Dr Stephen Inwood lectures at New York University in London. His books include A History of London and The Man Who Knew Too Much: The Inventive Life of Robert Hooke 1635 - 1703.

Coffee shops were the intellectual hub of Stuart and Hanoverian London, where entrepreneurs and philosophers rubbed shoulders with Gulliver's ?projectors?, and luminaries from the Royal Exchange met Fellows of the Royal Society. How did the coffee shops develop and what ideas did they spawn?