48 CONTEXT 176 : JUNE 2023 explores the diverse variety of the people involved, from the landowners with suitable clay, through the entrepreneurs who exploited it to the brickies who produced the finished product. Set within a broad economic framework which examines supply and demand, costs and transportation, it is an exhaustive study which is fully documented and illuminated by helpful illustrations. Of particular interest are the chapters devoted to the harsh life endured by the seasonal workers, which explains the processes involved in making bricks by hand before the increasing adoption of mechanisation towards the end of the century. The contribution of women and children is fully acknowledged, and there are evocative chapters on the living arrangements of the brickmakers, and the role of drink and religion in their working and domestic lives. By the second half of the century, they gradually began to organise themselves in trade unions to press for improved conditions and better wages, which inevitably led to a number of industrial disputes. The book concludes with the drastic decline of the local brickfields as production shifted to the highly mechanised industry in the Midlands, making cheaper Fletton bricks, and as the demand for ever more housing on the outskirts of London made their rural locations more valuable for development. Both books under review are serious academic studies with extensive lengthy quotations from the original documentary sources. Together they provide a coherent account that illuminates the development and appearance of London over four centuries. The introduction to the monograph on Barbon ends with a thoughtprovoking passage that is worth quoting in full: ‘The issues that Barbon was concerned with at the end of the 17th century seem eerily familiar to the present day. Is London too large, does it take too much of the country’s wealth, should it allow so much redevelopment, why is it so different from the rest of the country?’ The authors do not offer any easy answers to these questions, but in stimulating thoughtful debate, both of these books can be seen to have a contemporary relevance. Beautifully produced and illustrated, they provide a scholarly basis for a better understanding of the evolution of London and its suburbs. Malcolm Airs, emeritus fellow, Kellogg College Oxford Particular moments London: the Great Transformation 1860–1920 Atlantic Publishing, 480 pages, over 800 black-and-white illustrations, hardback, 2022, ISBN 978 1 915143 00 6, £50 This book is the fourth of Philip Davies’s explorations of London through historic photographs. In this volume the author draws on a wide range of archive material, particularly on photographs in the Historic England archives and at Bishopsgate Institute. In a foreword, Dan Cruikshank notes that it is often the most obscure that is lost. The book shines a light on less-known but changed corners of London. The large number of timber-framed and weatherboarded houses in areas like Clerkenwell and Stepney, and in then-outlying villages like Hornsey, come as a surprise. Equally unexpected is the foreground in 1867 of wharves and industrial buildings between Lambeth Bridge and the Palace of Westminster and the abbey: a place that is an important element in the nation’s image of itself. True to its title, the book illustrates a great transformation from a London that would be recognisable to Charles Dickens to a city still familiar in the mid-20th century. In his author’s introduction, Davies traces the depiction of London before photography and the subsequent history of photography in the capital. The book includes the earliest-known photograph of London: a view of Whitehall taken in 1839. Photography provided a record of the buildings and streets of London, and those form the core of the book, including work by photographers such as Bedford Lemere and Co. To take one example from hundreds, photographs of Edward Blore’s east front to Buckingham Palace in 1890, refaced in 1913, show that some changes were beneficial. Some photographers had a deliberate social reforming purpose. Practitioners like John Thomson and the American author Jack London went into the poorer boroughs of the city to depict the lives of the people living there. Pictures of shops and people at work show a lively street life and
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