Given the enormous amount of historical material available on this topic Rutherfurd could probably have written another book as big as this one. The emphasis of the novel is on medieval and early modern history of the city.

I suspect it would be interesting to visit the Museum of London with these sections as a guide. The period up to the Norman invasion in 1066 takes up less than 200 pages, a lot of which seems to be tied to archaeological finds in the region. After a brief section detailing the geological history of the region, the story kicks off in 54 BC with Ceasar's invasion of Britain. Where Rutherfurd covered ten-thousand years of history in his first novel, he takes a slightly less ambitions approach this time. Like all Rutherfurd's novels, London takes the Mitchener approach to historical fiction, in this case covering twenty-one centuries following the lives of a number of fictional families. Given the size of these novels, London weighs in at over 1300 pages in mass market paperback and that is a few pages less than Sarum, I decided to read London first. I've read it a number of years ago and I may reread it at some point in the future.

Ruska (1991) is the odd one out in his bibliography so far, it's the only one that is not set in an English speaking part of the world. I'm skipping his second novel for the moment. I reviewed his début Sarum (1987) last year and concluded that he has gone on to write better books. London (1997) is Edward Rutherfurd's third novel.

Edward rutherfurd londres