By Permission of Heaven: The Story of the Great Fire of London

A magnificently told and thrilling account of one of the most dramatic events in British history.

Adrian Tinniswood’s magnificent new account of the Great Fire of London explores the history of a cataclysm and its consequences, from that first small blaze in a baker’s house in Pudding Lane in the early hours of September 2nd, 1666 to the inferno that would devastate the third largest city in the Western world. The statistics are terrible: 436 acres of closely packed streets burned; 13,200 houses destroyed; £10 million lost at a time when £10 million represented the City’s annual income for 800 years. But the Great Fire wasn’t simply a tragedy of economics or architecture. It wrecked lives and destroyed livelihoods. It killed and maimed, and it drove Londoners mad in their quest for vengeance.

By Permission of Heaven pieces together the untold human story of the Fire and its aftermath -- the panic and terror, the bewilderment and violence and chaos, the search for scapegoats, the rebirth of a city. Above all, it provides an unsurpassable recreation of what happened to schoolchildren and servants, courtiers and clergymen when the streets of London ran with fire and “by ye Permission of Heaven, Hell broke loose upon this Protestant City.”


From the Hardcover edition.