexorably time passes. When you are swept through more than 2000 years of history in the space of 1300 pages, you are left with an overview and a sense of how quickly time passes and how short our times are. I found it amazing and sad all at the same time. My time here in London will be a blip, just like all of the lives outlined in this novel. It helps you to learn to appreciate what you have here.

Perhaps my only criticism is that some of the stories lacked depth, but realistically, the book didn’t lend itself to depth. As soon as I realised the characters weren’t what the book was all about, I got over that.

I have three more books by Edward Rutherford to read now. Looks like I will be satisfied for my next three flights back to Australia at least.

Rating: 8/10
ISBN:
Publisher:
Year: 1997
Date Finished: 30 December 2008
Pages: