Rosemary Hill
speaker
490 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 7 Sep
Rosemary Hill’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Hello, and welcome back to London Revisited, a close readings podcast from the London Review of Books.
I'm Rosemary Hill.
In our last episode, we saw London survive the plague and begin to rebuild after the Great Fire of sixteen sixty six, and we ended with a crisis of royal succession, with the Catholic James II defying attempts to exclude him from the
And he finally took the throne in sixteen eighty five, but as we'll see today, James's reign was not destined to be long.
I'm joined today by Markman Ellis, Professor of eighteenth century studies at Queen Mary University of London.
Hello, Markman.
And we're going to watch as the city becomes a centre of financial revolution, which grows out of a network of coffee houses, where a new flow of caffeinated enterprises create political debate, financial chaos from time to time, the exchange of news and gossip, the first daily newspapers, reviews, advice columns.
The ever emerging voice of public opinion.
Luckily for us we have one of the great writers of London, Daniel Defoe, and we're going to start with an extract from his novel Mell Flounders, published in seventeen twenty two.
Defoe's Mall Flanders comes somewhere between fiction and journalism.
Defoe knew a lot of criminals, partly because he spent some time in prison himself, and he wrote down what they said.
I think that's what gives her such an authentic sounding voice.
And also Defoe's descriptions are very evocative of a period in which the life in the streets becomes ever more important, ever more vital, ever more bustling.
These street sellers, street life behind it all in sixteen eighty eight, is a great moment of national and ultimately international crisis for London, for England, because after Charles II's death
James II, who um everyone's been trying to keep off the throne because he was a Roman Catholic.
And the fact that by now James had an heir, that was what made those who feared for Catholic influence in
England decide that something had to be done to challenge James.
The plan was that James would be asked to resign.
And the Dutch Protestant William of Orange, who was his son in law, invited to come as king.
So
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