Rosemary Hill

There's some development by now out to the east, isn't there, as well?

No, and indeed still isn't.

And the idea of being north or south of the river is still fundamental to everyone's understanding of London.

and where they belong in it and what they think is best.

So we've got this broader picture of the physical appearance of London, but there is also a broadening at this point of the idea of London and of ideas generally.

We've got in 1548, Reginald Wolfe, the London printer, who comes up with the idea of a universal cosmography of the whole world, not an unambitious attempt.

And history as chronology and evidence-based and so on, all the things we were talking about earlier, but now on a much bigger scale than anyone's attempted before.

Well, suddenly people have a sense because of the Reformation.

of how it is possible within a single lifetime for there to be this great caesura in national life.

And it's that interesting moment when most people have understood

the past more through place than through chronology.

But Camden brings those things together, the first of the great county histories.

And also one sees the beginnings of, not just because of Mary's influence,

but the beginnings of an expression of regret about all the destruction and people beginning to, I mean, to look at ruins through more sympathetic eyes and the beginnings later with Henry Spellman, who writes about the problems with sacrilege and how maybe if you took over

consecrated spaces, maybe some bad things will happen to you.

There's a great beginning of a great ambivalence about the past and therefore an ability to think about it critically.

Everyone, all historians, including us, you have your agenda.

But the ability to think critically about the past, of course, depends on

documentary evidence.

If it's just Geoffrey of Monmouth telling you about the Knights of the Round Table, I mean, you can't just buy it or you don't.