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London: The Biography
London: The Biography is the pinnacle of Peter Ackroyd’s brilliant obsession with the eponymous city. In this unusual and engaging work, Ackroyd brings the reader through time into the city whose institutions and idiosyncrasies have permeated much of his works of fiction and nonfiction.
Peter Ackroyd sees London as a living, breathing organism, with its own laws of growth and change. Reveling in the city’s riches as well as its raucousness, the author traces thematically its growth from the time of the Druids to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Anecdotal, insightful, and wonderfully entertaining, London is animated by Ackroyd’s concern for the close relationship between the present and the past, as well as by what he describes as the peculiar “echoic” quality of London, whereby its texture and history actively affect the lives and personalities of its citizens.
London confirms Ackroyd’s status as what one critic has called “our age’s greatest London imagination.”
Peter Ackroyd sees London as a living, breathing organism, with its own laws of growth and change. Reveling in the city’s riches as well as its raucousness, the author traces thematically its growth from the time of the Druids to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Anecdotal, insightful, and wonderfully entertaining, London is animated by Ackroyd’s concern for the close relationship between the present and the past, as well as by what he describes as the peculiar “echoic” quality of London, whereby its texture and history actively affect the lives and personalities of its citizens.
London confirms Ackroyd’s status as what one critic has called “our age’s greatest London imagination.”
801 pages, Paperback
First published December 5, 2000
About the author
Peter Ackroyd
186 books1,395 followersPeter Ackroyd CBE is an English novelist and biographer with a particular interest in the history and culture of London.
Peter Ackroyd's mother worked in the personnel department of an engineering firm, his father having left the family home when Ackroyd was a baby. He was reading newspapers by the age of 5 and, at 9, wrote a play about Guy Fawkes. Reputedly, he first realized he was gay at the age of 7.
Ackroyd was educated at St. Benedict's, Ealing and at Clare College, Cambridge, from which he graduated with a double first in English. In 1972, he was a Mellon Fellow at Yale University in the United States. The result of this fellowship was Ackroyd's Notes for a New Culture, written when he was only 22 and eventually published in 1976. The title, a playful echo of T. S. Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), was an early indication of Ackroyd's penchant for creatively exploring and reexamining the works of other London-based writers.
Ackroyd's literary career began with poetry, including such works as London Lickpenny (1973) and The Diversions of Purley (1987). He later moved into fiction and has become an acclaimed author, winning the 1998 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the biography Thomas More and being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987.
Ackroyd worked at The Spectator magazine between 1973 and 1977 and became joint managing editor in 1978. In 1982 he published The Great Fire of London, his first novel. This novel deals with one of Ackroyd's great heroes, Charles Dickens, and is a reworking of Little Dorrit. The novel set the stage for the long sequence of novels Ackroyd has produced since, all of which deal in some way with the complex interaction of time and space, and what Ackroyd calls "the spirit of place". It is also the first in a sequence of novels of London, through which he traces the changing, but curiously consistent nature of the city. Often this theme is explored through the city's artists, and especially its writers.
Ackroyd has always shown a great interest in the city of London, and one of his best known works, London: The Biography, is an extensive and thorough discussion of London through the ages.
His fascination with London literary and artistic figures is also displayed in the sequence of biographies he has produced of Ezra Pound (1980), T. S. Eliot (1984), Charles Dickens (1990), William Blake (1995), Thomas More (1998), Chaucer (2004), William Shakespeare (2005), and J. M. W. Turner. The city itself stands astride all these works, as it does in the fiction.
From 2003 to 2005, Ackroyd wrote a six-book non-fiction series (Voyages Through Time), intended for readers as young as eight. This was his first work for children. The critically acclaimed series is an extensive narrative of key periods in world history.
Early in his career, Ackroyd was nominated a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984 and, as well as producing fiction, biography and other literary works, is also a regular radio and television broadcaster and book critic.
In the New Year's honours list of 2003, Ackroyd was awarded the CBE.
Peter Ackroyd's mother worked in the personnel department of an engineering firm, his father having left the family home when Ackroyd was a baby. He was reading newspapers by the age of 5 and, at 9, wrote a play about Guy Fawkes. Reputedly, he first realized he was gay at the age of 7.
Ackroyd was educated at St. Benedict's, Ealing and at Clare College, Cambridge, from which he graduated with a double first in English. In 1972, he was a Mellon Fellow at Yale University in the United States. The result of this fellowship was Ackroyd's Notes for a New Culture, written when he was only 22 and eventually published in 1976. The title, a playful echo of T. S. Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), was an early indication of Ackroyd's penchant for creatively exploring and reexamining the works of other London-based writers.
Ackroyd's literary career began with poetry, including such works as London Lickpenny (1973) and The Diversions of Purley (1987). He later moved into fiction and has become an acclaimed author, winning the 1998 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the biography Thomas More and being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987.
Ackroyd worked at The Spectator magazine between 1973 and 1977 and became joint managing editor in 1978. In 1982 he published The Great Fire of London, his first novel. This novel deals with one of Ackroyd's great heroes, Charles Dickens, and is a reworking of Little Dorrit. The novel set the stage for the long sequence of novels Ackroyd has produced since, all of which deal in some way with the complex interaction of time and space, and what Ackroyd calls "the spirit of place". It is also the first in a sequence of novels of London, through which he traces the changing, but curiously consistent nature of the city. Often this theme is explored through the city's artists, and especially its writers.
Ackroyd has always shown a great interest in the city of London, and one of his best known works, London: The Biography, is an extensive and thorough discussion of London through the ages.
His fascination with London literary and artistic figures is also displayed in the sequence of biographies he has produced of Ezra Pound (1980), T. S. Eliot (1984), Charles Dickens (1990), William Blake (1995), Thomas More (1998), Chaucer (2004), William Shakespeare (2005), and J. M. W. Turner. The city itself stands astride all these works, as it does in the fiction.
From 2003 to 2005, Ackroyd wrote a six-book non-fiction series (Voyages Through Time), intended for readers as young as eight. This was his first work for children. The critically acclaimed series is an extensive narrative of key periods in world history.
Early in his career, Ackroyd was nominated a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984 and, as well as producing fiction, biography and other literary works, is also a regular radio and television broadcaster and book critic.
In the New Year's honours list of 2003, Ackroyd was awarded the CBE.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 479 reviews
November 17, 2010
Dear Mr. Ackroyd,
Will you marry me? I know you're gay, and I'm a woman. I understand that such details present wrinkles in the grand scheme, but I'm sure we can arrange bits on the side and whatever.
Truthfully, I don't think you are really good looking, but you sure write sexy.
I wish I had a quarter of your intelligence.
This love poem to London, for love poem it is, is wonderful. It's brillant! It's marvellous!
I think I just want to marry you so I can live in London.
Well, that and your accent.
It was a brillant idea to tell the story of London not as a linear history, but as a thematic one. It made it more interesting and the reader learns more. It also stops the book from getting dull. Instead, here come the Tudors; it's here comes the murder (or the animals, or acting or the poor). Even the length of the chapters is just right.
Sorry, didn't mean to sound like Goldilocks, though she might have been from London.
I also really liked the fact that you had a whole section on birds.
Thank you for a wonderful book.
Will you marry me? I know you're gay, and I'm a woman. I understand that such details present wrinkles in the grand scheme, but I'm sure we can arrange bits on the side and whatever.
Truthfully, I don't think you are really good looking, but you sure write sexy.
I wish I had a quarter of your intelligence.
This love poem to London, for love poem it is, is wonderful. It's brillant! It's marvellous!
I think I just want to marry you so I can live in London.
Well, that and your accent.
It was a brillant idea to tell the story of London not as a linear history, but as a thematic one. It made it more interesting and the reader learns more. It also stops the book from getting dull. Instead, here come the Tudors; it's here comes the murder (or the animals, or acting or the poor). Even the length of the chapters is just right.
Sorry, didn't mean to sound like Goldilocks, though she might have been from London.
I also really liked the fact that you had a whole section on birds.
Thank you for a wonderful book.
August 14, 2011
Nobody can doubt the incredible amount of research the author collated to put this mammoth of a book together. His subject matter is fascinating and rewarding.
However, Ackroyd's writing style is very particular and surely a matter of taste - unfortunately this reviewer finds it annoyingly loose, try-hard artistic and peppered with sweeping generalisations and over romanticisation. Small sections of the book stand out for their accuracy and fluency and undeniably, the book is crammed with reams of fascinating facts and mini-histories. Nevertheless, great subject material was for the most part dragged down by an over-worked writing style to a level that made reading this book a real slog - one that was self-imposed due to the fear that this city's most amazing history might not be covered in such depth for quite some time again.
However, Ackroyd's writing style is very particular and surely a matter of taste - unfortunately this reviewer finds it annoyingly loose, try-hard artistic and peppered with sweeping generalisations and over romanticisation. Small sections of the book stand out for their accuracy and fluency and undeniably, the book is crammed with reams of fascinating facts and mini-histories. Nevertheless, great subject material was for the most part dragged down by an over-worked writing style to a level that made reading this book a real slog - one that was self-imposed due to the fear that this city's most amazing history might not be covered in such depth for quite some time again.
January 11, 2009
London: The Biography is a junkshop of the heart, more or less: Peter Ackroyd's heart, or the heart of anyone else who has fallen in love with London's 2000 year history, its transformations, its theatricality, its poverty, its wit, its preposterousness, its influence on the English language. This is a book that's too densely packed with interesting data, arranged in short, thematic chapters, to be read from front to back, much as London is a city that's too large and infinite to be visited thoroughly even during a long, hyperactive visit. Instead, I think most readers will end up doing what I did--skipping around to find items of interest: the history of the stage in London, the experiences of the Londoners during the Blitz, the effects of Henry VIII's decision to break with the Roman Catholic Church, the persistence of Chaucerian character-types.
My experiences in London over 4 decades correspond in some measure to Ackroyd's insistence on the Dickensian quality of the place...the fogs, low ceilings, narrow alleyways...but his book does drop the ball in conveying the influence of parks and gardens on the London experience and fails to convey the full impact of London's cosmopolitanism--its infinity of peoples, costumes, and cuisines, in the post-Imperial, post-Colonial, post-modern era. I also wish there were a more extended meditation in it somewhere on literary London (writers are quoted all the time, but their London lives aren't stitched together in what you might call a cultural appraisal of the life of letters in London).
That said, Ackroyd has no qualms about emphasizing London's dingy quality, its patched-together architecture, and its continuous (for millennia) construction and deconstruction. This is his overriding theme: here's a city with a strong, peculiar personalty with which no one can do anything; it must be accepted as it is for what it is; tear it down and it will twist and torture your plans to build it anew; bomb it and it will survive underground; make it a "fashionable" destination, and it will satirize its own fashionableness.
