London: The Biography PDF
Preview London: The Biography
Acclaim for Peter Ackroyd’s London: The Biography “The book requires a leisurely pace; anything quicker would endanger the pleasure to be had from the variety on offer…. There is nothing quite like it.” —The Boston Globe “Ackroyd gives London a gift, the likes of which more callow cities can only hope, one day, to get.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Invariably exciting and immensely enjoyable…. Ackroyd coruscates with ideas and fancies…. The total effect is spectacular and vastly stimulating. ‘When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.’ The same could be said with equal justice of any reader who finds no pleasure or instruction in Ackroyd’s books.” —The Spectator “Ackroyd writes in a wonderfully graphic style that carries the reader through historical byways effortlessly.” —The Denver Post “A tour de force by a writer of immense skill…. A treasure of information and anecdote about one of the world’s great cities, a book to be taken up again and again for the pleasures that lie within.” —The Seattle Times “Ackroyd deserves great praise for writing a book equal to its gargantuan subject…. [It] succeeds on the most expansive and most intimate levels.” — The Orlando Sentinel “Packed with strange delights and bizarre occurrences…. Ackroyd is a writer of memorable, eccentrically rhythmic sentences that one wants to quote at length.” —Newsday “Enthralling…. Witty and imaginative.” —Publishers Weekly (starred) “Wonderful and weighty…. Ackroyd has created a rich celebration of a unique city.” —The Wall Street Journal B y the same author FICTION The Great Fire of London The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde Hawksmoor Chatterton First Light English Music The House of Doctor Dee Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem Milton in America The Plato Papers BIOGRAPHY T. S. Eliot Dickens Blake The Life of Thomas More POETRY The Diversions of Purley CRITICISM Notes for a New Culture Peter Ackroyd London Peter Ackroyd is a bestselling writer of both fiction and nonfiction. His most recent books include the biographies Dickens, Blake, and Thomas More and the novels The Trial of Elizabeth Cree, Milton in America, and The Plato Papers. He has won the Whitbread Biography Award, the Royal Society of Literature’s William Heinemann Award (jointly), the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and The Guardian fiction prize. He lives in London. For Jain Johnston and Frederick Nicholas Robertson Contents List of Illustrations Chronology Acknowledgements The City as Body From Prehistory to 1066 1 The Sea! 2 The Stones 3 Holy! Holy! Holy! The Early Middle Ages 4 You Be All Law Worthy London Contrasts 5 Loud and Everlasting 6 Silence Is Golden The Late Medieval City 7 This Companye Onward and Upward 8 Rather Dark and Narrow 9 Packed to Blackness 10 Maps and Antiquarians Trading Streets and Trading Parishes 11 Where Is the Cheese of Thames Street? A London Neighbourhood 12 The Crossroads London as Theatre 13 Show! Show! Show! Show! Show! 14 He Shuld Neuer Trobell the Parish No More 15 Theatrical City 16 Violent Delights 17 Music, Please 18 Signs of the Times 19 All of Them Citizens Pestilence and Flame 20 A Plague Upon You 21 Painting the Town Red After the Fire 22 A London Address 23 To Build Anew Crime and Punishment 24 A Newgate Ballad 25 A Note on Suicide 26 A Penitential History 27 A Rogues Gallery 28 Horrible Murder 29 London’s Opera 30 Raw Lobsters and Others 31 Thereby Hangs a Tale Voracious London 32 Into the Vortex 33 A Cookery Lesson 34 Eat In or Take Away 35 Market Time 36 Waste Matter 37 A Little Drink or Two 38 Clubbing 39 A Note on Tobacco 40 A Bad Odour 41 You Sexy Thing 42 A Turn of the Dice London as Crowd 43 Mobocracy 44 What’s New? The Natural History of London 45 Give the Lydy a Flower 46 Weather Reports 47 A Foggy Day Night and Day 48 Let There Be Light 49 Night in the City 50 A City Morning
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