Across the Thames: a new book about Southwark but not much about its Catholics

Liberty over London Bridge: A History of the People of Southwark by Margaret Willes

Yale University Press, £20, 304 pages

The dead are interesting, even fascinating, but never nearly so much as the living. Long strangled by a stultifying confederacy of German bombs, English planners and international finance, the City of London is dead. Across London Bridge, however, is a place very much alive: the Borough of Southwark. Its people are the subject of an admirable centuries-spanning chronicle by Margaret Willes, previously known for her well-received history of the Square Mile relayed through the prism of the churchyard of St Paul’s Cathedral.