Buy this book on-line

Morgan, Dewi : Phoenix of Fleet Street: 2000 years of St Brides

London: Charles Knight & Co, 1973

Hardback, first edition, 4to, very good condition, in a very good unclipped (£10.59) dust-jacket, publisher's original blueclothboards with gilt blocking to spine, 290 pages including index, colour and b/w photo and line illustrations-------------"St Bride's occupies a site which bears the distinct and still visible impressions of a rich and varied history. On this spot, by the rivers Fleet and Thames, and to the west of the City of London, you can see traces of the Roman settlement of Britain. Since then there have been eight churches here, the first of them dating from not long after the return of the legions to Rome. Royal business was transacted here, the English theatre was nurtured, and many famous figures lived nearby. The Black Prince marched -and Chaucer simply ambled- along Fleet Street. Emperor Charles V lodged in Bridewell Palace, next to the church, when he visited Henry VIII in 1522. And some years earlier, in 1500, Wynkyn de Worde, attracted by the literate churchmen who would buy his service, brought Caxton's press alongside St Bride's and established the first commercial print shop, thus creating the modern image of Fleet Street. This book is more than just the history of a church in a street in London. It is also the story of an island people, because little of importance that has happened in British history has not been echoed in St Bride's, and now the church's involvement in current affairs has extended from the national to the international, so that today, in the exchange of news, St Bride's is parish pump to the whole world." The author is honorary Chaplain to many Flrrt Street Institutions

Bibliophile Bookbase for antiquarian books, maps and prints.