By Permission of Heaven: The True Story of the Great Fire of London

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating Subject, But Book Could Be Better
Review: I did enjoy Tinniswood's book and found the subject very intriguing. The Great Fire of London was incredibly dramatic and Tinniswood shines when he brings in primary sources such as the diary of Samuel Pepys and the poetry of the time. I also appreciated the maps that tracked the progress of fire as well as other city plans and artwork included in the plates. Another strong point of the book is the discussion of the English fear of "papism"; the 17th century mind equated Catholicism with a loss of liberty, which is something I hadn't heard of before.

That being said, I found Tinniswood's writing style to be less than dynamic. The book does read quickly due to the subject matter, but I wouldn't call it great literature in and of itself. I would also have liked more historical background on the Restoration to help place the event in context. This book was worth the time to read, but this book is, for me, one to borrow rather than add to my personal library.

Rating:
Summary: Should have been much better
Review: It's hard to take a fascinating historical subject like this and make it boring, but that's exactly what Tinniswood does with this book. He does a very, very poor job of setting the scene and introducing characters -- if you don't already know a lot about 17th century life and the geography of London, you'll likely find yourself lost. His extremely dry writing style doesn't help matters, either.

The book also suffers from a lack of depth -- it's fact after fact with almost no attempt made at interpretation. And the lack of detail when compared to other books about historical fires (such as Von Drehle's "Triangle") is disappointing. Still, Tinniswood clearly has a very good knowledge of this interesting subject, and that's what keeps me from giving this book 1 star.

Rating:
Summary: Resurgam
Review: This book is a fascinating mix of disaster epic, social history, biography, and just plain good storytelling. I highly recommend it.

Adrian Tinniswood, the author of a biography of Christopher Wren and a history of architecture (among other titles), brings us to the intersection of those two topics, the massive fire that swept through the City of London in early September, 1666. For me, as I'd suspect for many readers, about the only thing I knew about the Great Fire of London was that it allowed Christopher Wren to demonstrate his genius in rebuilding the city's churches. In fact, the story is quite a lot larger than that.

Tinniswood's recounting of the fire itself is a narrative worth the price of the book. But what really makes this memorable history is the way the author places the fire in a larger social context of municipal politics, religious bigotry, the fear of war and reprisal, and much more.

What I found more fascinating even than the fire, however, was the author's description of the rebuilding of London and what it demonstrates about the English. In other nations and other times, politicians would not have hesitated to use the Fire as an excuse for a massive "visionary" building of a glorious new capital. But in London, any such plans foundered on the rocks of economic and property rights. The government simply refused to trample propertyholders' legitimate claims -- and the landowners and tenants themselves refused to be driven off their land merely to accommodate the social engineers' dreams of a newer, greater London.

Similarly, "A nationwide tax [to pay for rebuilding the City] would have been turned down flat by Parliament -- why should the rest of the country be made to suffer for London's losses?" [p. 225]. Parliamentary and City leaders even hamstrung the power of the powerful Companies to limit entry to their trades in order to keep reconstruction costs down ... sort of the seventeenth-century equivalent of Right to Work laws.

On the whole, there is a lot going on in this story. But Adrian Tinniswood ties it all together extremely well. Even for readers whose interests may not lie in the history of the Restoration era, this is an interesting tale that's both educational and inspirational. And that's not a bad way to spend your reading time.

Rating:
Summary: Intriguing book on how catastrophes impact nations...
Review: Tinniswood is an author I will be looking for in the future. His history of the great London fire of 1666 makes it memorable, and it is amazing how much is still the same as per politics and political maneuvering by those in power during such a daunting happening as this fire, that more or less razed London to the ground.

England was in the midst of a war as per usual with Holland and France when this fire broke out in the late summer of 1666. Even though it would have been easy to blame this fire on England's enemies (and some did exactly that...the war-mongers will always be with us I fear), King Charles and his many courtiers and even his generals made it more than clear at the Parlimentary Committee that was established to determine how the fire got started, that the extremely dry summer, the way London homes were built with wood and with extensions over alleys, and the lack of accessible water and plans for fighting a city fire were at fault for the loss of London.

