Jam-packed with unusual insights and facts about Georgian London. A great read from a talented new historian

Inglis writes colourfully and engagingly, and offers plenty of odd facts and amusing vignettes

Full of neat character portraits and engaging plots

Pacy, superbly researched. The real sparkle lies in its relentless cavalcade of insightful anecdotes . . . There's much to treasure here

Read and be amazed by a city you thought you knew

Fun, fast and factual . . . Lucy Inglis offers, without breaking stride, a delicious panorama of people, quiddities and oddities

Inglis has a good ear for the outlandish, the farcical, the bizarre and the macabre. A wonderful popular history of Hanoverian London

The Georgians had enough scandal and drama going on to fill a dozen tabloid papers. The rather-fit Lucy Inglis crams it all into this startling book which will have you pining for a taste of those debauched days

From the Great Fire in 1666 and the covering of the old 'Ditch' where the Fleet river once ran, to the creation of Westminster Bridge, the British Museum and the National Gallery, Lucy Inglis gives us an entertaining romp through well-known parts of London

Lucy Inglis leaves no stone unturned, no coffeehouse unvisited and no dark alley unexplored . . . a dazzling tapestry of 18th-century London life emerges. Lively, engaging, fascinating, humorous

[An] engaging and industrious survey of life in Georgian London

Reading Lucy Inglis's brisk, astringent and highly amusing tour around various quarters of Hanoverian London on Boxing Day is the ideal antidote to the excesses of Christmas and will keep you snugly entertained in your armchair for hours

Anyone who is interested in history and our great capital city will be gripped by Georgian London. This book is full of enjoyable nuggets

Inglis describes a city that was just beginning to become modern, with all its colourful high and low life

Gatrell's evocation of taverns, bagnios and alleys is compelling. He has a lovely eye for shadows in paintings and how they indicate time of day; he has a lively eye for sympathies in sketches. Butchers, bawds, rakes, tradesmen, sailors, fruit-sellers, fruit-buyers, tailors, cooks, pie-men, aristocrats, oilmen, coalmen, stay-makers, bookbinders, button-sellers and dozens of others are particularised fleetingly from crowds. Exact topography makes it clear how jostle and juxtaposition brought all sorts of people together. Decent dealings get an occasional look-in; the possibility of clean, calm and sunny moments is conceded. ... for all its zest for sensual assault, [The First Bohemians] engages with the unwashed great in illuminating scholarship

Fresh, interesting… Vivid and often moving

White writes with the fluency of a novelist, and this book can be hugely recommended

A first-rate social history

As ever with Jerry White, the broader themes are peppered with wonderful, throwaway trivia, while the main thrust is both meticulously researched and highly readable

White’s book is a true piece of art

A sparkling and fascinating account

Well-paced narrative...of great relevance today, when such conflicts seem (but only seem) to have disappeared.

Immensely compelling

Meticulously researched

The true strength of this meticulously researched book is the placing of the revelations into the context of a compelling human drama

Engrossing

[An] outstanding treasure of literature

Impeccably researched, and moving, this book breaks new ground