Liza Picard has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.3★ across 4 ratings. The most-rated is Victorian London.
Victorian London
Summary
Like her previous books, this book is the result of the author's passionate interest in the realities of everyday life, and the conditions in which most people lived, so often left out of history books. This period of mid-Victorian London encompasses a huge range of subjects: Victoria's wedding and the place of the royals in popular esteem; how the very poor lived, the underworld, prostitution, crime, prisons and transportation; the public utilities, Bazalgette on sewers and road design, Chadwick on pollution and sanitation; private charities, Peabody, Burdett Coutts, and workhouses; new terraced housing and transport, trains, omnibuses, and the Underground; furniture and decor; families and the position of women; the prosperous middle classes and their new shops, e.g. Peter Jones, Harrods; entertaining and servants, food and drink; unlimited liability and bankruptcy; the rich, the marriage market, taxes and anti-semitism; the Empire, recruitment and press-gangs. The period begins with the closing of the Fleet and Marshalsea prisons and ends with the first (steam-operated) Underground trains and the first Gilbert & Sullivan. All the splendours and horrors of Victorian life will be vividly recalled.
©2005 Liza Picard (P)2005 Orion Publishing Group Ltd.
Chaucer's People
Summary
The Middle Ages re-created through the cast of pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales. Among the surviving records of 14th-century England, Geoffrey Chaucer's poetry is the most vivid. Chaucer wrote about everyday people outside the walls of the English court-men and women who spent days at the pedal of a loom, or maintaining the ledgers of an estate, or on the high seas. In Chaucer's People, Liza Picard transforms The Canterbury Tales into a masterful guide for a gloriously detailed tour of medieval England, from the mills and farms of a manor house to the lending houses and Inns of Court in London. In Chaucer's People, we meet again the motley crew of pilgrims on the road to Canterbury. Drawing on a range of historical records such as the Magna Carta, The Book of Margery Kempe, and Cookery in English, Picard puts Chaucer's characters into historical context and mines them for insights into what people ate, wore, read, and thought in the Middle Ages. What can the Miller, "big . . . of brawn and eke of bones" tell us about farming in 14th-century England? What do we learn of medieval diets and cooking methods from the Cook? With boundless curiosity and wit, Picard re-creates the religious, political, and financial institutions and customs that gave order to these lives.
©2017 Liza Picard (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Chaucer's People
Summary
In Chaucer's People, Liza Picard guides us through the tumultuous world of the late 14th century in an ingenious, informative and entertaining way. Through the assorted cast of pilgrims Chaucer selected for The Canterbury Tales, Picard brings medieval social history to life and uncovers the detail behind Chaucer's poetic portraits. These are the lives lived beyond the court circles frequented by most of his well-heeled audience. Drawing on contemporary experiences of a vast range of subjects including war, trade, religion, plague and banking, Liza Picard recreates the medieval world in all its glorious detail. Chaucer chose his pilgrims carefully. He sometimes raises a thought-provoking query in an apparently simple portrait. The Prioress was a sweet, pretty, well-mannered young nun; what was she doing on the road to Canterbury with a mixed band of men instead of staying in her convent to pray? The Knight was 'a very perfect gentle knight'; but why had his military service landed him in such distant places as Lithuania and Spain? By providing these characters with a three-dimensional framework - the times in which they lived - Liza Picard opens up the 14th century world to us. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2017 Liza Picard (P)2017 Orion Publishing Group
Dr. Johnson's London
Summary
Like its popular and acclaimed predecessor, Restoration London, this book is the result of the author's passionate interest in the practical details of the everyday life of our ancestors, so often ignored in more conventional history books. Based on every possible contemporary source (diaries, almanacs, newspapers, advice books, memoirs, government papers and reports), Liza Picard examines every aspect of life in London: the streets, houses and gardens; cooking, housework, laundry, and shopping; clothes and jewellery, cosmetics and hairdressing; medicine, sex, hobbies, education, and etiquette; religion and popular beliefs; law and crime. This book spans the years 1740 to 1770, starting when the gin craze was gaining ground and ending when the East Coast of America was still British.
©2000 Liza Picard (P)1999 Orion Publishing Group Ltd