As a "book," this text strikes me as something of a marketing enterprise: here's the biggest, most comprehensive, last word on London, so you have to have it. It probably would have been more effective had it been edited down a bit. But that's exactly what Akroyd says people have tried to do to London, and in the end, it overflows all measure and restraint
My experiences in London over 4 decades correspond in some measure to Ackroyd's insistence on the Dickensian quality of the place...the fogs, low ceilings, narrow alleyways...but his book does drop the ball in conveying the influence of parks and gardens on the London experience and fails to convey the full impact of London's cosmopolitanism--its infinity of peoples, costumes, and cuisines, in the post-Imperial, post-Colonial, post-modern era. I also wish there were a more extended meditation in it somewhere on literary London (writers are quoted all the time, but their London lives aren't stitched together in what you might call a cultural appraisal of the life of letters in London).
That said, Ackroyd has no qualms about emphasizing London's dingy quality, its patched-together architecture, and its continuous (for millennia) construction and deconstruction. This is his overriding theme: here's a city with a strong, peculiar personalty with which no one can do anything; it must be accepted as it is for what it is; tear it down and it will twist and torture your plans to build it anew; bomb it and it will survive underground; make it a "fashionable" destination, and it will satirize its own fashionableness.
As a "book," this text strikes me as something of a marketing enterprise: here's the biggest, most comprehensive, last word on London, so you have to have it. It probably would have been more effective had it been edited down a bit. But that's exactly what Akroyd says people have tried to do to London, and in the end, it overflows all measure and restraint
December 29, 2017
[2014]
Ackroyd è un londinese che ha scritto, letto e visto molto su Londra; ed è uno scrittore londinese che ha scritto molto sugli scrittori londinesi (compresi libri su Dickens e sui fratelli Lamb): non stupisce quindi trovare qui stipato un gran numero di notizie, curiosità, citazioni, ricordi, immagini, riflessioni su Londra.
Uno degli informatori principali è il diarista del Seicento Samuel Pepys, poi naturalmente Defoe, Fielding, Samuel Johnson, Boswell, Dickens, Hogarth, De Quincey, Charles Lamb (molto meno l’altro grande saggista di inizio Ottocento, William Hazlitt), George Gissing, G. K. Chesterton, George Orwell, ecc. ecc.
Viene voglia poi di esplorare altri, meno noti, apporti basilari del libro: da John Stow (per il Cinquecento) e John Evelyn (un altro importante diario del Seicento) a Charles Booth (autore del gigantesco Life and Labour of the People of London, del 1903, in sette volumi) e Charles Knight («un altro grande storico di Londra»), a Henry Mayhew, autore di una inchiesta sui poveri di Londra, pubblicata sul «Morning Chronicle», poi in volume: London Labour and the London Poor, che pare sia stata tra i riferimenti importanti di Dickens... E naturalmente non mancano i riferimenti ai grandi architetti che hanno segnato l’immagine della città (Christopher Wren, Robert Adam, Nicholas Hawksmoor, George Dance, William Chambers, John Nash, Daniel Asher Alexander…) e nemmeno la voce degli osservatori stranieri, spesso anonima (ma non restano anonimi Heine e Taine, ad esempio).
Tanta roba, quindi; e d'altra parte sono quasi 700 pagine! Ma poi non è che Ackroyd ne tragga tantissimo sugo. Ad esempio, l’idea del sostanziale “paganesimo” di Londra torna più volte, ma rimane abbastanza abbozzata.
All’inizio (dalla preistoria al Medioevo) e alla fine (dai bombardamenti nazisti alla ricostruzione) l'organizzazione del materiale è un po' più cronologica, per il resto si va sostanzialmente per temi, in capitoli relativamente brevi.
Un buon riassunto del punto di vista di Ackroyd sul carattere della città si può estrarre dal discorso sui trasporti nella Londra vittoriana: «I cocchieri londinesi sintetizzano lo spirito della città – veloce, irrequieto, audace, con una propensione all’ubriachezza e alla violenza.»
La Londra di Ackroyd è «una città basata su lavoro e impresa, su potere e commercio» (più City che Westminster, insomma… e basti dire che, se non sbaglio, non cita nemmeno una volta Downing Street: il senso della città è principalmente dettato dall’impulso anarco-finanziario, come se non fosse “anche” una capitale politica), ma allo stesso tempo è segnata da un «umore radicale e ugualitario» che regolarmente riemerge in questa veloce e violenta città votata completamente al guadagno, al denaro, al commercio, alla finanza.
La forza coesiva principale del volume (anche un po’ fastidiosa quando si sente ripetuta e a volte forzata) è la tensione a rintracciare linee di continuità: evidenti, larvati o misteriosi collegamenti nei secoli, che fanno di Londra «una città di echi e di ombre» e spesso quasi un’entità con volontà propria, che impone ai suoi abitanti.
E quindi tenace continuità di carattere o di specializzazione nelle diverse parti della città, tendenza dei londinesi a rimanere tutta la vita nella stessa zona: ogni capitoletto deve avere il suo inizio accattivante e la sua frasetta finale riassuntiva, anche quando non è così significativo che nello stesso luogo siano successe cose solo vagamente simili a distanza di cinque o sei secoli.
Altra cosa un po’ fastidiosa è che spesso presenta come “tipicamente londinese” situazioni o caratteristiche che si ritrovano benissimo altrove. Non sempre poi il montaggio è così interessante da spingere con forza a proseguire la lettura: difficile tenere l’attenzione per settecento pagine senza essere mai una “storia”.
p. s. Alcuni limiti vengono dall’edizione italiana: le due cartine (intorno al 1800 e Modern London) sono limitate all’area più centrale e non facilmente leggibili, soprattutto perché tra le due pagine la rilegatura si mangia un pezzo, e la traduzione a volte non è chiarissima; però la copertina con The Heart of the Empire di Niels Moller Lund è adeguatamente suggestiva e il librone sta bene insieme senza sfaldarsi.
Ackroyd è un londinese che ha scritto, letto e visto molto su Londra; ed è uno scrittore londinese che ha scritto molto sugli scrittori londinesi (compresi libri su Dickens e sui fratelli Lamb): non stupisce quindi trovare qui stipato un gran numero di notizie, curiosità, citazioni, ricordi, immagini, riflessioni su Londra.
Uno degli informatori principali è il diarista del Seicento Samuel Pepys, poi naturalmente Defoe, Fielding, Samuel Johnson, Boswell, Dickens, Hogarth, De Quincey, Charles Lamb (molto meno l’altro grande saggista di inizio Ottocento, William Hazlitt), George Gissing, G. K. Chesterton, George Orwell, ecc. ecc.
Viene voglia poi di esplorare altri, meno noti, apporti basilari del libro: da John Stow (per il Cinquecento) e John Evelyn (un altro importante diario del Seicento) a Charles Booth (autore del gigantesco Life and Labour of the People of London, del 1903, in sette volumi) e Charles Knight («un altro grande storico di Londra»), a Henry Mayhew, autore di una inchiesta sui poveri di Londra, pubblicata sul «Morning Chronicle», poi in volume: London Labour and the London Poor, che pare sia stata tra i riferimenti importanti di Dickens... E naturalmente non mancano i riferimenti ai grandi architetti che hanno segnato l’immagine della città (Christopher Wren, Robert Adam, Nicholas Hawksmoor, George Dance, William Chambers, John Nash, Daniel Asher Alexander…) e nemmeno la voce degli osservatori stranieri, spesso anonima (ma non restano anonimi Heine e Taine, ad esempio).
Tanta roba, quindi; e d'altra parte sono quasi 700 pagine! Ma poi non è che Ackroyd ne tragga tantissimo sugo. Ad esempio, l’idea del sostanziale “paganesimo” di Londra torna più volte, ma rimane abbastanza abbozzata.
All’inizio (dalla preistoria al Medioevo) e alla fine (dai bombardamenti nazisti alla ricostruzione) l'organizzazione del materiale è un po' più cronologica, per il resto si va sostanzialmente per temi, in capitoli relativamente brevi.
Un buon riassunto del punto di vista di Ackroyd sul carattere della città si può estrarre dal discorso sui trasporti nella Londra vittoriana: «I cocchieri londinesi sintetizzano lo spirito della città – veloce, irrequieto, audace, con una propensione all’ubriachezza e alla violenza.»
La Londra di Ackroyd è «una città basata su lavoro e impresa, su potere e commercio» (più City che Westminster, insomma… e basti dire che, se non sbaglio, non cita nemmeno una volta Downing Street: il senso della città è principalmente dettato dall’impulso anarco-finanziario, come se non fosse “anche” una capitale politica), ma allo stesso tempo è segnata da un «umore radicale e ugualitario» che regolarmente riemerge in questa veloce e violenta città votata completamente al guadagno, al denaro, al commercio, alla finanza.
La forza coesiva principale del volume (anche un po’ fastidiosa quando si sente ripetuta e a volte forzata) è la tensione a rintracciare linee di continuità: evidenti, larvati o misteriosi collegamenti nei secoli, che fanno di Londra «una città di echi e di ombre» e spesso quasi un’entità con volontà propria, che impone ai suoi abitanti.
E quindi tenace continuità di carattere o di specializzazione nelle diverse parti della città, tendenza dei londinesi a rimanere tutta la vita nella stessa zona: ogni capitoletto deve avere il suo inizio accattivante e la sua frasetta finale riassuntiva, anche quando non è così significativo che nello stesso luogo siano successe cose solo vagamente simili a distanza di cinque o sei secoli.
Altra cosa un po’ fastidiosa è che spesso presenta come “tipicamente londinese” situazioni o caratteristiche che si ritrovano benissimo altrove. Non sempre poi il montaggio è così interessante da spingere con forza a proseguire la lettura: difficile tenere l’attenzione per settecento pagine senza essere mai una “storia”.
p. s. Alcuni limiti vengono dall’edizione italiana: le due cartine (intorno al 1800 e Modern London) sono limitate all’area più centrale e non facilmente leggibili, soprattutto perché tra le due pagine la rilegatura si mangia un pezzo, e la traduzione a volte non è chiarissima; però la copertina con The Heart of the Empire di Niels Moller Lund è adeguatamente suggestiva e il librone sta bene insieme senza sfaldarsi.
January 29, 2013
Atrociously bad. It could be turned into a drinking game -- drink any time Ackroyd uses fallacious logic or uses a completely unrelated and non-universal example to "prove" an absurd point. Of course, then you'd have alcohol poisoning by the end of the first chapter.
