From political skullduggery among the Tudors to the Cold War Profumo scandal and assassination of Georgy Markov, London is not always as genteel as we might suppose. Immensely entertaining and illustrated with 180 color and black and white images, the book is a lively look at 2,000 years of London history at its most brutal. Included here are tales of medieval torture in the Tower, burnings at the stake during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the merry debauchery of the Restoration, and the market crash of the South Sea Bubble.