Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the history of England, episode 440. The Kingdom is undone.

Last time we heard about the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire, and if you did but know it,

we also kicked off the story of the Industrial

Revolution, in which the major player, of course, is the escape provided from the photosynthetic

constraint by good old King Cole. This episode, we're going to cover just a few more

items related to the Great Fire, sorry about that. And then I think we can

return to the business of kings, which of course war. And progress, no doubt, to yet another glorious

victory of arms against the Dutch. Let us start, though, with a bit of other rebuilding news.

As I warned you last time, sorry about that, because there are just a couple

of things I'd like to finish off. First of all, the rebuilding was not the only transformation

of London in the late 17th century. There are many more, and I assume we'll keep mentioning stuff,

but one particular development I'd like to mention is the West End, on account of the fact that it's a

very famous bit, of course, just outside the city. So there is a man called Henry German. We have

mentioned him before because he was Queen Henrietta Maria's very closest courtier, constantly by

her side all the way from the start of the Civil Wars.

He never seemed to be particularly influential with Charles I, or the Privy Council,

because although the Italian diplomat described his physical gifts in glowing terms,

an extremely handsome young man, and for that that reason was always pleasing to the ladies.

He didn't seem to have been so well endowed upstairs, yet another of the chinless aristocratic

wonders with which our history has been so richly endowed. German's life of chinless

privilege and success really irritated Andrew Marvell, who used his

legendary poetic powers for a bit of trash talk.

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