If his thesis were that London, as a city, has a particular culture unlike other cities in Britain, then this book might be an interesting amble through different elements of that culture. However, his thesis is that the city itself, in its pavement, sewer systems, buildings, etc., literally speak to the residents and dictate their ways of life.
Yes, that is exactly as crazycakes as it sounds. Up to including his claim that the actual tarmac of the street told the poor, nonwhite protestors to riot against their white oppressors. Also, there's the constant impossible superlativing, making ridiculous claims that London was the first city ever to do ______ in all of history. As if Rome and other ancient metropolises had never been. Calling it shoddy scholarship is generous.
This book IS kind of interesting as an adjunct to Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series, if you pretend London is actually fiction. I only made myself finish the book because the anecdotes he paraphrases are fascinating. Sadly, there are no footnotes or endnotes, and he doesn't list his sources for particular stories, so this book is pretty useless as a diving off point into something better.
So...yay badly quoted anecdotes?
If his thesis were that London, as a city, has a particular culture unlike other cities in Britain, then this book might be an interesting amble through different elements of that culture. However, his thesis is that the city itself, in its pavement, sewer systems, buildings, etc., literally speak to the residents and dictate their ways of life.
Yes, that is exactly as crazycakes as it sounds. Up to including his claim that the actual tarmac of the street told the poor, nonwhite protestors to riot against their white oppressors. Also, there's the constant impossible superlativing, making ridiculous claims that London was the first city ever to do ______ in all of history. As if Rome and other ancient metropolises had never been. Calling it shoddy scholarship is generous.
This book IS kind of interesting as an adjunct to Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series, if you pretend London is actually fiction. I only made myself finish the book because the anecdotes he paraphrases are fascinating. Sadly, there are no footnotes or endnotes, and he doesn't list his sources for particular stories, so this book is pretty useless as a diving off point into something better.
So...yay badly quoted anecdotes?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 8, 2010
London has always possessed the presence of a character (and a major character at that), in the quite brilliant novels Ackroyd has chosen to set there. His love of and fascination for the city has always been apparent. Here he demonstrates his scholarly expertise on a subject that clearly beguiles him and with what incredibly enjoyable result.
The best praise I can offer this book is that it is worthy of its subject. It is deep, mystical, multi-layered and endlessly fascinating.
I lived in London for 20 years from the age of 21 and trying to describe it as it was in 1937, in my novel The House of Lost Souls, was probably the most enjoyable fictive challenge I've taken on.
This is not fiction - though it reads so compulsively it could be - but Ackroyd is the master, the London writer everyone should look up to. This book is a perfect mix of passion and erudition. I've just read it for the second time and look forward to reading it again. I can't recommend it strongly enough.
The best praise I can offer this book is that it is worthy of its subject. It is deep, mystical, multi-layered and endlessly fascinating.
I lived in London for 20 years from the age of 21 and trying to describe it as it was in 1937, in my novel The House of Lost Souls, was probably the most enjoyable fictive challenge I've taken on.
This is not fiction - though it reads so compulsively it could be - but Ackroyd is the master, the London writer everyone should look up to. This book is a perfect mix of passion and erudition. I've just read it for the second time and look forward to reading it again. I can't recommend it strongly enough.
July 20, 2011
What a book. Ackroyd has created the ultimate portrait of London as a living, breathing entity, not just a collection of old buildings and monuments. Rather than a dry chronological trawl through the history of our nation's capital, instead Ackroyd chooses themes and explores them through time and space, focussing on specific areas or ideas. Thus he paints a picture of an ever evolving city that defies all attempts to change or control it. London is its own master.
Ackroyd ranges back and forth through time in pursuit of his themes and as a consequence throws up facts that are never less than interesting, frequently fascinating. All the while he slowly moves us through London's development through the centuries, and my only quibble would be that he skips through the 20th century rather too quickly. But considering the book is 800 pages long and he had a heart attack after finishing it, I'll forgive him that.
If you are looking for a dry history book, look elsewhere. If you are in search of a book about London that is full of ideas and facts backed up by a wealth of research then London: The Biography is for you. Not to everyone's taste, but I found it a great read.
Ackroyd ranges back and forth through time in pursuit of his themes and as a consequence throws up facts that are never less than interesting, frequently fascinating. All the while he slowly moves us through London's development through the centuries, and my only quibble would be that he skips through the 20th century rather too quickly. But considering the book is 800 pages long and he had a heart attack after finishing it, I'll forgive him that.
If you are looking for a dry history book, look elsewhere. If you are in search of a book about London that is full of ideas and facts backed up by a wealth of research then London: The Biography is for you. Not to everyone's taste, but I found it a great read.
November 17, 2012
This book is a massive undertaking, both for the author and the reader, and the amount of extraordinary, fascinating and brilliant detail in here is mind-boggling. It pulls from an awe-inspiring number of primary sources to provide the most delectable quotes on everything from pubs to fashion to murders to popular food. In fact, I can't think of a subject that isn't in here, and it's all woven together in a form that is almost like fiction. It muses, ponders, revels in minutiae. This is the first book I started reading after my father died about a year and a half ago, I hadn't been able to read anything at all for a month or two and this was perfect for getting back into it, reading a couple of chapters at a time, setting down, coming back to. I loved loved loved so much of it, both the tidbits of history, but also the ways in which Ackroyd combined them, sometimes by theme or period or area. It's changed how I walked around London streets, how I see the Thames every time I cross it, the ways I contrast old and new and am always seeking out the echoes of past times. I was a bit that way before, I confess, but now I have a much better feeling for what might be there and understanding of what I find.
It's hard to judge a work of this size and scope with so much that is amazing in it. But as I read I became increasingly critical of the celebration of commercialism. It all comes to a head in the final chapters which left me angry. A sort of mystical view of London had been steadily emerging, a sort of organic living creature of a city with its own requirements and demands of its inhabitants. I liked playing with ideas about the ways in which a city shapes its residents, but was disappointed to find Ackroyd's jubilation at the financial centres surviving the blitz as proof that the living beating heart of London might well be commerce and finance. There is a celebration of Thatcher's big bang of 1986 loosing regulations on bangs -- that would ultimately lead to our current economic crisis. And he writes
How infuriating! As though the homeless and the masses of poor are a natural phenomenon like weather, and not caused by deindustrialisation, the roll back of the welfare state and Thatcher's own policies channeling wealth away from them towards the already wealthy. That Lincoln's Inn field should have been free of the homeless for 150 years was an accomplishment of society hard fought and bitterly won. Their return is an indictment of our current direction, not an ornament to London's wealth, or a gaze that seeks to remind the well-to-do of how wonderful they are. Had I only stopped reading with the Blitz I would have unqualifiedly loved this book, as it is I am torn between giving it a five and giving it a one. I look back and wonder how much of this view seeped into the history. I am sure it did in celebrating trade, muting struggle and resistance. But in terms of how theatre changed over time, the love of jellied eels and pies, the roles of gravediggers, the building of churches, the vast panoply of literary views and all such topics,this is quite wonderful.
It's hard to judge a work of this size and scope with so much that is amazing in it. But as I read I became increasingly critical of the celebration of commercialism. It all comes to a head in the final chapters which left me angry. A sort of mystical view of London had been steadily emerging, a sort of organic living creature of a city with its own requirements and demands of its inhabitants. I liked playing with ideas about the ways in which a city shapes its residents, but was disappointed to find Ackroyd's jubilation at the financial centres surviving the blitz as proof that the living beating heart of London might well be commerce and finance. There is a celebration of Thatcher's big bang of 1986 loosing regulations on bangs -- that would ultimately lead to our current economic crisis. And he writes
If the city had a voice it might be saying: There will always be those who fail or who are unfortunate, just as there will always be those who cannot cope with the world as presently constituted, but I can encompass them all.
...Lincoln's Inn Fields was occupied once more by the homeless, after an interval of 150 years, while areas like Waterloo Bridge and the Embankment became the setting for what were known as 'cardboard cities'. ... Despite civic and government initiatives, they are still there. They are now part of the recognisable population; they are Londoners, joining the endless parade. Or perhaps, by sitting upon the sidelines, they remind everyone else that it is a parade.
How infuriating! As though the homeless and the masses of poor are a natural phenomenon like weather, and not caused by deindustrialisation, the roll back of the welfare state and Thatcher's own policies channeling wealth away from them towards the already wealthy. That Lincoln's Inn field should have been free of the homeless for 150 years was an accomplishment of society hard fought and bitterly won. Their return is an indictment of our current direction, not an ornament to London's wealth, or a gaze that seeks to remind the well-to-do of how wonderful they are. Had I only stopped reading with the Blitz I would have unqualifiedly loved this book, as it is I am torn between giving it a five and giving it a one. I look back and wonder how much of this view seeped into the history. I am sure it did in celebrating trade, muting struggle and resistance. But in terms of how theatre changed over time, the love of jellied eels and pies, the roles of gravediggers, the building of churches, the vast panoply of literary views and all such topics,this is quite wonderful.
June 28, 2019
I have never been in London, but someday in future I would love to visit.
.
Being a student of English literature, I was always fascinated about this city- the city where Shakespeare lived, wrote and performed; where the best english poetry and dramas had been written and sung; the city of an empire on which the sun had never set; the city which was prospered by the financial exploitations of British kingdom's colonies- most particularly India- I wanted to know London's history, and I would say that Peter Ackroyd succeeded to elucidate it to a non-londoner.
.
As far as the critical criticism of the contents of the book concerns, I find myself unable to analyse it. Had I had lived there, I might have been able, but as far as the writing style concerns, I am fully satisfied.
.
Being a student of English literature, I was always fascinated about this city- the city where Shakespeare lived, wrote and performed; where the best english poetry and dramas had been written and sung; the city of an empire on which the sun had never set; the city which was prospered by the financial exploitations of British kingdom's colonies- most particularly India- I wanted to know London's history, and I would say that Peter Ackroyd succeeded to elucidate it to a non-londoner.
.
As far as the critical criticism of the contents of the book concerns, I find myself unable to analyse it. Had I had lived there, I might have been able, but as far as the writing style concerns, I am fully satisfied.
August 7, 2020
Cuatro meses, mil páginas y muchos tés después.... ¡puedo decir que TERMINÉ ESTE LIBRO! ¡Yas!
Lo empecé a leer porque me interesaba aprender más sobre la historia de Londres y este libro prometía darme una visión general de como fue cambiando con el tiempo desde sus primeros habitantes. El resultado no fue tan así como lo esperaba pero de todas formas me gustó mucho. Si les interesa el libro, lo primero que deben saber es que el orden de la narración no es cronológica, sino que va por temas: cada capítulo tiene uno distinto (el clima, los bares, los sonidos, los niños, los ríos, los dialectos, las cárceles etc.) que es el central y que va contando como fue cambiando/evolucionando eso a lo largo del tiempo, desde los primeros escritos y testimonios que se tienen hasta hoy (o, debería decir hasta el 2000 porque es el año de publicación). Ese orden hace que sea a veces un poco confuso, pero a la vez está bueno si uno está interesado específicamente en ese tema. Depende el gusto del consumidor.
