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EBOOK London Rising

Leo Hollis

Bloomsbury

By the middle of the seventeenth century, London was on the verge of collapse. Its ancient infrastructure

could no longer support its explosive growth; the English Civil War had torn society apart; and in 1665 the

capital was struck by a plague that claimed 100,000 lives. And then, the following year, the Great Fire

destroyed huge swaths of the city. As Leo Hollis recounts in his stirring history of the period, modern

London was born out of this crucible. Among the catalysts for this rebirth were five extraordinary men,

each deeply influenced by the Civil War, whose intersecting lives form the heart of London Rising: famed

philosopher John Locke, whose ideas about the individual would outline a new theory of civil society based

on natural rights; diarist John Evelyn, who insightfully chronicled the tumult and transformation before

him; the polymathic scientist and architect Robert Hooke; developer Nicholas Barbon, who rebuilt much of

the city after the fire; and Christoper Wren, astronomer, geometer, and the greatest English architect of

his time, whose reconstruction of St. Paul’s Cathedral was the essential symbol of London’s rebirth. The

city today is in great part the result of the myriad advances in literature, planning, science, and social

issues forged by these five. Hollis paints a vibrant portrait of one of the world’s greatest cities, and of a

generation of men whose impact on London is unmatched.

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