By Permission Of Heaven
  • Published: 1 October 2004
  • ISBN: 9780712668477
  • Imprint: Pimlico
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $39.99
Categories:

By Permission Of Heaven

The Story of the Great Fire of London

Formats & editions
EBook
1 Jan 2011
Paperback
1 Oct 2004
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A magnificently told, thrilling account of one of the most dramatic events in British history.

There had, of course, been other fires, Four Hundred and fifty years before, the city had almost burned to the ground. Yet the signs from the heavens in 1666 were ominous: comets, pyramids of flame, monsters born in city slums. Then, in the early hours on 2 September, a small fire broke out on the ground floor of a baker's house in Pudding Lane. In five days that small fire would devastate the third largest city in the Western world.

Adrian Tinniswood's magnificent new account of the Great Fire of London explores the history of a cataclysm and its consequences. It pieces together the untold human story of the Fire and its aftermath - the panic, the search for scapegoats, and the rebirth of a city. Above all, it provides an unsurpassable recreation of what happened to schoolchildren and servants, courtiers and clergyman when the streets of London ran with fire.
  • Published: 1 October 2004
  • ISBN: 9780712668477
  • Imprint: Pimlico
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $39.99
Categories:

About the author

Adrian Tinniswood

Adrian Tinniswood OBE FSA is the author of fifteen books on social and architectural history, including Behind the Throne: A Domestic History of the Royal Household; The Long Weekend: Life in the English Country House Between the Wars, a New York Timesand Sunday Times bestseller; His Invention So Fertile: A Life of Christopher Wren and The Verneys: a True Story of Love, War and Madness in Seventeenth-Century England, which was shortlisted for the BBC/Samuel Johnson Prize. He has worked with a number of heritage organisations including the Heritage Lottery Fund and the National Trust, and is currently Senior Research Fellow in History at the University of Buckingham and Visiting Fellow in Heritage and History at Bath Spa University.

portrait photo of Adrian Tinniswood

Also by Adrian Tinniswood

The Power and the Glory
Noble Ambitions
Behind the Throne
The Great Fire of London
The Long Weekend
The Rainborowes
Pirates Of Barbary
See all

Praise for By Permission Of Heaven

Marvellously readable

Daily Mail

The story of London's great fire is one of the set-pieces of English history. But the strength of Adrian Tinniswood's measured narrative lies in the fresh emphasis he places on its fallout

Andrew Holgate, Sunday Times

This book is more than just a gripping account of the great fire...with immense skill, Adrian Tinniswood uncovers the cross-currents of special interests that the disaster brought into play, many of which lend the story an almost contemporary feel

Christopher Hudson, Daily Mail

Admirably researched and highly evocative

Nicholas Seddon, Spectator

Even Pepys is too near and involved an observer to convey the full magnitude of the catastrophe. For that we need an historian, and Adrian Tinniswood's new account of the Great Fire rises impressively to the challenge

John Adamson, Sunday Telegraph
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