When Did Big Ben First Bong?

Millions live there, millions more visit each year - but how many really know London? Do you know when Big Ben first bonged - or even who Ben was? Why the River Thames is so-called? Which top Nazi was locked up in the Tower? Or what runs through the more than 50 miles of train-size tunnels which ring the city, stretch further than the Channel Tunnel and lie deeper than the Tube - and, no, the answer's not trains. The world's first celebrity chef, its oldest club, the worst ever mockney accent, a chapel full of prizefighters and the last Prime Minister to challenge a rival to a duel with pistols - from the truth about Handel's ears to hippos living in Trafalgar Square, it's all in When Did Big Ben First Bong?, the ultimate trivia guide to the greatest city on Earth.

Auteur

Writer and journalist DAVID LONG has regularly appeared in The Times and the London Evening Standard, as well as on TV and radio. As well as being an award-winning ghostwriter, he has written a number of books on London, including Spectacular Vernacular, Tunnels, Towers & Temples, and the highly successful Little Book of London.

Résumé
Millions live there, millions more visit each year but how many really know London? Find out: - How New York's famous Central Park came to be modelled on a seventeenth-century London square - When Primrose Hill almost gained a pyramid even larger than the Great Pyramid of Cheops - Why about 640 people came to be drowned in the Thames in a single night - What the royal family might do to escape London if the balloon ever goes up