Hit-and-miss history man

Since it was a prime social manifestation of the industrial revolution, the Victorian city more than merits serious attention by historians. It became the symbol of the de-ruralisation of the British (or more specifically, English) poor, and was the vehicle for the rise of the middle classes. These themes and others are discussed in detail by Tristram Hunt in this book.

Its three sections deal broadly with the establishment of the new cities, their development, and their decline. Together with familiar tales from familiar sources about the condition of the urban poor, Dr Hunt has found some unfamiliar tales and sources as well. He is clearly knowledgeable about architecture (though surprisingly does not mention, in his passage on the architect, how George Gilbert Scott used the study of French and Italian decoration made for his aborted plan for the new Foreign Office to design St Pancras station). His section on Victorian developments in sanitation, and the work of Bazalgette in particular, is excellent. He has noted some of the intellectual themes of Victorian life, notably the Gothic revival, the comfort blanket of mediaevalism and the resurrection of the distinction between Saxons and Normans, and analysed them thoughtfully. He understands and writes well about a few of the great personalities of the period, notably Joe Chamberlain. His scholarship is extensive, albeit based rather more heavily on printed sources than might have been ideal. He has written, all in all, a serious book that rounds up much of what one needs to know about the cities of the 19th century and those who made them.

One must, though, enter three reservations about this work. The first Dr Hunt’s at times superficial understanding of the Victorian sages whom he, quite rightly, discusses in terms of their philosophical impact on the nature of urban life.