Making the
Metropolis:
Creators of Victoria's London
Stephen Halliday
In 1801 the population of London was almost one million.
A century later, on the death of Queen Victoria, it
had passed six million, and the city had been transformed.
Stephen Halliday's beautifully illustrated new book
shows how the ramshackle collection of communities
that entered the nineteenth century became the world's
first metropolis.
This amazing story is told through the lives of
eight men who created the Victorian capital. John
Nash defined the modern West End with his
'New Street' (Regent Street); Marc Brunel
invented the tunnelling shield that made the underground
railways possible; Thomas Cubitt
built houses for aristocrats in Belgravia; Sir
Charles Barry built the New Palace of Westminster
to replace the charred ruins of the old one;
Sir Joseph Paxton designed the Crystal Palace
for the Great Exhibition of 1851, the profits of which
enabled Alfred Waterhouse to build
the Natural History Museum, first of the famous South
Kensington museums; Sir Joseph Bazalgette
built the sewers, streets and parks that made the
metropolis a safe place to live, and Sir Edward
Watkin, chairman of the Metropolitan Railway,
began the process that created the suburbs of Metroland
and elsewhere.
Reviews
"The Mayor of London and the members of the
Greater London Authority should keep a copy of this
book beside their beds."
Maxwell Hutchinson
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