Radio’s Mike Read Delves Deep Into The City’s Greatest Thoroughfare In New Book, A Thousand Years Of A London Street: Cheapside

On The Table Read Magazine, “the best book magazine in the UK“, A Thousand Years Of A London Street: Cheapside by Mike Read takes readers back to Roman times to spotlight the good, the bad and the intriguing aspects of Cheapside’s millennium long history.

Thousand Years Of A London Street: Cheapside

In A Thousand Years Of A London Street: Cheapside, Mike Read immerses readers in his palpable love of London’s past and the backstories that make the streets of the capital city so compelling.

This is Read’s second book in his series, the first book focused on London’s Denmark Street, in which he documents a thousand years of selected London streets and their respective histories. Some streets have their roots and foundations in places of worship, others were locations for trading, others are notable because of their geographical location or particular topography. Cheapside goes back further than a thousand years, with St Paul’s at its western end and St Mary-le-Bow as its centrepiece, and all the way to the Romans and beyond.

Read regales readers with fascinating and edifying tales of Cheapside’s colourful history including kings, queens, poets, playwrights, murderers, criminals, broadcasters, inventors, politicians, pioneers, philanthropists, religious fanatics, revolutionaries, diarists and architects. Everything in this fascinating exploration played a part in making Cheapside what Charles Dickens Jnr called the greatest thoroughfare in the City of London.

The book bursts with forensically detailed research and a boundless peppering of arcane facts about how the Romans, The Great Fire of London, Wren and multitude of others have made their mark on Cheapside’s pavements. With London’s streets holding a huge number of long lost stories ready for the describing, Mike Read’s A Thousand Years Of A London Street series has endless potential.  The main question that remains is which road will provoke the curiosity of this broadcaster turned supersleuth next?

Mike Read

Having been a broadcaster for over 40 years, Mike Read spend 5 years presenting the BBC Radio 1 breakfast show from 1981, and has worked for a number of other radio stations over his career.

As a TV presenter, he’s best known for the music game show Pop Quiz, and for Saturday Superstore.  Currently, Mike Read is the breakfast show presenter for United DJs, a mainly online station, which was launched last April.

Find more from Mike Read now:

Twitter – @MikeReadUK

Kindle: https://amzn.to/3R6PtUV

Paperback: https://amzn.to/3sCp8nF