BEHIND THE BLUE LAMP
BEHIND THE BLUE LAMP
by Alan Moss, David Swinden and Peter Kennison
A4, 516 pages.
With a Foreword by Dame Cressida Dick, Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis
Ever since its inception in 1829 the Metropolitan Police Service has seen change on a daily basis, not least in recent years with budget cuts and the closure of police stations.
Recording the stories of these buildings, BEHIND THE BLUE LAMP reveals the histories of more than 400 police stations operated by the Metropolitan Police over the course of its existence, from pre-Peel Parish watch houses to the New Scotland Yard headquarters on Victoria Embankment.
The lives of the officers who served - and sometimes lived - in these police stations are related, charting a developing social history across the capital of almost two centuries.
An account of the evolution of the Metropolitan Police District is also given, including histories of the various Divisions, and details of the developing uniforms, equipment and badges of rank over the course of more that 190 years are recorded.
Richly-illustrated, BEHIND THE BLUE LAMP is an amalgamation of an earlier trilogy of books - 'Behind the Blue Lamp: Policing North and East London' (2003), 'More Behind the Blue Lamp: Policing South and South-East London' (2011) and 'Discovering More Behind the Blue Lamp: Policing Central, North and South-West London' (2014), so that 190 years of policing history is now collated in one volume, updated, newly-edited and indexed.
Published on the Blue Lamp Books imprint.