About Jerry White
Jerry White is an award-winning historian of London. His latest book, Birth of a Global City, a history of London during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars of 1789-1815, is published by Bodley Head on 1 October 2026.
Jerry worked in local government, mainly in London, from 1967 to 2009. During that time he was Chief Executive of the London Borough of Hackney (1989-1995) and was one of the three Local Government Ombudsmen for England (1995-2009), with responsibility for South London among other areas.
Jerry is Emeritus Professor of Modern London History at Birkbeck, University of London.
Latest Publication
Birth of a Global City
Published by The Bodley Head, 1 October 2026
The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars changed London beyond recognition, turning it into the capital of the world – the centre of international finance and trade. Victory over France in 1815 ushered in the ‘British Century’: the next hundred years would be defined by Britain’s capitalist innovation and financial might, naval supremacy and imperial ambition.
In this brilliant portrait of these pivotal years, Jerry White looks at how revolution and war on the Continent transformed the capital. While the manufacture of war materials brought wealth for some, high food prices led to bread riots. The war divided public opinion, with ultra-patriots clamouring for the defeat of ‘Boney’, while others sought to emulate the democratic reforms pioneered across the Channel. Crucially, the chaos and uncertainty on the continent led to a mass flight of aristocratic wealth, foreign bankers and European merchants to London, which would help turn the capital into the world’s leading financial centre.
Jerry White shows how huge docks transformed the Port of London into the world’s trading centre; how the City of London financed the war against France and Nathan Mayer Rothschild provided the gold that crushed Napoleon at Waterloo; how a newly embellished Paris stimulated the reconstruction of central London and fuelled its expansion; and how this moment of Britain’s greatest imperial expansion revived briefly the London slave trade before it was finally ended in 1807. It was this turbulent period of war and political turmoil that created London as we know it today.
Jerry White’s Books
The Battle of London, 1939-1945
Endurance, Heroism and Frailty Under Fire
“Jerry White is one of London’s best historians…and in this enveloping book he tries to scrape away the myths that have obscured our view of the Second World War and reintroduce us to what life in the city between 1939 and 1945 was actually like” - Andrew Holgate, Sunday Times
“As a history of the capital in wartime, it is probably unsurpassable…From the Myra Hess lunchtime concerts at the National Gallery, to the extraordinary resilience and bravery of Londoners…all can be found in this book” - Anne de Courcy, Sunday Telegraph
Mansions of Misery: A Biography of the Marshalsea Debtors’ Prison
“This colourful, exuberant, brilliantly detailed account by Jerry White is the latest in a long list of irreplaceable books about London, all written as if the author were personally remembering what he describes rather than excavating it.” - Simon Callow, Guardian, Book of the Week
“…a scrupulous piece of scholarship, which makes imaginative and brilliantly illuminating use of its archival sources, not only in order to reconstruct the everyday lives of ordinary and not so ordinary debtors incarcerated in the Marshalsea, but in order to provide a vivid sense of ‘what it meant to be a Londoner between 1700 and 1842’” - Matthew Beaumont, Times Literary Supplement
Zeppelin Nights:
London in the First World War
Spear’s Social History of the Year 2014
Guardian Best Book of the Year 2014
“Zeppelin Nights is social history at its best…White creates a vivid picture of a city changed for ever by war” - The Times
“Jerry White’s name on a title page is a guarantee of a lively, compassionate book full of striking incidents and memorable images…This is a fast-paced social history that never stumbles…A well-orchestrated polyphony of voices that brings history alive” - Guardian
London in the Eighteenth Century: A Great and Monstrous Thing
“A dazzling and dramatic narrative…a must for anyone seriously interested in London’s history” - Evening Standard
“White brings a diligence and contagious zest that may serve to discourage anyone from ever tackling the subject again” - Sunday Times
London: The Story of a Great City
Published in Conjuction with the Museum of London (Treasures & Experiences)
“The new history of the capital” - Time Out
“White’s narrative is lively and engaging, and the facsimiles are well produced.…it’s also great fun” - Sunday Telegraph
London in the Twentieth Century
A City and Its People
Winner of the Wolfson History Prize 2001
“A brilliant, acclaimed book which examines one of the world’s greatest cities during one of the most tumultuous centuries”
London in the Nineteenth Century
“From a prize winning historian, a fresh and energetic look at a century of frenzied growth” - Sunday Times
“Both exhaustive and detailed: both scholarly…and human…irresistible” - BBC History Magazine
Campbell Bunk: The Worst Street in North London Between the Wars
“It deserves to become a classic” - Emrys Jones, Planning Perspectives
“a most subtle and powerful evocation of life and labour” - Guardian
Rothschild Buildings:
Life in an East-End Tenement Block, 1887-1920
“Jerry White has written a moving and richly detailed history of those times and those people.” - Bernard Kops, Guardian