Published in 2013
501 pages
Liza Picard was born in 1927. She read law at the London School of Economics and qualified as a barrister, but did not practise. She worked for many years in the office of the Solicitor of the Inland Revenue and lived in Grays Inn and Hackney, before retiring to live in Oxford. Restoration London, the result of many years interest and research into London life, was her first book.
What is this book about?
How did you clean your teeth in the 1660s? What make-up did you wear? What pets did you keep?
Making use of every possible contemporary source, Liza Picard presents an engrossing picture of how life in London was really lived in an age of Samuel Pepys, the libertine court of Charles II and the Great Fire of London. The topics covered include houses and streets, gardens and parks, cooking, clothes and jewellery, cosmetics, hairdressing, housework, laundry and shopping, medicine and dentistry, sex education, hobbies, etiquette, law and crime, religion and popular belief. The London of 350 years ago is brought (and sometimes horrifyingly) to life.
‘A joy of a book … It radiates throughout that quality so essential in a good historian: infinite curiosity’ Observer
