Peter aykroyd london biography of william

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.

Peter Ackroyd sees London as a living, breathing organism, with its own laws of growth and change.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK Here are two thousand years of London's history and folklore, its chroniclers and criminals and plain citizens.

He takes us through Shakespeare's London neighborhood and the fertile, competitive theater world where he worked as actor and writer.

This talk leads to questions about the heart attack Ackroyd had in 1999, a couple of days after he completed his mammoth biography of London; he.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK Here are two thousand years of London's history and folklore, its chroniclers and criminals and plain citizens....

London: The Biography

2000 book by Peter Ackroyd

London: The Biography is a 2000 non-fiction book by Peter Ackroyd published by Chatto & Windus.

Content

Ackroyd's work, following his previous work on London in one form or another, is a history of the city. It is chronologically wide in scope, proceeding from the period of the Upper Jurassic through to the period of the Druids and on to the 21st century.

Although it does have a broadly chronological aspect to its structuring, the work is organised in a thematic fashion, particularly from the late medieval period to the end of the 19th century where the approach taken is one that eschews a linear time-based narrative and instead focuses upon the organisation of the material on the basis of themes.^[1] There are sections and digressions on everything from the history of silence in relation to the city, the history of light, childhood, ghosts, prostitution, Cockney speech, graffiti, the weather, murder, suici