There is hardly a city in the world with richer historical and cultural assocations than London. It is a place where history has been made for thousands of years, and where it is still being made today. It is not a city frozen in time, preserved in its ancient medieval pomp but a place that has been at or near the centre of national life for a thousand years and at the forefront of international political, cultural and economic history for each of the past five centuries. Here Stephen Inwood, bestselling author of A History of London, and a lifelong student of the city's rich and vibrant history, offers an explorer's guide to London's past. He will show you London's history all around you: stretches of Roman wall; medieval churches and Tudor houses that survived the Great Fire; monastic buildings that survived the Reformation; street markets first established centuries ago that survive today; Georgian streets and squares that were spared the wreckers' ball; Wren churches; Victorian terraces and Inns of Court that survived the Blitz. He takes you to the London of Chaucer and Shakespeare, Samuels Pepys and Johnson; Dickens and Darwin, T.S Eliot and George Orwell.