Por otro lado, la forma de escritura me pareció un poco pesada de a partes, porque está llena de referencias e inspiraciones poéticas(?? que, si sólo están interesados en el lado histórico, se vuelve denso.
De todas maneras, este es un GRAN libro y una GRAN obra sobre Londres. Se nota no sólo que el autor hizo muchísima investigación para poder escribirlo (ya mirando la cantidad de páginas que hay de bibliografía uno lo adivina) sino también que sabe muchísimo del tema por gusto y por años de estar sumergido en él. A pesar de que sentí altibajos (naturalmente, hay temas que me gustan más que otros y de ahí el ritmo irregular de lectura) uno siente esa visión general de Londres, una ciudad que va y viene, que tuvo muchísimas etapas y que no entra ni siquiera en un libro de -apenas- mil páginas. Investigando descubrí que Ackroyd hizo también unos documentales para la BBC sobre Londres que están en Youtube, así que here I go.
Es la primera vez que hago tantos updates acá en GR que reflejen de verdad mis opiniones a medida que leo (generalmente leo rápido y no me da el tiempo, je) así que las pego porque me gustaría recordarlas cuando relea mi reseña:
April 13, 2020 – Started Reading
April 13, 2020 – 2.0% "No sé cuanto voy a tardar en leer este libro (más de mil páginas de non-fiction) peeero estoy súper entusiasmada así que here we go."
April 17, 2020 – 5.0% "Ya leí dos capítulos y está demasiado genial. Me va a llevar lo suyo peeero me encanta."
April 18, 2020 – 8.0% "Definitivamente no me gustaría haber vivido en Londres en los 1100."
April 22, 2020 – 13.0% "El capitulo de los mapas me está gustando. Es raro que no vaya cronológicamente, sino por temas."
April 27, 2020 – 15.0% "Me sigue pareciendo rara la distribución de los temas y los capítulos. Pero vamos avanzando :)"
April 30, 2020 – 20.0% "¡Y llegué a la página 200! El capítulo sobre los dialectos de Londres, el cockney en particular, me pareció fascinante."
May 4, 2020 – 24.0% "El capítulo de las pestes... viene justito eh"
June 6, 2020 – 30.0% "Voy lento pero voy!! Este año lo termino xD
June 22, 2020 – 32.0% "Este capítulo sobre las cárceles estuvo muy interesante.
June 24, 2020 – 37.0% "Y seguimos con los capítulos de asesinatos... ¡quiero algo más que no sea sangre chorreante!"
June 26, 2020 – 41.0% "Wujuuu ya pasé el cuarenta por ciento"
July 10, 2020 – 46.0% "El capítulo de las bebidas alcohólicas me dejó con la extraña sensación de querer tomarme un litro de agua xD"
July 16, 2020 – 53.0% "EAAa ya pasé la mitad!!! No lo puedo creer!!!"
July 24, 2020 – 56.0% "De a poco..."
July 31, 2020 – 62.0% "En este mismo momento tengo unas ganas de dejarlo.... pero es interesante y ya pasé la mitad así que supongo que es mejor seguir de a poquito :)
August 4, 2020 – 70.0% "Este capítulo sobre el Támesis y los ríos subterráneos me encantó"
August 5, 2020 – 85.0% "Definitivamente me alegro de no haber vivido en el Londres victoriano"
August 6, 2020 – 93.0% "Chaaann ya voy llegando al final. Estos capítulos sobre la Segunda Guerra fueron la verdad interesantes"
August 6, 2020 – Finished Reading
↠3 estrellas
Lo empecé a leer porque me interesaba aprender más sobre la historia de Londres y este libro prometía darme una visión general de como fue cambiando con el tiempo desde sus primeros habitantes. El resultado no fue tan así como lo esperaba pero de todas formas me gustó mucho. Si les interesa el libro, lo primero que deben saber es que el orden de la narración no es cronológica, sino que va por temas: cada capítulo tiene uno distinto (el clima, los bares, los sonidos, los niños, los ríos, los dialectos, las cárceles etc.) que es el central y que va contando como fue cambiando/evolucionando eso a lo largo del tiempo, desde los primeros escritos y testimonios que se tienen hasta hoy (o, debería decir hasta el 2000 porque es el año de publicación). Ese orden hace que sea a veces un poco confuso, pero a la vez está bueno si uno está interesado específicamente en ese tema. Depende el gusto del consumidor.
Por otro lado, la forma de escritura me pareció un poco pesada de a partes, porque está llena de referencias e inspiraciones poéticas(?? que, si sólo están interesados en el lado histórico, se vuelve denso.
De todas maneras, este es un GRAN libro y una GRAN obra sobre Londres. Se nota no sólo que el autor hizo muchísima investigación para poder escribirlo (ya mirando la cantidad de páginas que hay de bibliografía uno lo adivina) sino también que sabe muchísimo del tema por gusto y por años de estar sumergido en él. A pesar de que sentí altibajos (naturalmente, hay temas que me gustan más que otros y de ahí el ritmo irregular de lectura) uno siente esa visión general de Londres, una ciudad que va y viene, que tuvo muchísimas etapas y que no entra ni siquiera en un libro de -apenas- mil páginas. Investigando descubrí que Ackroyd hizo también unos documentales para la BBC sobre Londres que están en Youtube, así que here I go.
Es la primera vez que hago tantos updates acá en GR que reflejen de verdad mis opiniones a medida que leo (generalmente leo rápido y no me da el tiempo, je) así que las pego porque me gustaría recordarlas cuando relea mi reseña:
April 13, 2020 – Started Reading
April 13, 2020 – 2.0% "No sé cuanto voy a tardar en leer este libro (más de mil páginas de non-fiction) peeero estoy súper entusiasmada así que here we go."
April 17, 2020 – 5.0% "Ya leí dos capítulos y está demasiado genial. Me va a llevar lo suyo peeero me encanta."
April 18, 2020 – 8.0% "Definitivamente no me gustaría haber vivido en Londres en los 1100."
April 22, 2020 – 13.0% "El capitulo de los mapas me está gustando. Es raro que no vaya cronológicamente, sino por temas."
April 27, 2020 – 15.0% "Me sigue pareciendo rara la distribución de los temas y los capítulos. Pero vamos avanzando :)"
April 30, 2020 – 20.0% "¡Y llegué a la página 200! El capítulo sobre los dialectos de Londres, el cockney en particular, me pareció fascinante."
May 4, 2020 – 24.0% "El capítulo de las pestes... viene justito eh"
June 6, 2020 – 30.0% "Voy lento pero voy!! Este año lo termino xD
June 22, 2020 – 32.0% "Este capítulo sobre las cárceles estuvo muy interesante.
June 24, 2020 – 37.0% "Y seguimos con los capítulos de asesinatos... ¡quiero algo más que no sea sangre chorreante!"
June 26, 2020 – 41.0% "Wujuuu ya pasé el cuarenta por ciento"
July 10, 2020 – 46.0% "El capítulo de las bebidas alcohólicas me dejó con la extraña sensación de querer tomarme un litro de agua xD"
July 16, 2020 – 53.0% "EAAa ya pasé la mitad!!! No lo puedo creer!!!"
July 24, 2020 – 56.0% "De a poco..."
July 31, 2020 – 62.0% "En este mismo momento tengo unas ganas de dejarlo.... pero es interesante y ya pasé la mitad así que supongo que es mejor seguir de a poquito :)
August 4, 2020 – 70.0% "Este capítulo sobre el Támesis y los ríos subterráneos me encantó"
August 5, 2020 – 85.0% "Definitivamente me alegro de no haber vivido en el Londres victoriano"
August 6, 2020 – 93.0% "Chaaann ya voy llegando al final. Estos capítulos sobre la Segunda Guerra fueron la verdad interesantes"
August 6, 2020 – Finished Reading
↠3 estrellas
April 8, 2013
As a native Londoner, I found parts of this book very interesting. For example, I knew there had been other rivers in London such as the long-lost Fleet river, what I hadn't realized is that they are all still there, buried under the city. I also didn't know much of anything about London pre-Romans.
Apart from being really, really long, there were a few things I didn't like about this book. One was the way Ackroyd described things as being unique to London, for example quoting all the references to London as a theater, or a stage. I expect any city has been described in this way at some point. It's also full of randomly linked miscellany with which Ackroyd tries to make a point, but often seems like stretching just a little too hard. Also, while I see the point in not writing the book chronologically, at times it made it hard to understand what period of time was being referred to.
Apart from being really, really long, there were a few things I didn't like about this book. One was the way Ackroyd described things as being unique to London, for example quoting all the references to London as a theater, or a stage. I expect any city has been described in this way at some point. It's also full of randomly linked miscellany with which Ackroyd tries to make a point, but often seems like stretching just a little too hard. Also, while I see the point in not writing the book chronologically, at times it made it hard to understand what period of time was being referred to.
August 17, 2011
Could very well be THE biography of 'London', Peter Ackroyd's 2000 publication is a monumental eight hundred page delight. The scope and coverage is breathtaking, from the last ice age to the domain of wild animals, to the Roman and Saxon foundations to it's present day sprawl. The capital city with all the trials,tribulations,fog and flame from Aeneas to Ziegler.
Ackroyd has produced a masterpiece. It is clearly a life times work, and not just a historical one. The reader is taken by the hand and led through the streets, alleyways, squares, fairs, churches, palaces, ale houses and hovels. Through time travel and through the eyes of a myriad of characters, writers, artists, princes and paupers, we can imagine the sights, sounds, smells and spirits through the centuries.
A huge feast of a book that is easily digested in concise and so very well written portions.
Ackroyd has produced a masterpiece. It is clearly a life times work, and not just a historical one. The reader is taken by the hand and led through the streets, alleyways, squares, fairs, churches, palaces, ale houses and hovels. Through time travel and through the eyes of a myriad of characters, writers, artists, princes and paupers, we can imagine the sights, sounds, smells and spirits through the centuries.
A huge feast of a book that is easily digested in concise and so very well written portions.
