London: The Concise Biography (Paperback)

Peter Ackroyd (author)

£15.99

Paperback 688 Pages / Published: 12/04/2012

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Synopsis Author

An abridged edition of Peter Ackroyd's magisterial biography of the city of London. Prize-winning historian, novelist and broadcaster, Peter Ackroyd takes us on a journey - historical, geographical and imaginative - through the city of London. Moving back and forth through time, Ackroyd is an effortless, exuberant guide to times of plague and pestilence, fire and floods, crime and punishment, and sex and theatre. He brings the ever changing streets alive for the reader and shows us what lies beneath our feet and above our heads. His biography is as rich in detail and fizzing with vitality as the city itself.

Publisher: Vintage Publishing
ISBN: 9780099570387
Number of pages: 688
Weight: 562 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 43 mm

MEDIA REVIEWS

"Peter Ackroyd is the greatest living chronicler of London" * Independent *
"Peter Ackroyd was born to write the biography of London...a brilliant book" * Sunday Telegraph *
"It would be no exaggeration to say that Peter Ackroyd's 'biography' of our captial is the book about London" -- A N Wilson * Daily Mail *
"You will not find a better, more visionary book about a place we take for granted" * Observer *
"[London] may be several years old but it remains one of the leading narratives as he cleverly weaves through centuries of history to reveal to us the hundreds of different cities within a city." -- Fiona Hamilton * The Times *

Peter Ackroyd

Equally praised for his formally experimental fiction, his inventive biographies and his ambitious histories (particularly of his home and birthplace of London), Peter Ackroyd is arguably one of the greatest writers of his generation. With a particular partiality for Victorian and Gothic influences, his most famous novels include: Hawksmoor, Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem, The English Ghost and his own re-telling of The Canterbury Tales and The Death of King Arthur. His non-fiction ranges widely, encompassing: London the Biography, London the Concise Biography, London Under, Thames: Sacred River, Venice: Pure City, a multi-volume history of London (Foundation, Tudors, Civil War, Revolution) and Queer City as well as biographies of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Blake, Charlie Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock.