1700 Scenes from London Life Author:Maureen Waller In 1700, London was a city like no other, poised between medievalism and future empire. London had endured a plague and witnessed the Great Fire of 1666. A king had been publicly executed at Whitehall. Now the city with Christopher Wren's skyline of churches bulged with riches and boasted the most glittering jewels of England: John Locke, George... more » Handel, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and astronomer Edmund Halley. It was a city of flourishing merchants and a rising standard of living, but its inhabitants also waded deep in the mire of nightsoil, disease, and crime. Maureen Waller has written a biography of the teeming, sprawling London previously known only through fiction.« less