December 15, 2021
This is one of the most dishonest, spiteful, and acrimoniously fearmongering texts I've run into in a long time. It was bad enough that I considered not finishing it, which would've been the second time in more than a decade that I had gone through such a decision. In the end, I decided that, when it came down to sunken cost fallacy versus the everlasting annoyance of the unresolved read, I might as well power through this piece that I was happy enough to keep on my TBR for nearly a decade and commit to reading within a couple of years of finally tracking down a copy. Now that I'm finally through, I can say with some amount of credibility that the length of time which this work spent as a "biography" of London encompasses one, maybe two hundred pages that are devoted to detailing early histories of foundation and consolidation of the city along sociopolitical and geographical lines, aka drawing a clear line from the ones in power to the causes and effects they wreaked on infrastructure and the populace on this particular area on a rather small island in the Northern hemisphere. However, as soon as the work hits the timeline when the more awkward powers start gleefully executing the more awkward causes and effects that run along the lines of enclosure, colonialism, and other socioeconomic bloodsuckings on an international scale, it stops being a biography and starts being a tourist trap guide for the middle class English major, ever so enamored with that pile of stolen cultural wealth called the British Museum and ever so fretful about the immigration of those who would've gladly stayed in their own countries had their cultural wealth not been stolen in the first place. It's glib, farcical, and if the textual touting of the morbid urban legend ascribed to the "ring around the roses" rhyme can be extrapolated from, every single fact, citation, and quotation is entirely take it or leave it depending on your personal fancy. What isn't is how Ackroyd increasingly gets his panties in a twist about the huge wealth discrepancies that are a natural consequence of how London and the larger England has gutted the world for the past half a millennium and tries to pass off such rapacious Mammonism as not only inevitable, but praiseworthy. It's classic "well off folks whistling in the dark" sprawled out for 800+ pages and shoved through the publication mill on the strength of author repute and little else, and let me tell you: where Ackroyd sees "theatricality" and "egalitarian and democratic instincts," I see the set up for the decline and the fall.
If you give people nowhere else to go, they will go, whatever the horror or the abject. If you ensure that everything: life, liberty, the pursuit of humanization, the realization of a nation, the continuance of a culture, the maintenance of a continuing line of production and consumption, ebb and flow, that everything has its price, the world will flock to where it is most possible to acquire such with the minimum of continually being able to choose between one's money and one's life. I certainly didn't expect Ackroyd to write an entire history of British imperialism as a mere part of his research into London, but to assign responsibility to political leaders and royal representatives for a few of the earlier centuries and then immediately bow out when it was clear that those up top were steadily razing the countryside from the inside cityscape to the outside international plane and reaping the benefits of every new product and every outcropping slum, all you're doing is dumping some milk and cream on a kernel of shit and calling it a milkshake. The cannibalization of Ireland, the rampant antisemitism that led leaders of 1930s England to more than fancy the idea of getting into bed with Hitler, the razing of India, Jamaica, and much of the rest of the world through a combination of tariffs, monoculture, and the IMF: to talk about London as sociopolitical growth as if such growth was simply manna from heaven is about as honest as mentioning Churchill without delving into Thatcher, and guess what, Ackroyd does just that. So certain sections of the city have had certain superficial consistencies over the years. To discuss segregations of populaces and workforces without looking at who was monetarily benefiting from such through a combination of civic policy and opportunistic bigotry seems to go against Ackroyd's constant praise of those furthering London's supposed raison d'être of commerce above all else, but I suppose that would've been a tad too avariciously on the nose. Same with the populations that couldn't manage to permanently flee London during the course of the Blitz despite the exhortations of "protect the women and children," or the "riots" that for some odd coincidence occurred around the time of a few small events that happened across the water known as the American Revolution and the French Revolution, or the myriad 21st century populations seeking stable prosperity in the foreign land that fed on their homeland's famines. There's certainly a tale, perhaps even a biographical one, to be told about that, but despite whatever linguistic trickery Ackroyd pulls in hopes that the reader is too fatigued to notice, it is no epic romance, and London is no hero.
After trudging my way through those, I'm never going to be able to take any absolutist criticism of crowdsourced centers of information seriously. If something like this can make its way through the editing, publishing, marketing, and reading line sheerly out of textual-juggernaut-fatigue, there's little hope for the hardline stance that anything bound between two covers and calls itself 'nonfiction' is always going to be better accredited and approved than everything on a site such as, say, Wikipedia. It would probably be too much to expect that there's some site out there that goes into exacting detail of checking out which blithely stated "fun facts" are legitimate and which ones fall into the sort of hysterical paranoia that's always on the lookout for "fake" beggars and "lazy" immigrants, but this bloke called Iain Sinclair who seems to know a bit about London and whatever "psychogeography" is called this piece "fundamentally conservative," so there is that. In any case, do I wish I had had the sense of jettisoning this piece and never looking back before I took the risk of engaging with it? For certain. Do I hope that my review will aid others in doing the same? Of course. Perhaps circumstances are that maybe 30, 40, perhaps even 60% of what Ackroyd has to (however so mewlingly and pukingly) say is actually legit without being malignantly hateful and thus is worth a not too particular read. However, is 240-480 pages of what the title actually promised worth going through an 800+ page behemoth? I'll leave that for the reader to decide.
If you give people nowhere else to go, they will go, whatever the horror or the abject. If you ensure that everything: life, liberty, the pursuit of humanization, the realization of a nation, the continuance of a culture, the maintenance of a continuing line of production and consumption, ebb and flow, that everything has its price, the world will flock to where it is most possible to acquire such with the minimum of continually being able to choose between one's money and one's life. I certainly didn't expect Ackroyd to write an entire history of British imperialism as a mere part of his research into London, but to assign responsibility to political leaders and royal representatives for a few of the earlier centuries and then immediately bow out when it was clear that those up top were steadily razing the countryside from the inside cityscape to the outside international plane and reaping the benefits of every new product and every outcropping slum, all you're doing is dumping some milk and cream on a kernel of shit and calling it a milkshake. The cannibalization of Ireland, the rampant antisemitism that led leaders of 1930s England to more than fancy the idea of getting into bed with Hitler, the razing of India, Jamaica, and much of the rest of the world through a combination of tariffs, monoculture, and the IMF: to talk about London as sociopolitical growth as if such growth was simply manna from heaven is about as honest as mentioning Churchill without delving into Thatcher, and guess what, Ackroyd does just that. So certain sections of the city have had certain superficial consistencies over the years. To discuss segregations of populaces and workforces without looking at who was monetarily benefiting from such through a combination of civic policy and opportunistic bigotry seems to go against Ackroyd's constant praise of those furthering London's supposed raison d'être of commerce above all else, but I suppose that would've been a tad too avariciously on the nose. Same with the populations that couldn't manage to permanently flee London during the course of the Blitz despite the exhortations of "protect the women and children," or the "riots" that for some odd coincidence occurred around the time of a few small events that happened across the water known as the American Revolution and the French Revolution, or the myriad 21st century populations seeking stable prosperity in the foreign land that fed on their homeland's famines. There's certainly a tale, perhaps even a biographical one, to be told about that, but despite whatever linguistic trickery Ackroyd pulls in hopes that the reader is too fatigued to notice, it is no epic romance, and London is no hero.
After trudging my way through those, I'm never going to be able to take any absolutist criticism of crowdsourced centers of information seriously. If something like this can make its way through the editing, publishing, marketing, and reading line sheerly out of textual-juggernaut-fatigue, there's little hope for the hardline stance that anything bound between two covers and calls itself 'nonfiction' is always going to be better accredited and approved than everything on a site such as, say, Wikipedia. It would probably be too much to expect that there's some site out there that goes into exacting detail of checking out which blithely stated "fun facts" are legitimate and which ones fall into the sort of hysterical paranoia that's always on the lookout for "fake" beggars and "lazy" immigrants, but this bloke called Iain Sinclair who seems to know a bit about London and whatever "psychogeography" is called this piece "fundamentally conservative," so there is that. In any case, do I wish I had had the sense of jettisoning this piece and never looking back before I took the risk of engaging with it? For certain. Do I hope that my review will aid others in doing the same? Of course. Perhaps circumstances are that maybe 30, 40, perhaps even 60% of what Ackroyd has to (however so mewlingly and pukingly) say is actually legit without being malignantly hateful and thus is worth a not too particular read. However, is 240-480 pages of what the title actually promised worth going through an 800+ page behemoth? I'll leave that for the reader to decide.
March 5, 2021
Una vera meraviglia, che rievoca non uno ma centinaia di diversi romanzi storici, ambientati in epoche diverse.
La natura del tempo, a Londra, è misteriosa. Non sembra scorrere univocamente in una direzione, ma invece torna indietro e si ritira; non somiglia tanto a una corrente o a un fiume, quanto a un fiotto di lava di un qualche sconosciuto vulcano. Talvolta procede regolarmente in avanti, prima di accelerare e fare un balzo: talvolta rallenta e, in certi casi, si ammucchia e inizia a fermarsi completamente. Esistono certi posti a Londra in cui si potrebbe pensare che il tempo sia giunto alla fine.
Questa citazione è una delle tante che spiegano lo spirito del libro, che non è scritto seguendo una sequenza temporale, come qualsiasi biografia "regolamentare", ma per argomenti. Una chicca!
La natura del tempo, a Londra, è misteriosa. Non sembra scorrere univocamente in una direzione, ma invece torna indietro e si ritira; non somiglia tanto a una corrente o a un fiume, quanto a un fiotto di lava di un qualche sconosciuto vulcano. Talvolta procede regolarmente in avanti, prima di accelerare e fare un balzo: talvolta rallenta e, in certi casi, si ammucchia e inizia a fermarsi completamente. Esistono certi posti a Londra in cui si potrebbe pensare che il tempo sia giunto alla fine.
Questa citazione è una delle tante che spiegano lo spirito del libro, che non è scritto seguendo una sequenza temporale, come qualsiasi biografia "regolamentare", ma per argomenti. Una chicca!
June 13, 2011
Whither art thou driven, ghostly stranger, by the lamentations that echo in the dales of the lifeless and broken hills from whence thou wert bound? Phantom of breath, buckler of the passed and passing days, into what deep chasm of the forgotten mind of God hast thou found thyself, mewling for the grace that has evaded thy dogged and persistent steps? Look inward, man-child—a succession of stygian wombs hast thou haunted, passing now into life and anon into death. The cry of babes and the rattle of carrion are the chorus that greet thee upon thy fresh emergence—sweet and rancid kisses from which thou hast ever shrunk away, engirt with the terror that upholds the heavens.
February 18, 2023
A Dense, Quirky Telling of 2,000 Years of London's Story
This is quite an unusual and quirky and unforgettable book. It’s a long-form love poem to the city over the past two millennia of its incredibly eventful and storied history. It does a great job of covering the city not chronologically like a bog-standard history book. Instead, it takes a loosely thematic approach, covering it from dozens of angles - the early native Britons era, then the Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans, Middle Ages, Plantagenets/Tudors/Stuarts, then the Victorian and Imperial Age, Industrial Revolution, WWI, WWII Blitz, and then the Post-War years and Thatcher and up to around the turn of the century.
