This isn't a tourist-oriented souvenir book with lots of impressive photography and a history focused mainly on amusing anecdotes and the 18th Century Georgian/Regency era. Instead it's a serious history of the city from the pagan Celtic era up to the mid 1980s when it was written. It's a good bridge between casual curiosity and serious scholarship for those looking for a "way in" to the more academic material and an excellent account of what's known of Bath from pre-history through to the Mediaeval period. After that it becomes steadily more cursory as it approaches the 20th Century where it rapidly deteriorates in quality as the text degenerates into a series of complaints and rants about the post-WWII architecture and planning. This is a shame, spoiling the excellence of the first half of the book.

Really from the chapter on 18th Century Bath onward it stops being a real general history of Bath at all, instead focusing more and more narrowly on the physical development of the city. One of the strongest features of the book is the succession of reconstructed and contemporary maps of the city that show its expansion over time and how the constraints of previous developments affected future changes, leading to the city we have today.

These criticisms perhaps should not be surprising, considering that the author is an archaeologist by profession and has made his name by heading the most important 20th Century archaeological investigations in Bath. One would expect his knowledge and enthusiasm to be greatest over the time period when archaeology throws more light than documentation does and this is clear in the text: the transition occurs in the Mediaeval period, which is the last really good chapter in the book. One can also understand the focus on the physical fabric of the city, too; physical remains are what archaeologists mostly work with, so to be fair the author probably intended to focus in this way - but it leaves a lot out - more than it puts in, really, from 1700 or so, onward. One might also consider in defense of Cunliffe that he was probably working to tight constraints on word count and number of pages.

Hence I can strongly recommend the first half of this book, which gives much detail from probably the leading expert but if you are mostly interested in Bath's Georgian or later history you should look elsewhere - one of those souvenir books will serve you much better with pretty pictures to boot. For me - well, I got what I most wanted to learn more about, having read one of those touristy histories already. ( )

Given his stature in his profession and his prolific pen I was long aware of Barry Cunliffe's abilities as an archaeologist and a writer. What I didn’t discover until recently was that he had used his skills to write a history of the city of Bath. It’s a relatively short and well-illustrated chronicle of Bath’s evolution through time, one that reflects both his skills as a scholar and his love of his subject.

In the preface to the book Cunliffe explains that his primary theme is how the dual influences of landscape and the past shaped the city’s development. This results in a study mainly focused on its physical history, which plays to Cunliffe’s strengths. These are most clearly evident in the book’s early chapters, in which he provides an account of the area’s prehistoric and Roman settlement based on the available archaeological discoveries, much of which he had written about before. As he moves into the medieval era, though, Cunliffe draws more heavily upon the historical scholarship about the period, detailing the establishment of Bath Abbey, the emergence of the medieval town, and the shift from a primarily Church-controlled municipality to one run by the business leaders. As he shows, it was the latter’s focus on developing the town’s appeal as a spa that contributed to its revival in the 17th century, which paved the way for the architectural and civic planning marvels of the 18th century that make Bath the attraction it is today.

Cunliffe’s command of his sources and skills at concision result in a book that condenses nicely thousands of years of Bath’s history in less than 200 pages. It is a superb introduction to the region, hampered mainly by the growing need for an updated edition. Hopefully Cunliffe will write one soon, because it is difficult to imagine someone else with his formidable combination of abilities and passion undertaking a similar work anytime soon. ( )