This is a popular history book about a relatively small chunk of London that is now famous for its numerous jewellers and purveyors of engagement and wedding rings. The story reaches back to the medieval period and as ever the amount of fidelity modern London has with the layout of its ancient forbearer is amazing. Hatton Garden still essentially follows the bounds of the Fleet river and the monastic estate that lay beside it.
The book traces how precious metalworking and the diamond trade came to end up in Hatton Garden and how in recent years it has declined, perhaps terminally. While there is a lot of emphasis on the Jewish refuges and their community (partly because Lichenstein is a descendant of some of those refugees), there is also an excellent review of the Italian community that bequeathed the Italian church that lies on Clerkenwell Road.
It is also good at charting the way that areas rise and fall, alternating between putrid slaughter houses, crime-ridden rookeries and fine houses and rising rents that force out the craftsmen that give the area its modern reputation. It is a good picture of a city in constant motion, always changing and becoming something new.
See also the Guardian's review