Making the Metropolis: Creators of Victoria's London

Author: Stephen Halliday

Making the Metropolis: Creators of Victoria's London

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.