That Terrible Place

Robert Shepherd has spent more than 25 years working in and around Westminster and has become increasingly obsessed by its history. He sees Westminster as a place of high drama and enduring mythology - a place obsessed with spin', with creating images and sending out a message, from the time of Edward the Confessor onwards. Ambition, conflict, gossip, intrigue and vanity are hard-wired into this tightly drawn spot on the map that houses the Abbey, the Palace of Westminster, Downing Street and Whitehall - under a mile long and no more than 500 yards wide (hemmed in by Trafalgar Square to the north, Horseferry Road to the south, the river Thames to the east and St James's Park to the west). Into this epic story - enlivened by bombs, coups, fires, floods, mobs, murders, plagues, revolts and riots - Robert Shepherd finds room for plenty of colourful anecdotes and little-known facts. The cast-list is the extraordinary range of those irrestibly drawn to the place like a magnet - clerics, courtiers, debtors, detectives, diplomats, journalists, lawyers, lobbyists, merchants, monarchs, monks, murderers, politicians, printers, prostitutes, scholars, teachers, tourists and writers.