Greater London by Nick Barratt: review The adjective most often applied to suburbs is "sprawling" and it is hard to resist the word when reading this epic account. We start with a straightforward historical narrative from Roman and Saxon London leading over 500 pages up to the present day. Then the book tries to tidy up the ends it has left untied by finishing with a borough-by-borough historical gazetteer and the story of one suburb, Hampton, as if it typifies suburbia. One cannot help the impression of an author struggling not to drown in his material. This history not only tries to encompass all London, but all elements of London - transport, sanitation, education, welfare, crime, policing, public health, immigration - you name it. It is, finally, an impossible task, and the book sometimes becomes indigestible for the general reader. But one cannot help but admire Barrett's ambition in undertaking what is at heart a history of buildings and the people who live in them, as well as his successful attempts to leaven the mix with contemporary accounts, illustrations and literary references. You can't help but love the fact, for instance, that there was a street in London's red light district in the 13th century called Gropec--t Lane (in Southwark) or that George II was fond of the dirty suburb of Brentford because it's "so like Yarmany" (Germany). We learn that Kilburn was a spa town, that Turnham Green was feared for its highway robbers, that by the beginning of the 18th century London was drowning in human waste and, according to Swift, "Sweepings from Butchers Stalls, Dung Guts and Blood/Drowned puppies/stinking sprats/all drench'd in mud." All entertaining stuff, and Barratt works hard to sustain his material, but it does tend to sink under a surfeit of familiar facts and statistics. It might have been more interesting and original to delve into such matters as the architecture and interior décor of the suburban house or the social attitudes to suburbia, and although this is touched on, Barratt gives space to the more tangible, more mundane, aspect of urban development - traffic planning, local government, sewage reform and so on. The real story of suburbia, for most of us, comes with the opening up of the transport routes in the mid-19th century, with the extension of the train lines, coach and later bus and car routes into what were formerly villages on the edges of London. Typically, this is meticulously recorded, and for my money the book comes into its own in the final quarter, "From Metropolis to Metroland." This final section could have been expanded into a more comprehensive account of the growth of London suburbia as we think of it today, including interviews with the people who moved there from the inner cities, and the way suburbia became lodged in popular culture. But Barratt has opted for a broader brush and a bigger picture. The result, though not as ramshackle as suburbia, is somewhat unfocused and over ambitious. For a more concise and palatable history I would turn to Paul Barker's The Freedoms of Suburbia. But this is nevertheless a superb work of research and is clearly and entertainingly written, sometimes intimidating in its attention to detail, but rarely dry. Greater London by Nick Barratt 592pp, Random House, t £23 (PLUS £1.35 p&p) Buy now from Telegraph Books (RRP £25, ebook £12.99)