Sir Francis Hill continues in this volume his majestic history of his native city. Medieval Lincoln appeared in 1948, and was reissued in 1965; Tudor and Stuart Lincoln was published in 1956. This third volume, first published in 1966, covers the period of the industrial revolution and parliamentary reform, the time of' the Napoleonic war and the post-war depression. As in previous volumes, local history is taken as a microcosm of the social history of the nation. Sir Francis works from primary sources, many of them unpublished; these give the feel of the period in a direct and vivid way. Since Lincoln was a county town, a cathedral city, a centre of trade and an industrial centre, its history is in many ways representative of English history as a whole.