The book is far from even-handed and unbiased - Peter Ackroyd believes the city has a personality and spirit of its own, embedded in the millennia of history in the very mud, stones, brick, human detritus, and later concrete, steel, and glass. And each neighborhood of London has its own distinct identity, which reverberates and remains throughout different ages. It’s quite a fanciful concept, and while I wouldn’t deny it in a more conceptual sense, he actually seems to believe it in very literally. Apparently this theme runs through much of his other fiction and non-fiction works.
What I found most interesting was reading the polarized reviews of this book by other GR readers. They fall mainly into two camps, which fall broadly into these polar opposite views:
1) Ackroyd’s London is a brilliant and erudite book, brimming with amazing scholarship and chockablock with anecdotes, both entertaining and edifying. He is a genius and a national treasure.
2) Ackroyd’s London in its later stages is clearly a middle-class English book promoting a xenophobic, Eurocentric view of Englands Imperial and Colonial legacy, glibly glossing over the exploitive nature of that time, and instead taking a cosy nostalgic view of England at its zenith of political and economic and cultural status, and offensive and insensitive as such.
Well, like all things, I imagine the truth lies in-between, and moreover it depends on the perspective and views of the reader. The book is both really, so you will react to it accordingly, most likely. As an American expat who spent half his life in Japan, and only recently moved to the British Isles, I’ve been voraciously learning as much as I can about this complex and contentious legacy, trying to see the good and the bad, and putting things in their historical context but also understanding how the bad aspects of Imperial/Colonial rule most certainly are deserving of harsh criticism in this multicultural and multi-polar global era.
I think I can see both sides. I can say with certainty that I found the book very interesting to listen to, especially with its thematic, easily digested chapters that broke up a very long book. It never bored me, even though some of the florid writing did elicit some eye-rolling. It told me a lot about London I didn’t know, piqued my interest in the city even more, and provided much food for thought. In that sense, it was well worth the time I invested.
This is quite an unusual and quirky and unforgettable book. It’s a long-form love poem to the city over the past two millennia of its incredibly eventful and storied history. It does a great job of covering the city not chronologically like a bog-standard history book. Instead, it takes a loosely thematic approach, covering it from dozens of angles - the early native Britons era, then the Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans, Middle Ages, Plantagenets/Tudors/Stuarts, then the Victorian and Imperial Age, Industrial Revolution, WWI, WWII Blitz, and then the Post-War years and Thatcher and up to around the turn of the century.
The book is far from even-handed and unbiased - Peter Ackroyd believes the city has a personality and spirit of its own, embedded in the millennia of history in the very mud, stones, brick, human detritus, and later concrete, steel, and glass. And each neighborhood of London has its own distinct identity, which reverberates and remains throughout different ages. It’s quite a fanciful concept, and while I wouldn’t deny it in a more conceptual sense, he actually seems to believe it in very literally. Apparently this theme runs through much of his other fiction and non-fiction works.
What I found most interesting was reading the polarized reviews of this book by other GR readers. They fall mainly into two camps, which fall broadly into these polar opposite views:
1) Ackroyd’s London is a brilliant and erudite book, brimming with amazing scholarship and chockablock with anecdotes, both entertaining and edifying. He is a genius and a national treasure.
2) Ackroyd’s London in its later stages is clearly a middle-class English book promoting a xenophobic, Eurocentric view of Englands Imperial and Colonial legacy, glibly glossing over the exploitive nature of that time, and instead taking a cosy nostalgic view of England at its zenith of political and economic and cultural status, and offensive and insensitive as such.
Well, like all things, I imagine the truth lies in-between, and moreover it depends on the perspective and views of the reader. The book is both really, so you will react to it accordingly, most likely. As an American expat who spent half his life in Japan, and only recently moved to the British Isles, I’ve been voraciously learning as much as I can about this complex and contentious legacy, trying to see the good and the bad, and putting things in their historical context but also understanding how the bad aspects of Imperial/Colonial rule most certainly are deserving of harsh criticism in this multicultural and multi-polar global era.
I think I can see both sides. I can say with certainty that I found the book very interesting to listen to, especially with its thematic, easily digested chapters that broke up a very long book. It never bored me, even though some of the florid writing did elicit some eye-rolling. It told me a lot about London I didn’t know, piqued my interest in the city even more, and provided much food for thought. In that sense, it was well worth the time I invested.
August 28, 2010
You may be forgiven for thinking that my recent paucity of reviews was a due to lack of reading brought about by the birth of our son. Not so. I have been labouring through this beast of a book for the past couple of months, and am now relieved to be able to put it back on the shelf.
Peter Ackroyd's biography of London is impressive in every sense - the length, the breadth, the details and the passionate and scholarly work that went into it, and it has been celebrated by reviewers and middle-class Londoners everywhere, but I doubt many of them have read it all.
As much as I liked the subject matter (well, it is my home) and enjoyed many of the wonderfully varied chapters on all aspects of the city's history (social, commercial, architectural, political, natural) Ackroyd's narrative itself was densely earnest, puffy, and self-important. Take this quote for example:
"The nature of time in London is mysterious. It seems not to be running in one direction, but to fall backwards and to retire; it does not so much resemble a stream or river as a lava flow from some unknown source of fire. Sometimes it moves steadily forward, before springing or leaping out; sometimes it slows down and, on occasions, it drifts and begins to stop altogether."
So, even time in London is unique?! London is a great city, and this is a great book, packed with some amazing details and insights into life through the ages, but this is the kind of pompous nonsense that makes the book twice as long as it needs to be, and understandably makes non-Londoners throw their hands in the air.
Read it, or else just put it on the shelf to impress guests.
Peter Ackroyd's biography of London is impressive in every sense - the length, the breadth, the details and the passionate and scholarly work that went into it, and it has been celebrated by reviewers and middle-class Londoners everywhere, but I doubt many of them have read it all.
As much as I liked the subject matter (well, it is my home) and enjoyed many of the wonderfully varied chapters on all aspects of the city's history (social, commercial, architectural, political, natural) Ackroyd's narrative itself was densely earnest, puffy, and self-important. Take this quote for example:
"The nature of time in London is mysterious. It seems not to be running in one direction, but to fall backwards and to retire; it does not so much resemble a stream or river as a lava flow from some unknown source of fire. Sometimes it moves steadily forward, before springing or leaping out; sometimes it slows down and, on occasions, it drifts and begins to stop altogether."
So, even time in London is unique?! London is a great city, and this is a great book, packed with some amazing details and insights into life through the ages, but this is the kind of pompous nonsense that makes the book twice as long as it needs to be, and understandably makes non-Londoners throw their hands in the air.
Read it, or else just put it on the shelf to impress guests.
January 5, 2013
I initially gave this four stars, recognising the huge amount of research that Ackroyd has pulled together - anything you want to know about scandals, sewers, executions or thievery in London is here in an exuberant tumble. But ultimately the tumble led to my three star rating - the lack of order in the presentation jars for me and I gave up. It's a book for dipping rather than straight through reading.
The Manchester Guardian review on this link summarises several other reviews that balance amazment at the scope and abundance of Ackroyd's work against its internal chaos:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2000/...
I've marked it both as history and fiction, because you never really know with Ackroyd - the boundaries between the two are very thin. Certainly he has used lots of snippets of information he has come across in researching his previous books
The Manchester Guardian review on this link summarises several other reviews that balance amazment at the scope and abundance of Ackroyd's work against its internal chaos:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2000/...
I've marked it both as history and fiction, because you never really know with Ackroyd - the boundaries between the two are very thin. Certainly he has used lots of snippets of information he has come across in researching his previous books
August 27, 2012
This book was truly extraordinary.
I was looking for an in-depth history of London, and I certainly found it between this book's covers. Peter Ackroyd truly did write a biography of London, from its sprawling streets to its strange citizens. His writing is fluid, and fascinating to read; his use of primary sources is utterly astounding, and somewhat maddening, as the cockney can be a bit hard on the eyes.
Peter Ackroyd's book is told in a very loose chronology. While the 'story' begins with prehistory, and ends in the 80s, not much in this book is linear. He makes London timeless, and turns the city into the icon that it is today. The emphasis of the text is upon how little things have changed, even while London is destroyed and rebuilt cyclically. The essence of the city can be found in the hospitals raised upon the sites of druidic wells, the very wells that the Victorians later claimed had healing capabilities.
The triumph of this text is not in the traditional dates and names of rulers, battles, and the like... rather, the triumph is in the fact that it focuses upon the citizens of the empire. Reading this book, you will learn about the conditions of the jails, what Londoner's favorite pasttimes were, how the role of women changed, and how London assimilates the immigrants. You'll read about how little Cockney has changed from the 1500s, and how London's taste for the theatrical existed before Shakespeare came on the scene.
After reading this book, I feel that I have learned more about London than I have from the World History courses I've taken. Peter Ackroyd has an eye for what's importance, and brings this city of commerce, violence, and theater to life in a way that no one else has.
Smashing book.
I was looking for an in-depth history of London, and I certainly found it between this book's covers. Peter Ackroyd truly did write a biography of London, from its sprawling streets to its strange citizens. His writing is fluid, and fascinating to read; his use of primary sources is utterly astounding, and somewhat maddening, as the cockney can be a bit hard on the eyes.
Peter Ackroyd's book is told in a very loose chronology. While the 'story' begins with prehistory, and ends in the 80s, not much in this book is linear. He makes London timeless, and turns the city into the icon that it is today. The emphasis of the text is upon how little things have changed, even while London is destroyed and rebuilt cyclically. The essence of the city can be found in the hospitals raised upon the sites of druidic wells, the very wells that the Victorians later claimed had healing capabilities.
The triumph of this text is not in the traditional dates and names of rulers, battles, and the like... rather, the triumph is in the fact that it focuses upon the citizens of the empire. Reading this book, you will learn about the conditions of the jails, what Londoner's favorite pasttimes were, how the role of women changed, and how London assimilates the immigrants. You'll read about how little Cockney has changed from the 1500s, and how London's taste for the theatrical existed before Shakespeare came on the scene.
After reading this book, I feel that I have learned more about London than I have from the World History courses I've taken. Peter Ackroyd has an eye for what's importance, and brings this city of commerce, violence, and theater to life in a way that no one else has.
Smashing book.
September 12, 2018
London: The Biography
قرأت هذا الكتاب العملاق قبل رحلتي الأخيرة والتي زرت فيها لندن وأدنبرة، كتاب مفصل يناسب الباحثين أكثر من القارئ العادي، جاف في تناوله لموضوع حي مثل تاريخ لندن، استسلمت بعد ما قرأت ربع الكتاب.
