” London
- The Executioner`s City” reveals the capital as a place where the bodies of criminals defined the boundaries of the city & heads on poles greeted patrons on London Bridge. Tyburn Fields is the best known site of execution in London, but London may be aptly named the executioner`s city, so many were the places where executions could & did occur. The ubiquity of crime & punishment was taken for granted by countless generations of the capital`s inhabitants, though it seems to have done little to stem the tide of criminality that has always threatened to engulf the city. The book is a powerful evocation of the dark side of London`s history, where the great & not so good, the poor & helpless, the cruel & the idealistic crowd together to be punished in public. A King & more than one Queen, heretics, archbishops, pirates, poisoners, plotters, murderers & a cook executed for selling putrid fish met death by hanging, beheading, burning or boiling in London, & on most occasions the crowd roared its approval. David Brandon & Alan Brooke`s book is a vivid picture of capital punishment in a capital that seems to have thrived on executions.