Richard TamesNew York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
285 pages ~ $60.00/Cloth, $15.00/Paper.
It borders on cliché to say that London is a city that means many things to many people. Its status as a world capital, center of finance, site of artistic production, and place of higher learning affirms this. The city has a storied visual history, from the engravings of Gustave Dore (brilliantly captured in London: A Pilgrimage [1872]) to the dubious romp of King Ralph (1991). London is a modern metropolis that has always had an uneasy relation with its own history, functions as a microcosm for Great Britain on the whole, and serves as a tableau for the wildest dreams of millions of tourists each year.
Richard Tames’ compact, valuable history of London makes the persuasive case that the city is far more still. He is not exhaustive (try, instead, London: A Social History by Roy Porter) nor is it overwhelmingly personal (seek London Perceived by V.S. Pritchett for a view of one man’s London), but somewhere between the two. Tames turns London into something engaging for newcomers, residents, and students alike.
The book’s “cultural” approach means that it does something different than an archetypical biography-of-place. Tames appears as interested in London history as he is with representations of London, London in the popular imagination, and London as a tableaux for the world stage. For Tames, history is one of many reconstructive tools that can be used to “make” the city. Reading this London does not provide a linear, casual chronology, but rather a bevy of mosaic pieces to better illuminate an even more mysterious (though by this time, far more fascinating) whole. Pritchett probably better explains this vexing quality of the city, despite Tames’ more historically sensitive vantage. To wit, “London has no style – we repeat – but greed, negligence, muddle, the belief in Nature; in short, the dread of plan, the passion of the counting-house for property – and to the merchants property is a sign that the human past is on one’s side – have made the accident of Nature the alternative to style” (Pritchett 51). Despite the number of excellent books on the subject, London will remain a mystery suspended between commerce, life, nature, and decay.
Tames does his best work within the challenging realm of intellectual history (“Chapter Five: Intellectual Capital”). Much of the book to this point, to borrow one of his own phrases, parallels this “city of superlatives,” with choice attention to the minds that make London run. London, it its chaos, was what it was and is what it is because of its ability to attract an enormous number of talented individuals to live and work within its frequently-shifting boundaries. With personalities like Dr. Samuel Johnson constantly looming behind as spiritual advisors, Tames largely narrates London through its main movers and shakers. Parcel to this is the stuff of “Sporting London” (Chapter Seven), wherein Tames explains that “London could plausibly claim a sporting heritage stretching back over two millennia to the gladiatorial and military exercises of the Roman founders” (Tames 165). Lest the intellectual side of London seem lopsided, he fittingly adds that “London has always had a large concentration of young men – apprentices and in-migrants – who needed to let off steam and show off” (Ibid. 166). Again, the ambiguity of the city prevails. London is the place of Johnson, Boswell, Woolf, and Dickens, but also the place of football hooligans – see the fascinating 2004 film The Football Factory – and the upcoming site of the Summer Olympics.
Yet, despite the history and celebrity seemingly tied to the city’s very fabric, he manages to sow the past back into the real, physical present. The reader’s “trip” through London conjures specific places and events. If Tames’ book fails, it is at the moments where it seems to straddle the fence between the sort of book that one sits and reads straight through and the type of practical guide best carried about as one walks the city. There is no where near enough practical information to make London: A Cultural History worth carrying along as one explores the city, yet it is the short of book that demands some familiarity with the places and its peoples. Thus, the book works best as part aide-memoire, part-cultural history, the sort of thing one reads after returning from a stimulating, tiring trip to the place itself. Its value likely becomes evident upon a return trip to the city. This decision to cover all bases probably owes more to the reach of the “Cityscapes” series, attractive books all with the unfortunate aim to “do too much” for the reader. Thankfully, the positives of this series – illustrations of place as opposed to photographs, accessible and practical cultural history – far outweigh the negatives.
Works Cited
- Pritchett, V.S. London Perceived. Boston: David R. Godine, 2002.
- Tames, Richard. London: A Cultural History. New York: Oxford UP, 2006.
