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To buy online through the 08 shop Liverpool the first 1000 years

To purchase in person contact The Liverpool Culture Company

[t]:0151 233 2459
Liverpool08 Web site

Book specifications:

Published November 2001 by Garlic Press Publishing
Second impression: February 2002
Hardback (250 x 210mm) 240 pp

rrp: ?16.95

ISBN: 1-9040990-09

Liverpool: The First 1000 years

If you want to know why Liverpool won the Capital of Culture bid for 2008 then this is the book for you - over 100,000 words and 250 photos might give you some clues!

This book looks scrumptious, and is crammed with amazing 'did you know' and 'good lord - I'd no idea!' stories.

It's (obviously) about Liverpool, so anyone who has ever lived or worked in the city will be fascinated by what a great life the city has had so far. But Liverpool has had such a massive influence on the world that this is a book for everyone, wherever you live.

One thousand years ago there was nothing of the Liverpool we know now - not even the Mersey estuary. What is now the river was a lake separated from the sea by an ancient oak forest. The area was home from Neolithic times onwards to fishermen and seamen - a rare Neolithic tomb is still to be seen in the city. The name Liverpool was not recorded until 1189, but the Domesday Book 100 years earlier records Toxteth and West Derby among local names.

In 1207 King John granted a royal charter to 168 merchants in a small town. But by the end of Elizabeth I's reign, the population of Liverpool - ravaged by plague and other misfortunes - was smaller than it had been nearly 400 years earlier. But come the end of the 19th century, Liverpool was one of the greatest trading cities on Earth - the gateway between the Old and New Worlds - and was home to brilliant pioneers, inventors, entrepreneurs and reformers; over nine million people left Europe through Liverpool?s docks, to find a new life in America and Australia. In the 1960s Liverpool was one of the coolest cities on the planet as the Mersey Sound resonated around the world.

So how did Liverpool become the pariah city of Britain in the 1980s? The city's reputation had been flipped from positive to negative in a few years. How come people have been so quick to forget the great world city and think only of riots, strikes and militant politics? How come they haven?t noticed the speed at which the city has begun to renew itself?

This biography of a remarkable city offers a clearer perspective on recent history, a reminder of the impact Liverpool had on the world during the last millennium, and the background to the city's year as European Capital of Culture in 2008