Food and Feast in Medieval England gives an excellent brief look at what was eaten in Medieval England, where the food came from (grown or imported), how it was prepared and some of the laws regulating food sales and food production in the cities. It has chapters focusing on the diet of village peasants, city folk and the nobility. An very hefty percentage of people in the Middle Ages were employed almost solely in the making of food- if you want to know what they did all year, seeing what they ate is a good place to start.

London Under: The Secret History Beneath the Streets informed me that there are tunnels under London, hundreds of them. More than I would have imagined possible. There are buried rivers and buried ruins, layer upon layer. Peter Ackroyd tells the stories of this buried past, about the digging of the Underground tubes, of the disasters that occurred when the first tunnel under the Thames was built and ponders on what drives people below the earth.

The Thief Lord is set in Venice, sometime in the recent past. Victor Getz, a good natured small time detective, is approached by an unpleasant couple with an usual request: find two brothers, aged 12 and 5, who have run away to Venice and lost themselves amid the tangled streets and canals. Victor is more accustomed to finding lost dogs than lost boys, but he takes the job. Meanwhile, Prosper and Bo are desperate not to be found. Luckily, they are taken under the protection of a street gang run by a boy called the Thief Lord. But the Thief Lord is not what he seems, and even in Venice it's not easy to stay lost. A very enjoyable YA novel with a touch of magic and a touch of philosophy- I was surprised but interested by its ideas on why children want to grow up while adults want to stay young.

Shakespeare's Pub tells the (somewhat scanty) history of the George Inn, the oldest pub still standing in London. The story of the George is filled out with the history of Southwark in general- in Elizabethan times it was the entertainment center of the city, packed with pubs, inns, ale houses, brothels, bull-fights and theaters. The title is somewhat misleading but the book was enjoyable.