The year 1660 witnessed not only the restoration of the monarchy but also the beginning of a new lusty and licentious age.  Under the Merry Monarch, Charles II, London shurgged off Puritanism and launched itself into debauchery to enjoy two centries of uninhibited pleasure.  This richly evocative portrayal of the capital will take you on an unforgettable historical pleasure trip.

Gambling was endemic: men bet on trifles for the highest stakes, and fortunes and reputations were won and lost overnight. Sex was easily available and even numbers of the House of Commons had to be regularly hauled out of brothels to vote legislation through parliament. Pleasure gardens offered patrons a blood soaked evening of cockfights, dogfights, bull and bear baiting and boxing matches. Taverns and coffee houses were also popular: one coffee house cum bordello in Drury Lane attracted the after theatre crowd with prizefights between bare breasted women.

Drink fuelled most activities and gin was the new sin. Lords fell under their lavishly laid tables each night and carried to bed by servants who saw nothing odd in such conduct. The saying was that you could get drunk for only a penny and dead drunk for tuppence. Music halls provided defiantly irreverent fun and laughter and playhouses were more flesh markets than theatres.

Public hangings at Tyburn and executions at Tower Hill were also staged as public spectacles and could draw excited crowds of up to 100,000. London's Pleasures draws to a close as the Victorian era brought a return to piety: fairs were quashed, pleasure gardens closed and music halls reinvented themselves for a wider audience.

Full of wonderful anecdotes and revelations and richly illustrated throughout, this is a thoroughly entertaining window on the past. Read this and you will certainly never think of London in the same again.

Puritanism and launched itself into debauchery to enjoy two centries of uninhibited pleasure.  This richly evocative portrayal of the capital will take you on an unforgettable historical pleasure trip.

Books by David Kerr Cameron