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Books

The hundreds of languages spoken in London are the city’s greatest glory

21 February 2020

10:00 PM

21 February 2020

10:00 PM

Migrant City: A New History of London Panikos Panayi

Yale, pp.424, £20

Every history of London — and there have been very many — has looked at the importance for the city of migration. Not to mention it would be as inconceivable as ignoring the River Thames. Both, after all, flow directly through the city’s heart. In this scholarly new study, the difference is that London’s history of migration — its patchwork of settlement, its Irish ‘rookery’, its ‘coloured quarter’, Huguenot silk-weavers, Jewish street-sellers, German bakers, Italian waiters, Chinatown, Banglatown — is placed centre-stage.

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