Excerpt from Fleet Street in Seven Centuries: Being a History of the Growth of London Beyond the Walls Into the Western Liberty, and of the Fleet Street to Our Time That is not quite true, but let us grant cheerfully that the newspapers have made the modern fame of the street. They have familiarised its name in the most distant corners of the world, and will introduce this book to a wider public than is to be found in the City, though in pages crowded with so much incident Mr. Bell allots but small space to the news paper press. And the street is linked with its staple industry in a manner more intimate than can be claimed for any other distinctive area of London. The Fleet Street Man, wherever you meet him, is marked down as a journalist, so completely has every other association been forgotten in our day. The City of London is very old, and in its long unbroken history the newspapers are but things of yesterday. Herein you will read less of what Fleet Street is than of what it was, and there are probably few who will not agree that its record over seven centuries past rivals in interest the busy, hustling life of the street to-day. Fleet Street became in the mediaeval age the chief western highway into the City, the connecting landway with the king's palace and the courts at Westminster. Its story is very largely that of the City itself. But the develop ment of the great Ward of Farringdon Without - that is to say, without the walls-differed very greatly from that of the City within the walls, and in tracing that development from the time of the first settlements of ecclesiastics in the then rural suburb Mr. Bell has done a work that will be valued by all to whom the fascination of London's past makes an appeal. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

An intriguing illustrated history of one of London's most famous streets.

A panoramic portrait of a remarkable woman and the tumultuous Victorian era on which she made her mark, The First Lady of Fleet Street chronicles the meteoric rise and tragic fall of Rachel Beer—indomitable heiress, social crusader, and newspaper pioneer. Rich with period detail and drawing on a wealth of original material, this sweeping work of never-before-told history recounts the ascent of two of London’s most prominent Jewish immigrant families—the Sassoons and the Beers. Born into one, Rachel married into the other, wedding newspaper proprietor Frederick Beer, the sole heir to his father’s enormous fortune. Though she and Frederick became leading London socialites, Rachel was ambitious and unwilling to settle for a comfortable, idle life. She used her husband’s platform to assume the editorship of not one but two venerable Sunday newspapers—the Sunday Times and The Observer—a stunning accomplishment at a time when women were denied the vote and allowed little access to education. Ninety years would pass before another woman would take the helm of a major newspaper on either side of the Atlantic. It was an exhilarating period in London’s history—fortunes were being amassed (and squandered), masterpieces were being created, and new technologies were revolutionizing daily life. But with scant access to politicians and press circles, most female journalists were restricted to issuing fashion reports and dispatches from the social whirl. Rachel refused to limit herself or her beliefs. In the pages of her newspapers, she opined on Whitehall politics and British imperial adventures abroad, campaigned for women’s causes, and doggedly pursued the evidence that would exonerate an unjustly accused French military officer in the so-called Dreyfus Affair. But even as she successfully blazed a trail in her professional life, Rachel’s personal travails were the stuff of tragedy. Her marriage to Frederick drove an insurmountable wedge between herself and her conservative family. Ultimately, she was forced to retreat from public life entirely, living out the rest of her days in stately isolation. While the men of her era may have grabbed more headlines, Rachel Beer remains a pivotal figure in the annals of journalism—and the long march toward equality between the sexes. With The First Lady of Fleet Street, she finally gets the front page treatment she deserves.

The hundreds of recipes in Maxime de la Falaise's delight-ful book triumphantly attest to the virtues of Anglo-Saxon gastronomy. Rich with the historical sense of taste, this book allows you to cook the rudiments of a medieval royal banquet, an Elizabethan nursery breakfast, or an eighteenth-century tavern lunch. The recipes are divided into five chronological sections, each preceded by an introduction recounting the fashions and the changes in the food and drink of the period; together they provide an overview of the evolution of English cookery. The earliest recipes, dating from the thirteenth century, are presented in their original language ("Take faire Mutton that hath ben roste . . .") as well as in a modern translation, and all measures and quantities have been updated throughout. Many of the dishes are quite simple to make; others are, quite literally, fit for a king. All together they constitute a delectable, sensual cele-bration of the development of English cuisine.