This lavishly produced book brings together an impressive amount of new historical research which seeks to answer this question, providing fresh interpretations of Leicester's history since 1800. The chapters analyse the events, changes and characteristics that have shaped the city and given it its distinctive identity. The sights, sounds and smells of the city in the twenty-first century are products of cumulative layers of history, layers which are peeled back by a specially assembled team of historians, all of whom have lived and worked in Leicester for many years. The result is an...

Drawing on a body of research covering primarily Europe and the Americas, but stretching also to Asia and Africa, from the mid-eighteenth century to the present, this book explores the methodological and heuristic implications of studying cities in relation to one another. Moving fluidly between comparative and transnational methods, as well as across regional and national lines, the contributors to this volume demonstrate the necessity of this broader view in assessing not just the fundamentals of urban life, the way cities are occupied and organised on a daily basis, but also the urban...