ABSTRACT
The city of Bristol is founded on five sins: piracy, slaves, booze, tobacco and weapons of war. Here I have lived for more than twenty years.
This merchant city, a hundred miles southwest of London, has Roman origins. Although not on the sea it became a port in the tenth century, being readily defended from the sea as it is approached by a narrow gorge with high cliffs from which rocks could be dropped to sink attacking ships. Reaching its peak in the eighteenth century, Bristol still has fine houses and merchant palaces dating from when it was the second port and the second city of the realm. Now it is the same size as Edinburgh, with its population of somewhat over half a million citizens.
