Elizabeth's London

Everyday Life in Elizabethan London

By: Liza Picard

Narrated by: Liza Picard

Like its popular and acclaimed predecessors, Restoration London and Dr Johnson's London, this fascinating evocation of Elizabethan London is the result of the author's passionate interest in the practical details of everyday life and the conditions in which most people lived, which most history books ignore: the streets, houses and gardens; cooking, housework and shopping; clothes, jewellery and make-up; medicine and sex; education, etiquette and hobbies; religion, law and crime.

©2003 Liza Picard (P)2003 Orion Publishing Group Limited

Like visiting Elizabethan England yourself

The Author and Narrator had me hanging on every word and detail. I hope for more books covering mental time travels to the reigns of other extraordinary monarchs and other transformative time periods. Eleanor of Aquitaine, Joanna the Mad, Edward IV

Eye-opening

I was so struck by how much more organised and indeed humane London seems to have been in Elizabeth's time than I'd realised. This was no Dark Age of misery but a time of extraordinary flowering of human endeavour, art and capability. There was indeed misery, brutality and grim poverty, but there was also an awareness of suffering and an attempt by many to mitigate it. The London of that era is described in all its facets. Far from finding the author's voice distracting, I felt its patrician tones of scholarship rather soothing. The text, with its flashes of wry amusement, is a delight.

Hard to Follow Along

I got this book for a college class. I have it in paperback and need the audiobook to follow along as I read.

The audiobook isn't the same as the paperback. It skips over whole paragraphs sometimes. It makes it hard for thosw of us who like to read and listen at the same time.

I think they need to re-record this book so that it flows better. Try not to use the author.