Product Description

Much of Peter Ackroyd's work has been concerned with the life and past of London but here, as a culmination, is his definitive account of the city. For him it is a living organism, with its own laws of growth and change, so London is a biography rather than a history. It differs from other histories, too, in the range and diversity of its contents. Ackroyd portrays London from the time of the Druids to the beginning of the twenty-first century, noting magnificence in both epochs, but this is not a simple chronological record. There are chapters on the history of silence and the history of light, the history of childhood and the history of suicide, the history of Cockney speech and the history of drink. London is perhaps the most important study of the city ever written, and confirms Ackroyd's status as what one critic has called 'our age's greatest London imagination.'

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1037 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-21
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 848 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
When the eminent novelist and biographer Peter Ackroyd finished writing London: The Biography, he almost immediately had a heart attack, such was the effort of his 800-page work about the "human body" that is this most fascinating of cities. And not just any human body either, but "envisaged in the form of a young man with his arms outstretched in a gesture of liberation... it embodies the energy and exaltation of a city continually beating in great waves of progress and of confidence."

Probably there is no one better placed than Ackroyd--the author of mammoth lives of Dickens and Blake, and novels such as Hawksmoor and Dan Leno and the Lime House Golem which set singular characters against the backdrop of a city constantly shifting in time--to write such a rich, sinewy account of "Infinite London".

Ackroyd's London is no mere chronology. Its chapters take on such varied themes as drinking, sex, childhood, poverty, crime and punishment, sewage, food, pestilence and fire, immigration, maps, theatre and war. We learn that gin was "the demon of London for half a century", and that "it has been estimated that in the 1740s and 1750s there were 17,000 'gin-houses'." Fleet Street was an area known for its "violent delights" where "a 14-year-old boy, only 18 inches high, was to be seen in 1702 at a grocer's shop called the Eagle and Child by Shoe Lane." By the mid 19th century "London had become known as the greatest city on earth." By 1939 "one in five of the British population had become a Londoner."

Though London's chapters vary meaning that it can be dipped into at random, Ackroyd is employing a skilful and continuous theme throughout, which constantly links past and present--the similarities of children's games in Lambeth in 1910 and 1999; the obsession with time--"in 21st-century London time rushes forward and is everywhere apparent", while in 18th-century London the church clock of Newgate "regulated the times of hanging." Above all, he insists that the "dark secret life" of the metropolis is as relevant today as it was in perhaps its most appropriate period, Victorian London.

Again and again Ackroyd returns to the image of London as a living organism, hence his use of the word "biography" in the title. At once awed by and intimate with this "ubiquitous" city, he stresses that "it can be located nowhere in particular... its circumference is everywhere." –-Catherine Taylor

Review
It comes as no surprise that the biographer of famous Londoners such as Dickens, Blake and Thomas More should now turn his talents to London itself. The subject almost seems to be one that Ackroyd has been limbering up to tackle for many years, given the prominence that the city assumes in novels such as Hawksmoor, Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem. Claiming that London, a living organism, requires a biography instead of a history, he seeks to capture its vitality and uniqueness through a myriad of sources and many years of experience as one of the greatest connoisseurs of the city's past. Illustrated in both colour and black and white, the book charts the growth of London from the days when mammoths roamed its forests (the bones of one of them were excavated in 1690 at what would later become King's Cross) to the opening of the Tate Modern. But this is not a typical chronological history. London for Ackroyd is a palimpsest still bearing the visible imprints of Roman roads and forts, Saxon churches, Viking raids and medieval wells - all as real and as vibrant, and as much a part of today's London, as the city's more recent landmarks. It is this relationship between the past and the present - what he calls a 'continuity of experience' - that intrigues Ackroyd and makes for some of the book's most fascinating reading. Did you know, for example, that Clerkenwell has been home, at one time or another, to a continuum of social radicals such as Wat Tyler, the Chartists, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, Marx's daughter, Lenin and, most recently, The Big Issue? There are accounts, as you would expect, of well-known events like the plague, the Great Fire and the Blitz, but also sections on smells, children, magic, suicide and murder. The account of murder London-style recounts the history of Jack the Ripper, of course, but also points out the evidence for a serial strangler in the 18th century whose trademark was biting off his victim's noses. Ackroyd states in his Preface that London can never be glimpsed in its entirety, only experienced 'as a wilderness of alleys and passages, courts and thoroughfares'. He does a superb job of guiding us through this maze, leading us through the centuries and, like a Victorian police constable, shining his torch into the most obscure byways to reveal the sinister, the arcane and the marvellous. Reviewed by Ross King, author of Brunelleschi's Dome (Kirkus UK)

