The history of place in the hands of a master in the evocation of time and social change. In this text, the houses - a Cotswold vicarage, a one-time girls' boarding school in Surrey and a Jacobean house now buried in inner London - represent the changing face of England during 4 centuries through the many people who have lived in them.

One summer evening in central France, Gillian Tindall went on an errand into a deserted house. There she discovered a cache of letters in various hands, all written to the same woman. In piecing together the life of this extraordinary person, the author rediscovered a vanished village world and a remarkable period in French history.

49 Bankside is an 18th century house; the last survivor of what was once a long ribbon of houses overlooking the Thames. Rich with anecdote and colour, with celebrities from history, as well as ordinary people, this is social history at its most enjoyable.

"From the Hardcover edition."

Using a handful of lives and a specific location to exemplify 200 years of history, Gillian Tindall focuses on a few of the oldest streets in Pariss Latin Quarter. Her study shows how Paris has drawn into its magnetic field people who have variously found there education or enlightenment, a refuge or a secret garden.

Kentish Town has passed through every possible visual and social permutation, and is still developing and changing today. This study illustrates the classic historical sequence of the village gradually being absorbed by the London metropolis.