قرأت هذا الكتاب العملاق قبل رحلتي الأخيرة والتي زرت فيها لندن وأدنبرة، كتاب مفصل يناسب الباحثين أكثر من القارئ العادي، جاف في تناوله لموضوع حي مثل تاريخ لندن، استسلمت بعد ما قرأت ربع الكتاب.
November 13, 2015
This was okay. I love reading about London, quirky interesting facts about places that I know. This had plenty, but also had a LOT of other information about places, people, things...just about everything. The title says it all...'concise'! I found myself flicking through to find bits that I found interesting, but there was still plenty of bits to keep me going!
July 20, 2023
"London: The Biography" by Peter Ackroyd is an exploration of the city that delves deep into the lives and experiences of its people throughout history. Despite the book’s considerable size, this is not the grand and epic history one might expect. Instead, Ackroyd often focuses on the intimate details of Londoners’ existence and their daily lives through time.
This approach appears charming at first. The reader feels like instead of a sky high view of things, they are gently placed upon the ground and time is slowed down as if they are viewing London as a common person who grew up there. But soon, this approach also makes the book quite dense and hard to read as the author hyper focuses on one subject for a long period of time. For example, there is a lengthy chapter on what London “sounds” like and others that go deeply into its smells, or the graffiti you can find in its toilet stalls, or the history of maps made of London, the history of its accents, etc.
The reader can be disoriented from the chapter titles, (which are often quotes and tell you nothing about what’s to come in the succeeding chapter), and also that the book is organized thematically rather than chronologically. You are thrown around vast quantities of time so frequently, it feels a bit chaotic at times and can be hard to follow. The segue ways from one topic to the next are not always the best. And again, the topics that one would think a lot of time would be spent on (the plague, the great fire, etc.) barely get mentioned compared to the far less interesting (and sometimes outright mundane) aforementioned topics above.
It is obvious that the author put a lot of effort and research into this book. But it comes across as more little bits of culture that they personally found interesting all cobbled together, and not the scholarly historical analysis one might expect from such a comprehensive work. One other thing that can be hard for readers, at least it was for me, is the habit of using grand metaphors to describe London. The author views London as a living organism and constantly uses sweeping metaphors that can come across as excessive.
For those interested in the common people and character of London, "London: The Biography" can, at times, offer interesting anecdotes and unique parts of history that you don’t normally hear about. However, readers seeking a more scholarly examination of the city's history may find themselves skipping to the parts that captivate their interest the most or putting down the book for good altogether.
This approach appears charming at first. The reader feels like instead of a sky high view of things, they are gently placed upon the ground and time is slowed down as if they are viewing London as a common person who grew up there. But soon, this approach also makes the book quite dense and hard to read as the author hyper focuses on one subject for a long period of time. For example, there is a lengthy chapter on what London “sounds” like and others that go deeply into its smells, or the graffiti you can find in its toilet stalls, or the history of maps made of London, the history of its accents, etc.
The reader can be disoriented from the chapter titles, (which are often quotes and tell you nothing about what’s to come in the succeeding chapter), and also that the book is organized thematically rather than chronologically. You are thrown around vast quantities of time so frequently, it feels a bit chaotic at times and can be hard to follow. The segue ways from one topic to the next are not always the best. And again, the topics that one would think a lot of time would be spent on (the plague, the great fire, etc.) barely get mentioned compared to the far less interesting (and sometimes outright mundane) aforementioned topics above.
It is obvious that the author put a lot of effort and research into this book. But it comes across as more little bits of culture that they personally found interesting all cobbled together, and not the scholarly historical analysis one might expect from such a comprehensive work. One other thing that can be hard for readers, at least it was for me, is the habit of using grand metaphors to describe London. The author views London as a living organism and constantly uses sweeping metaphors that can come across as excessive.
For those interested in the common people and character of London, "London: The Biography" can, at times, offer interesting anecdotes and unique parts of history that you don’t normally hear about. However, readers seeking a more scholarly examination of the city's history may find themselves skipping to the parts that captivate their interest the most or putting down the book for good altogether.
December 17, 2021
Ah the sweet relief of finally finishing this maddening and amazing book! There are so many great details and ideas in this book. Unfortunately, they are scattered and flung musingly about, organized by what a reader can only charitably assume is the very mixed-up interior of author Peter Ackroyd's mind. Only in the last 30 pages or so does this book settle down and behave in a recognizable way as a history or a biography, presenting facts chronologically and with little editorializing. (Indeed, the last few chapters, focused on London in WWII and thereafter, are so out of character with the rest of the book's meandering, musing ways so as to induce readerly whiplash.) That said, it's a beautiful book and one which provided me great pleasure in its little observations, tales, and trivia. I don't even know if I recommend it, but I'm very pleased to have finally read it and can't wait to one day return to explore London's streets with this book in mind.
March 15, 2016
There's a tremendous amount of research here, and I particularly appreciated Ackroyd's focus on original sources to describe the spirit of London through the ages. I wish it had been organized chronologically, however, instead of thematically, and the discussion never seemed to get much beyond the few hundred years between the late Renaissance and the mid-19th century. I also got a little tired of Ackroyd trotting out London as a metaphor (London is a key, is a prison, is a garden, is a stage, is a maze, etc., etc.); surely the city has some kind of limit as a rhetorical device. While the book did make me excited to live there this summer, it was a little less illuminating than I had hoped it would be.
August 1, 2017
I love London. Although it's not my absolute favourite city, it's the one whose history I'm most fascinated by. I bought this book after my first trip to London back in 2013, and have been very much looking forward to reading it ever since.
To be honest, it was a bit of a letdown. I'm not sure what exactly I was expecting, but this wasn't it. There's no doubt that it's incredibly well-researched and intelligent, but I put the book down feeling very dissatisfied. I wanted to learn more about this amazing city, but I just don't feel like I did. It was certainly very wordy, but it didn't seem to contain a great deal of actual information.
To be honest, it was a bit of a letdown. I'm not sure what exactly I was expecting, but this wasn't it. There's no doubt that it's incredibly well-researched and intelligent, but I put the book down feeling very dissatisfied. I wanted to learn more about this amazing city, but I just don't feel like I did. It was certainly very wordy, but it didn't seem to contain a great deal of actual information.
December 3, 2017
I bought this before we went to London in June.
I wound up reading it more by dipping into it here and there, rather than sequentially.
It's a lot of fun, because it's packed with the history of specific locations.
I wound up reading it more by dipping into it here and there, rather than sequentially.
It's a lot of fun, because it's packed with the history of specific locations.
Read
July 9, 2022Most of the below is negative, so I should make clear that I greatly enjoyed reading London. I learned a vast array of facts which have increased my enjoyment of the city, and would recommend the book to anyone who has spent any length of time here. Having it in your bag as you walk the city, stopping by the river or in churchyards to read how centuries of Londoners have perceived your location, is serene.
Two strengths of Ackroyd's writing stand out. Firstly, London has an ambling, flâneuring structure, and Ackroyd is rightly proud of this. It really does fit the disorderly, organic city. I intend to reread this book, and I suspect that becoming more acquainted with its winding passages, sudden transitions, and overriding emotions will feel much like getting to know London.
Secondly, Ackroyd’s skill with his sources is commendable. Back when I had to write historical essays, I greatly admired historians who could draw from all kinds of source with equal ability. London is not written as an academic book, though it could pass as one with the simple addition of references. (Goodness knows that it’s no more fanciful than the average twenty-first-century history paper.) However, all historians can learn from his sourcemanship. He blends statistics with travellers’ diaries with archaeological findings with academic papers with literature with natural history with oral history with personal experience and even with the formidable Pipe rolls. Ackroyd is a literary man, and London is weighted towards literary sources. That’s fine, though, because he links them so deftly to the other material. Besides, a literary history is bound to provide the largest quantity of literary pleasure.
As an aside, I’m surprised that urban history is not more mainstream. The pleasure of knowing who walked then where you walk now is simple but immense. The legwork required to justify studying it seems less complicated than for most history.
However. Most of the literary pleasure in the book comes not from Ackroyd, but from the writers he quotes. Ackroyd’s own passion for London is expressed every other paragraph in vague, clichéd, and ridiculous terms. Take a shot every time he says ‘as x as the city itself’, or ‘just like London’, or ‘it is perhaps unsurprising that this appeals to Londoners’, or every time he tosses underhand some new adjective onto the pile of those comprising the quintessential ‘London nature’. Finish your drink if that adjective contradicts another on the pile: Londoners are fearless and foul-mannered on one page, cowardly and charming on another. As Prince Herman said of the docks out east, a player of such a drinking game would harbour ‘rum enough to make half England drunk’.
What Ackroyd has to say about that ‘London nature’ didn’t click either. I am a Londoner. Excepting some short, frivolous breaks for undergraduate studies, I have lived in London all my life. I know parts of the suburbs so intimately I can’t stand them. I’m hot on street names in the centre and don’t need maps. I know chunks of the tube from memory. I hope to move out East this month, in significant part because of the history and architecture. My parents and I enjoy testing each other on niche points of London navigation (‘If you go south along Southampton Row, then… … … Where are you now?’). And yet, when reading about the quintessential Londoner, I may as well have been reading about the quintessential Hong Konger or porteño or Bavarian. I felt entertained and charmed, but I did not feel described. I have no problem with literary generalisation. I simply think that the desperately erudite Ackroyd had his head stuck in the sixteenth century, when the city was unrecognisably bloody and expressive. Occasionally, he shows awareness that times have changed. He remarks that even a Victorian would be shocked at the repressed solipsism of returning commuters in London crowds.
It could also be that I and those I grew up around are London frauds, but I won’t readily accept that.
It appears that no beleaguered editor could restrain Ackroyd from veering off into histrionic flattery of London. I will take a representative paragraph, picked from a random page (436). It’s a discussion of London fog, within the nature chapter. It begins with the charming detail that Monet made his trip to London, where he stayed for two years, to paint the fog. There follows a lovely quote from Monet: ‘Those massive, regular blocks become grandiose within that mysterious cloak’. Next is another nice soundbite, from a conversation between Blanchard Jerrold and Gustave Doré. After this, over half the paragraph is still to run, but Ackroyd commences his flimsy, noncommittal explication. The fog is ‘a token, or revelation, of mystery’; London has ‘splendour and awfulness’ (oh does it now?); and in Monet, London’s ‘shrouded immensity is instinct with light. It is prodigious.’ Ackroyd is reliably a worse describer than whomever he is quoting. He says too much and embarrasses himself before his crush.
