A history of one of London’s most colourful boroughs is one of the best every written, says Peter Gruner

HER favourite period was the 18th and early 19th centuries when Islington was a country village of teahouses, markets and popular water spas.
But historian Mary Cosh also writes vividly about the later 19th century squalor and ugliness of the teeming slums. And she explores the disparity between rich and poor – which has hardly changed today.
It has taken more than 20 years to complete, but Ms Cosh’s brilliant A History of Islington is the most definitive story of the place ever written, and the most authoritative since John Nelson’s study in 1811.
Ms Cosh’s book traces the town’s early Tudor roots, as a small and agreeable settlement for wealthy traders in the 16th century, “away from the smoke and stench of cramped” London, right up to 2004, when pockets of the borough are regarded as among the poorest and most crime ridden in the land.