They are the kind of observations that have occurred to thousands of visitors to London as they dash off a few words to the folks back home: London is a city of soaring costs, endless rain, poor food and weekend rowdiness.

Yet Luisa de Carvajal's description of life in the capital has come to light more than 400 years after she jotted down her thoughts for friends and relatives in Spain and Flanders.

Having lain in a Madrid convent, the notes have been translated into English for the first time by Glyn Redworth, a senior lecturer in history at the University of Manchester.

In 150 letters, Carvajal, who died in 1614 aged 48, paints an image of England in the 17th century with astonishing attention to detail. Her descriptions are a treasure trove for historians of Britain's social, religious and economic past.

“The food looks good,” she writes, “but has no smell and almost no taste.” At a time when London was a warren of timber-framed buildings and 200,000 inhabitants were crammed into little more than a square mile, she complains of rowdy neighbours: “At times they grind me down with the noise that comes through the wall where I sleep. All you hear is the sound of meat being roasted and others cooking, eating, playing, and drinking. On Fridays it gets worse.”

Compared with Spain, England is an unsophisticated, even barbaric country and she is shocked to discover that at least 25 thieves went to the London gallows every month - “even though some are children of ten or eleven”.

She is disgusted by the city's lack of sanitation, observing that - with endless bouts of plague - “England had more pestilences than Egypt” and is horrified to see carrots being transported in carts that, the day before, had carried plague victims.

Carvajal, a noblewoman who was brought to England in 1605 by English Jesuits, risked her life in the pursuit of martyrdom for the Roman Catholic cause. She distributed banned books, provided a hiding place for priests, and secretly exhumed the body parts of martyrs to send as relics to Spain.

Dr Redworth will include the letters in a major study for Oxford University Press: The She-Apostle: The Extraordinary Life and Death of Luisa de Carvajal, which is published this week.

LEAN PICKINGS

Luisa de Carvajal on English cooking:

“The food looks good, but has no smell and almost no taste and is not very nourishing. You can't keep it, even in winter, for four whole days without it going off. Since they sell things in pieces and not by weight, you are obliged to buy more than you need for a small household. They get round this by roasting things and keeping them as cold meats or by putting them in pastry”

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4805843.ece