An impressionistic history of England's capital city, by British novelist/biographer Ackroyd ("The Plato Papers", 2000, etc.), who knows his subject well and writes about it with considerable passion. This is not a history in any usual sense of the term, still less a travelogue or walking guide, although it has elements of all of these genres. What the author attempts to provide instead is a roughly chronological portrait of the character or soul of a great metropolis, drawn in large part from contemporary accounts of widely divergent veracity and literary skill. Folk tales, ballads, royal chronicles, Restoration comedies, journalism, court records, ecclesiastical histories, novels, biographies, and gossip columns (going back to Addison and Steele) all come into play, and the resulting mosaic is graced by a richness and depth of color that go a long way towards making up for the unwieldy size and loose organization. The "London as Theatre" section, for example, takes us into the bear-baiting pit as well as the Globe Playhouse, while "London's Outcasts" examines the plight of the city's downtrodden from the medieval beggars clustered about the gates of churches and monasteries to the madmen who haunted the asylum wards of Bedlam. Eventually Ackroyd finds his focal concern in wondering "what is it, now, to be a Londoner?" He concludes that the city is of such immensity, so variegated in its component functions and populations, and so rich in historical associations, that it is "all singular and all blessed." Although the author does not quote Samuel Johnson's aphorism that "when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life," he does illustrate Johnson's assertion that "London has therein all that life affords." Somewhat rarefied, but a splendid tribute to the great metropolis. (Kirkus Reviews)

From the Publisher
A masterpiece
‘Peter Ackroyd was born to write the biography of London…a brilliant book’ Sunday Telegraph

‘It would be no exaggeration to say that Peter Ackroyd’s ‘biography’ of our capital is the book about London. It contains a lifetime of reading and research…but this huge book is light and airy and playful…[He] leads us on a journey both historical and geographical, but also imaginative. Every street, alley and courtyard has a story, and Ackroyd brings it to life for us…Marvellous’ A N Wilson, Daily Mail

‘Nothing can quite match the huge strange echo chamber of life-stories, folktales, and urban myths conjured up in Peter Ackroyd’s epic vision of his native city. Sparkling, witty scholarship is constantly transformed into smoky mystical street-history, with dark hypnotic meditations on fog, fire, sewage, suicide and civic resurrection’ Richard Holmes, Books of the Year, Daily Telegraph

‘Ackroyd is the most effortless guide. You wander by his side through the streets of the old city, savouring its bustle, colours and its smells, the stink of living. This is much more than history; it is a tapestry of inspiration and love. You will not find a better, more visionary book about a place we take for granted’ Observer

‘His masterwork…A rich torrent of remarkable lists, bizarre anecdotage, stink, press and clatter, the gestures of the street, the violence and the cruelty, the beauty and the energy of this greatest and most horrible of cities. It is just fantastic’ Andrew Marr, Books of the Year, Daily Telegraph

‘This magnificent evocation of all that London has meant down the centuries…I cannot begin to describe the richness with which Ackroyd pursues his theme…A blend of virtuosity and deep affection that is truly bewitching. Ackroyd has performed a noble public service in preserving in these pages so many centuries of marvels, horrors and secrecies’ Jan Morris, Mail on Sunday

‘Magisterial…a gargantuan feat of scholarship…With each chapter the life of the city becomes ever more intense, pulsating and persisting through the ages’ Scotland on Sunday

‘Ackroyd’s superbly crafted, learned, intelligent London is the best monument the world’s capital could have. It is absolutely wonderful’ John Simpson, Books of the Year, Daily Telegraph

‘London is an astonishing achievement…a remarkable reading experience’ Daily Telegraph

‘Invariably exciting and immensely enjoyable…Ackroyd coruscates with ideas and fancies…the total effect is spectacular and vastly stimulating. "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life." The same could be said with equal justice of any reader who finds no pleasure or instruction in Ackroyd’s book’ Spectator

‘Mammoth…beguiling…intriguing…vivid…engrossing’ Scotsman

‘Truly, he has written London’s biography. I began rereading it as soon as I finished, and I urge you to read it as soon as possible, so that you can begin rereading it as well’ Will Self, New Statesman

‘A fat and filling feast: pretty much everything of interest about the capital is crammed into the eight-hundred pages. One cannot but marvel at Ackroyd’s erudition, his energy in marshalling minutiae, his ear for quotation, his flair for dazzling juxtapositions, his vibrant imagination and sheer exuberance’ The Times

‘An erudite labour of love, a fan-letter to a fabulous city, and a book one suspects Ackroyd was destined to write. It illuminates the English character, and is darkly humorous in its detail, tumbling through centuries crowded with legendary events and eccentric observations, as exuberant, energetic and alarming as the city itself’ Independent on Sunday

‘A masterpiece’ Evening Standard

‘Spellbinding’ Express on Sunday

‘A sharp, beautifully written but above all truthful account of London…This is the kind of writing that gives intellectuals a good name’ Sunday Tribune

‘A rich dish, this is Ackroyd’s masterwork, a definitive tale of the city’ Condé Nast Traveller

‘Awe-inspiring’ Big Issue