The Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain
Life in the Age of Samuel Pepys, Isaac Newton and The Great Fire of London
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Vintage Publishing
Published:5th Apr '18
Should be back in stock very soon
The third in the series of Ian Mortimer's bestselling Time Traveller's Guides
The past is a foreign country: this is your guidebook.
If you could travel back in time, the period from 1660 to 1700 would make one of the most exciting destinations in history.
Charles II is back. London is burning. Modern Britain is taking shape.
The monarchy is restored, Charles II has returned and Britain between 1660 and 1700 is changing at remarkable speed. Samuel Pepys records the age, the Great Fire transforms London, Christopher Wren rebuilds its skyline and Isaac Newton helps alter how people understand the universe.
Ian Mortimer asks what all this would mean to you if you were to travel there. Where would you stay? What would you eat? What should you wear? How would you travel, shop, find entertainment or cope with illness?
Using diaries, travel accounts, legal records, household evidence and contemporary statistics, he reconstructs a society moving between centuries-old habits and sudden innovations in science, commerce, fashion and finance.
Restoration Britain remains unequal, superstitious and often dangerous, but curiosity and experiment are changing its assumptions. By treating the past as a destination rather than a display case, Mortimer reveals an age and a people, who in the practical details of their daily lives may be more familiar than we would expect.
‘Ian Mortimer is a historical truffle hound… His book is a delightful read.’ Sunday Times
Ian Mortimer is among the best: a conjuror who is always bright, engaging and well-informed… Any tour of late 17th-century Britain is guaranteed to be exhilarating. And with Mortimer in charge, one always travels first class * Mail on Sunday *
Ian Mortimer is a historical truffle hound… The Time Traveller’s Guide to Restoration Britain is just such fun to read… Mortimer writes with real freshness and enthusiasm,... His book is a delightful read. * Sunday Times *
This entertaining tourist guide brings the late 17th century alive…The latest Time Traveller’s Guide will entertain and inform anyone with an interest in this extraordinary period * The Times *
Thoroughly entertaining… It is crammed with insights, facts and enjoyable anecdotes, which create a sense of the experience of living in Britain between 1660 and 1700… This is a compelling book and one of considerable erudition… This is the book that will provide the most richly colourful account of Britain in this period * History Today *
Everything you wanted to know about these fair isles between 1660 and 1700... Exciting times. * Sunday Express *
Mortimer composes his vivid mosaic of life between 1660 and 1700 through the fancied experience of a time traveller * Telegraph *
Entertaining and demotic rather than a work of scholarly nitpicking * The Times *
When it comes to (armchair-based) time travel, he’s your man. If you have yet to experience his in-the-now approach to history, I envy you. What strange words and weird customs you will learn… Our guide’s treatment of the past is, as ever, a case of great knowledge worn lightly. He is by turns funny, scholarly, poignant and almost always fascinating… As a way of meeting our ancestors almost face to face, there is something magical about his writing * i *
Ian Mortimer manages to inform and delight in equal measure * Bookseller *
Enthralling and detailed * Mail *
ISBN: 9780099593393
Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 31mm
Weight: 362g
480 pages