Rutherford spent many hours researching the book in the Museum of London, so that was our first stop. In addition to a wonderful read, this book serves as a great travel guide. I couldn't have picked a better book to read!Īn added benefit of this book was that it inspired yet another vacation - this time to - you guessed it - London.

The story, which includes an immense cast of characters, was extremely engrossing, and the historical detail made the story all the more rich and enjoyable. I found, however, that this book was a perfect blend of drama AND history. At first, I was sceptical about this book because, unlike my husband, I'm not a big history lover. At my husband's urging, I chose LONDON by Edward Rutherford. I wanted something big and juicy that I could savor throughout my week-long vacation. Last summer, I was searching for the perfect book to take with me to the beach. You can't read London without a scorecard-but that's part of the fun. Just as one begins to warm to the characters, they are hurried off the stage. Rutherfurd is a good storyteller and each vignette makes for a good story however, he has given himself the inevitable task of beginning what amounts to a new book every 40 pages or so. Ultimately, though, the structure of the novel determines the lion's share of its success. The author doesn't skimp on historical detail, and that's a signal pleasure of the book. London is ambitious, and students of English history will eat it up. The author places his vignettes at the most dramatic moments of that city's history, leaping from Caesar's invasion to the Norman Conquest to the Great Fire to (of course) the Blitz, with many stops in between. His novel, London, stretches two millennia all the way from Roman times to the present. Edward Rutherfurd belongs to the James Michener school: he writes big, sprawling history-by- the-pound.

Rutherford london the novel