The year 1660 witnessed not only the restoration of the monarchy but also the beginning of a new lusty and licentious age. Under the Merry Monarch, Charles II, London shurgged off Puritanism and launched itself into debauchery to enjoy two centries of uninhibited pleasure. This richly evocative portrayal of the capital will take you on an unforgettable historical pleasure trip.

Gambling was endemic: men bet on trifles for the highest stakes, and fortunes and reputations were won and lost overnight. Sex was easily available and even numbers of the House of Commons had to be regularly hauled out of brothels to vote legislation through parliament. Pleasure gardens offered patrons a blood soaked evening of cockfights, dogfights, bull and bear baiting and boxing matches. Taverns and coffee houses were also popular: one coffee house cum bordello in Drury Lane attracted the after theatre crowd with prizefights between bare breasted women.

Drink fuelled most activities and gin was the new sin. Lords fell under their lavishly laid tables each night and carried to bed by servants who saw nothing odd in such conduct. The saying was that you could get drunk for only a penny and dead drunk for tuppence. Music halls provided defiantly irreverent fun and laughter and playhouses were more flesh markets than theatres.

Public hangings at Tyburn and executions at Tower Hill were also staged as public spectacles and could draw excited crowds of up to 100,000. London's Pleasures draws to a close as the Victorian era brought a return to piety: fairs were quashed, pleasure gardens closed and music halls reinvented themselves for a wider audience.

Full of wonderful anecdotes and revelations and richly illustrated throughout, this is a thoroughly entertaining window on the past. Read this and you will certainly never think of London in the same again.

Puritanism and launched itself into debauchery to enjoy two centries of uninhibited pleasure. This richly evocative portrayal of the capital will take you on an unforgettable historical pleasure trip.

Books by David Kerr Cameron

Featured

David Kerr Cameron

When British servicemen were observing nuclear tests in the Pacific during the 1950s, the Prime Minister of the time, Sir Anthony Eden, was warned that they risked a lingering death from cancer. His response is reported to have been, 'A pity, but we cannot help it.'

A Kist of Sorrows

Last night I took the old roads and heard the old speak. I listened again to the sdll voices and felt the sting of the wind on my cheek. And it was good, like a home-coming.

The old track is grass-grown, almost obliterated by the years, and I am a stranger now where the old wind wanders, where it reeshles the dry broom and tugs at the tufted grass. The hill is quiet, shorn of voices.

Time has mellowed the stones, as it has sutured the hurts of the heart; hallowed them as the last reminder of the folk who once had their life and their being here. They rest, stilled forever in their coffin'd sleep, and now on the hill nature has reclaimed her own.

The Gaberlunzie Man

McQaid is a sword - and occasionally dagger - for hire in the turbulent Highlands, as disillusionment grows against the Hanoverian regime. On a fine summer night in 1745 he is summoned to the bedside of the dying laird of Auchlour and commissioned on the most secret errand of his life ...

London Pleasures, From Restoration to Regency

Willie Gavin, Crofter Man

David Kerr Cameron has captured and recorded for future generations a culture and a landscape that have now gone forever

The Ballard And The Plough | A Folk-History of the Scottish Farmtouns

Quoting generously from bothy ballads, David Kerr Cameron has written a book rich in anecdote and insight.

The Cornkister Days | A Portrait of a land and it rituals

With a knowledge and a skill that reveals his passion for the land and its people, David Kerr Cameron picks his way through the rural upheavals and developments of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries towards the landscape we recognise today. In doing so he provides a wide-sweeping and unforgettable view of our rural history and completes his great rural trilogy portraying the old farming landscapes of Scotland's North-east Lowlands.

The English Fair

Colourful, boisterous and often bawdy, the old-time fairs punctuated the routine of the year like exploding stars in the firmament. They were also a vital part of England's economy. This comprehensive and readable study examines a long neglected subject and its impact on trade and everyday lives.

Featured

David Kerr Cameron was born in Aberdeenshire in 1928.

After National Service in the RAF he joined Kirriemuir Herald, a Scottish weekly, 1951. He worked at various newspapers and magazines, including the Farming Express, where he was managing editor.

In 1966 he joined the Daily Telegraph, where he was, in succession, a Features Sub-Editor, Chief Features Sub-Editor, Weekend section/Books section production Sub-Editor of both Sunday and daily pages, and finally Sub-Editor on Arts desk. He retired from the Daily Telegraph in 1993.

He never forgot the rigours of farming life in Aberdeenshire, which he wrote about with un-sentimental vividness in his books.

The Ballad and the Plough (1978), Willie Gavin, Crofter Man (1980), and The Cornkister Days (1984), all of which won Scottish Arts Council Awards, gave the social history of the North-East a readability that drew comparisons with the work of the late John Prebble.

Featured

News

Authors

Humour

History

General Interest

Communication & Business

Biography

Fiction

Crime and Thrillers

Military, Aviation and Endurance