I thoroughly enjoyed the research Tinniswood did on the writings from that time period. Not only does he include official writings of the fire, but also poetry lamenting the fire, the various preachers and sermons they gave on what the fire meant as far as God was concerned, and later in the book, information concerning the rebuilding of the city of London. This information incorporates all the thinking of the time into a very pleasing history on a single occurrence, which like the sinking of the Titanic, had an impact on the way people did things. In this case, London was rebuilt with bricks and stones, rather than wood, people were kept from building right down to the Thames (at least for a while), and other laws were incorporated to make all cities safer from fires.

A couple of things I found amazing was how little life was lost due to this fire. Considering the great amount of people in such a small space, one would have expected a great loss of life...but that didn't happen. The other thing that was amazing was the fact that most people just gathered up their families and things and left. It wasn't until Charles gave his brother the task of trying to stop the fire that anything was done, and he did a good job at it.

Great history.

Karen Sadler,
Science Education

Rating:
Summary: Wow, an exciting book.
Review: Wow, an exciting book. Adrian Tinniswood has an undergraduate degree in history and a master's in literature and is a respected journalist. From the extensive bibliography for By Permission of Heaven, one can see that his training in historical research has enabled him to dig a first rate story out of historical archives, while his training in literature produced a riveting tale. The True Story of the Great Fire of London reads like a novel. Tinniswood's effective mining of his sources has paid dividends in the creation of historical characters at least as engaging as those of fictional works, and these individuals are set in the dramatic setting of the fire and its aftermath. The author chronicles the birth and progress of the fire, its amazing destructiveness with little fatality, and its effects on later London and English society. Adding excitement to the story is the fact that, unlike the Chicago fire which was almost as devistating, the London event was set in the midst of war with another country and the very real fear of invasion.

At the end of the book I felt like there should be more story to read and began to cast about for biographies and other historical works on 17th Century England. What more can one ask from a good book?

FOR THOSE WRITING PAPERS IN HISTORY, ANTHROPOLOGY, OR SOCIOLOGY: One might write a comparison of the Chicago fire and the London fire using the author as a resource. How were they different? What types of political factors in both made the situation better or worse for either? What kinds of social factors entered into these situations if any? Why were there so few fatalities during the London fire? How did things change for the working class after the fire? Why? Could either fire have been prevented? Why were these cities particularly vulnerable? Were they more vulnerable than other cities of the time or just unlucky? Could Per Bak (How Nature Works: The Science of Self Organized Criticality) or similar authors on the subject of criticality have predicted these events? What would they say about them? Are cities still as vulnerable to fire today despite our better preventive and fire fighting measures? Under what circumstances might such a fire occur today? Would there be more or fewer fatalities? Are third world countries prone to this type of event even today? Why or why not?

Rating:
Summary: Wow, an exciting book.
Review: Wow, an exciting book. Adrian Tinniswood has an undergraduate degree in history and a master's in literature and is a respected journalist. From the extensive bibliography for By Permission of Heaven, one can see that his training in historical research has enabled him to dig a first rate story out of historical archives, while his training in literature produced a riveting tale. The True Story of the Great Fire of London reads like a novel. Tinniswood's effective mining of his sources has paid dividends in the creation of historical characters at least as engaging as those of fictional works, and these individuals are set in the dramatic setting of the fire and its aftermath. The author chronicles the birth and progress of the fire, its amazing destructiveness with little fatality, and its effects on later London and English society. Adding excitement to the story is the fact that, unlike the Chicago fire which was almost as devistating, the London event was set in the midst of war with another country and the very real fear of invasion.

At the end of the book I felt like there should be more story to read and began to cast about for biographies and other historical works on 17th Century England. What more can one ask from a good book?

FOR THOSE WRITING PAPERS IN HISTORY, ANTHROPOLOGY, OR SOCIOLOGY: One might write a comparison of the Chicago fire and the London fire using the author as a resource. How were they different? What types of political factors in both made the situation better or worse for either? What kinds of social factors entered into these situations if any? Why were there so few fatalities during the London fire? How did things change for the working class after the fire? Why? Could either fire have been prevented? Why were these cities particularly vulnerable? Were they more vulnerable than other cities of the time or just unlucky? Could Per Bak (How Nature Works: The Science of Self Organized Criticality) or similar authors on the subject of criticality have predicted these events? What would they say about them? Are cities still as vulnerable to fire today despite our better preventive and fire fighting measures? Under what circumstances might such a fire occur today? Would there be more or fewer fatalities? Are third world countries prone to this type of event even today? Why or why not?