Kurzbeschreibung

A masterpiece: London: A Biography is the culmination and distillation of Peter Ackroyd's lifelong obsession with the history and topography of London. Vividly anecdotal and brilliantly original.

Beschreibung

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

London is perhaps the most important study of the city ever written, and confirms Ackroyd's status as what one critic has called 'our age's greatest London imagination.'

Klappentext

Paperback of this exhaustive and minutely researched biography of the city of London, which has been hailed by various critics as "the" book on the city. A vivid and anecdotal overview which takes from the time of the Druids to the turn of the millennium, and which looks at subjects such as childhood, suicide, Cockney sppech and drinking, in relation to London's history. "Nothing can quite match the huge strange echo chamber of life-stories, folktales, and urban myths conjured up in Peter Ackroyd's epic vision of his native city" "Daily Telegraph".