REGENT'S PARK

The Regent's Park has a history stretching back through seven centuries, well be
fore the designer and architectural genius John Nash and his patron the Prince R
egent laid it out at the beginning of the nineteenth century as the first of the
improvements they had planned for London. Rabbitts recounts the story of the pa
rk from its origins as a tiny part of the Middlesex Forest to its role as Henry
VIII's hunting ground at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, to its
subsequent development in the nineteenth century as London's new West End. This
comprehensive history of one of the United Kingdom's most popular outdoor spaces
also takes into account the wider history of Britain and its public parks.