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The city has a recorded history dating back to Roman times and encompassing the lives of such illustrious political figures as William the Conqueror, Thomas à Becket, and Queen Elizabeth I, as well as those of William Shakespeare, John Milton, and the other authors who created one of the world's great bodies of literature. Formerly the heart of a vast empire, London was also a center of the Industrial Revolution (c. 1750) and a showcase for both the material progress and the dire social ills it created