This paragraph also demonstrates Ackroyd’s superstitious obsession with London’s continuity. This is his pet crime, of which his attitude to the ‘London nature’ is one instance. According to this paragraph, Monet ‘is trying to capture the essential spirit of the place beyond particular epochs or phases’, and London ‘represents some primeval and primitive force which has lingered over the centuries’. I have no truck with accounts wherein this is the impression received of London. I often receive that impression myself. Ackroyd, though, seems really to believe that people are shaped by eldritch forces tied to particular locations. He overuses tacky words like ‘atavistic’ and ‘echoic’ to describe these forces. Whether or not the reader finds this absurd, though, the tenacity with which Ackroyd drags everything back to this theme is self-defeating. It straitjackets his material into a drab structure. It makes the whole thing less rambling and random and continuous—to coin a phrase, less like London.
It is easy for a learned Londoner to overemphasise the visibility of London’s history. After all, that wonderful history will inform their impressions of every corner of the city. But one would think from the way Ackroyd writes about ancient streets like Cheapside, Cornhill, Ludgate Hill, etc, that they were dotted with ancient hovels open to the sky (and I confess to being nonplussed about the supposedly wondrous London skies), out of which might pounce cutpurses, ghosts, or rowdy thesps in ruffs. The City’s post-WWII revival was amazingly tactful, and there is much history on show. However, most of it is visible only to the mind’s eye. Millennia of slums, shops, and churches, of filth, crime, and clamour, have truly disappeared, beneath flat tarmac cleaned as scrupulously as it is in Zurich.
In practice, it is very easy to skim over Ackroyd’s schtick and have a tremendous experience with London. When I couldn’t avoid it, though, I felt real discomfort.
Some of the passages Ackroyd quotes are also excitable. That’s permissible, though, because they’re so enjoyable and because they don’t purport to be history. Great poets of the natural world write poems more beautiful than the nature they describe. The same is true of novelistic descriptions of faces, or daily routines, or battles. Such is great literature. London is its intoxicating best as an unobtrusive anthology of great literature. It is its exasperating worst when Ackroyd is jostling for a place in the anthology.
Two strengths of Ackroyd's writing stand out. Firstly, London has an ambling, flâneuring structure, and Ackroyd is rightly proud of this. It really does fit the disorderly, organic city. I intend to reread this book, and I suspect that becoming more acquainted with its winding passages, sudden transitions, and overriding emotions will feel much like getting to know London.
Secondly, Ackroyd’s skill with his sources is commendable. Back when I had to write historical essays, I greatly admired historians who could draw from all kinds of source with equal ability. London is not written as an academic book, though it could pass as one with the simple addition of references. (Goodness knows that it’s no more fanciful than the average twenty-first-century history paper.) However, all historians can learn from his sourcemanship. He blends statistics with travellers’ diaries with archaeological findings with academic papers with literature with natural history with oral history with personal experience and even with the formidable Pipe rolls. Ackroyd is a literary man, and London is weighted towards literary sources. That’s fine, though, because he links them so deftly to the other material. Besides, a literary history is bound to provide the largest quantity of literary pleasure.
As an aside, I’m surprised that urban history is not more mainstream. The pleasure of knowing who walked then where you walk now is simple but immense. The legwork required to justify studying it seems less complicated than for most history.
However. Most of the literary pleasure in the book comes not from Ackroyd, but from the writers he quotes. Ackroyd’s own passion for London is expressed every other paragraph in vague, clichéd, and ridiculous terms. Take a shot every time he says ‘as x as the city itself’, or ‘just like London’, or ‘it is perhaps unsurprising that this appeals to Londoners’, or every time he tosses underhand some new adjective onto the pile of those comprising the quintessential ‘London nature’. Finish your drink if that adjective contradicts another on the pile: Londoners are fearless and foul-mannered on one page, cowardly and charming on another. As Prince Herman said of the docks out east, a player of such a drinking game would harbour ‘rum enough to make half England drunk’.
What Ackroyd has to say about that ‘London nature’ didn’t click either. I am a Londoner. Excepting some short, frivolous breaks for undergraduate studies, I have lived in London all my life. I know parts of the suburbs so intimately I can’t stand them. I’m hot on street names in the centre and don’t need maps. I know chunks of the tube from memory. I hope to move out East this month, in significant part because of the history and architecture. My parents and I enjoy testing each other on niche points of London navigation (‘If you go south along Southampton Row, then… … … Where are you now?’). And yet, when reading about the quintessential Londoner, I may as well have been reading about the quintessential Hong Konger or porteño or Bavarian. I felt entertained and charmed, but I did not feel described. I have no problem with literary generalisation. I simply think that the desperately erudite Ackroyd had his head stuck in the sixteenth century, when the city was unrecognisably bloody and expressive. Occasionally, he shows awareness that times have changed. He remarks that even a Victorian would be shocked at the repressed solipsism of returning commuters in London crowds.
It could also be that I and those I grew up around are London frauds, but I won’t readily accept that.
It appears that no beleaguered editor could restrain Ackroyd from veering off into histrionic flattery of London. I will take a representative paragraph, picked from a random page (436). It’s a discussion of London fog, within the nature chapter. It begins with the charming detail that Monet made his trip to London, where he stayed for two years, to paint the fog. There follows a lovely quote from Monet: ‘Those massive, regular blocks become grandiose within that mysterious cloak’. Next is another nice soundbite, from a conversation between Blanchard Jerrold and Gustave Doré. After this, over half the paragraph is still to run, but Ackroyd commences his flimsy, noncommittal explication. The fog is ‘a token, or revelation, of mystery’; London has ‘splendour and awfulness’ (oh does it now?); and in Monet, London’s ‘shrouded immensity is instinct with light. It is prodigious.’ Ackroyd is reliably a worse describer than whomever he is quoting. He says too much and embarrasses himself before his crush.
This paragraph also demonstrates Ackroyd’s superstitious obsession with London’s continuity. This is his pet crime, of which his attitude to the ‘London nature’ is one instance. According to this paragraph, Monet ‘is trying to capture the essential spirit of the place beyond particular epochs or phases’, and London ‘represents some primeval and primitive force which has lingered over the centuries’. I have no truck with accounts wherein this is the impression received of London. I often receive that impression myself. Ackroyd, though, seems really to believe that people are shaped by eldritch forces tied to particular locations. He overuses tacky words like ‘atavistic’ and ‘echoic’ to describe these forces. Whether or not the reader finds this absurd, though, the tenacity with which Ackroyd drags everything back to this theme is self-defeating. It straitjackets his material into a drab structure. It makes the whole thing less rambling and random and continuous—to coin a phrase, less like London.
It is easy for a learned Londoner to overemphasise the visibility of London’s history. After all, that wonderful history will inform their impressions of every corner of the city. But one would think from the way Ackroyd writes about ancient streets like Cheapside, Cornhill, Ludgate Hill, etc, that they were dotted with ancient hovels open to the sky (and I confess to being nonplussed about the supposedly wondrous London skies), out of which might pounce cutpurses, ghosts, or rowdy thesps in ruffs. The City’s post-WWII revival was amazingly tactful, and there is much history on show. However, most of it is visible only to the mind’s eye. Millennia of slums, shops, and churches, of filth, crime, and clamour, have truly disappeared, beneath flat tarmac cleaned as scrupulously as it is in Zurich.
In practice, it is very easy to skim over Ackroyd’s schtick and have a tremendous experience with London. When I couldn’t avoid it, though, I felt real discomfort.
Some of the passages Ackroyd quotes are also excitable. That’s permissible, though, because they’re so enjoyable and because they don’t purport to be history. Great poets of the natural world write poems more beautiful than the nature they describe. The same is true of novelistic descriptions of faces, or daily routines, or battles. Such is great literature. London is its intoxicating best as an unobtrusive anthology of great literature. It is its exasperating worst when Ackroyd is jostling for a place in the anthology.
June 23, 2019
I loved this, and I am slightly surprised I did, for two reasons: I am usually no great fan of thematic history (I recently posted a review here of a book on ancient Egypt which I criticised for its non-linear approach), and I am usually no great fan of London. Ackroyd had me beguiled and persuaded, though. The thematic structure works brilliantly because Ackroyd – a master wordsmith as well as a master of his subject – is adept at sculpting a beautiful and many-sided narrative. For me, London is generally a place of fear, horror and dislike – when I visit friends in Hampstead, I feel like Frodo climbing the steps of Cirith Ungol when the lift brings me up from the bowels of the Piccadilly Line to the surface at Hampstead Tube Station. And yet, I find it fascinating...I cannot love it in the same way that Ackroyd clearly does. Cobbett saw it as “the Great Wen” - a huge pustular carbuncle on the arse of humanity. Ackroyd confronts the horror – and there is plenty of that – and yet he loves it still. I take off my hat to him, and even if I stand alongside Cobbett when all is said and done, I bow before Ackroyd for his masterful prose and his deep and impressive knowledge and affection for his subject. Anyone who loves London – and anyone who hates it – will profit from and enjoy this book – if they have the stamina to read it to the end.
December 6, 2020
Me ha gustado muchísimo, pero no sé si lo recomendaría a alguien que no esté tan obsesionado con Londres como lo estoy yo. Es un libro extensísimo, se me ha hecho algo pesado por momentos, pero es indudable que es una monografía sobre Londres que toca absolutamente todos los temas posibles.
January 12, 2024
London: The Biography is definitely an apt name for this impressive, meticulously researched work by Peter Acrkoyd: while reading it, it truly felt like I was learning about a living thing.
I expected Ackroyd to follow a chronological order, but instead the book is organized by topics, with each chapter dedicated to a specific theme, aspect or characteristic of London. At first I was a little surprised by this, but in the end I think it worked really well. It was almost like reading different essays all related to London.
While it was a little dense at times, and while I wasn't equally interested in all the chapters, it was overall a very informative, fascinating read, which I would recommend to people who love London like myself.
Some of my favourite chapters were:
- ch. 20, Newgate prison;
- ch. 28, London cafés;
- ch. 29, London markets;
- ch. 37, gardens, trees, animals and so on;
- ch. 39, the infamous London fog;
- ch. 56, London women.
I expected Ackroyd to follow a chronological order, but instead the book is organized by topics, with each chapter dedicated to a specific theme, aspect or characteristic of London. At first I was a little surprised by this, but in the end I think it worked really well. It was almost like reading different essays all related to London.
While it was a little dense at times, and while I wasn't equally interested in all the chapters, it was overall a very informative, fascinating read, which I would recommend to people who love London like myself.
Some of my favourite chapters were:
- ch. 20, Newgate prison;
- ch. 28, London cafés;
- ch. 29, London markets;
- ch. 37, gardens, trees, animals and so on;
- ch. 39, the infamous London fog;
- ch. 56, London women.
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