Rosemary Hill

And we might wonder, I mean, London Bridge, of course, looms large in our consideration of London.

But Platter probably didn't go over London Bridge to get to the theatre, did he?

Yes, and the waterboatmen who knew how to manage the tides and the currents and get you to where you actually wanted to go, because if he had gone over the bridge, he wouldn't have actually arrived very near the theatre.

It wouldn't have been frightfully convenient.

And the waterboatmen, the ferrymen, were also, as indeed taxi drivers are to this day, a great source of news, gossip, information.

And so Plata goes to the globe.

We begin at this moment where we left off last time at the end of Mary's reign.

She died in 1558.

And we are on the brink of one of the great reigns of English history and in London's history too with Elizabeth.

But before we start on all that, just tell us, what does London look like now?

Before we get to the maps, talk a little bit more about the panorama.

What's in it?

So there's a certain parallel with what's going on in the writing of history.

It becomes more important to actually get the facts in rather than

to create an impression, to create a symbolic narrative.

People want to know what it's really like.

And just to remind people, of course, this is the Gothic St.

Paul's, not the St.

Paul's that they know now, which doesn't have a steeple.

So when you say that the copper plates that survive show the middle, so how much more was there, do we think?