London: A Biography by Peter Ackroyd (PDF)

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A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOKHere are two thousand years of London’s history and folklore, its chroniclers and criminals and plain citizens, its food and drink and countless pleasures. Blackfriar’s and Charing Cross, Paddington and Bedlam. Westminster Abbey and St. Martin in the Fields. Cockneys and vagrants. Immigrants, peasants, and punks. The Plague, the Great Fire, the Blitz. London at all times of day and night, and in all kinds of weather. In well-chosen anecdotes, keen observations, and the words of hundreds of its citizens and visitors, Ackroyd reveals the ingenuity and grit and vitality of London. Through a unique thematic tour of the physical city and its inimitable soul, the city comes alive.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I’ve read a number of histories of London, but this was the most entertaining and revealing. The author demonstrates his encyclopedic knowledge of every stone and brick in the metropolis over two millennia, but doesn’t present their stories in a dry, chronological fashion. It’s more like strolling through a {massive) museum with hundreds of separate galleries and exhibits. Each chapter takes one discrete element of the city: a street corner, a tree, a trade, an industry, a church or institution, a fashion, a form of amusement, etc., and explores its development over the centuries and relationship to the other elements. In the end, we are left with solid evidence of the author’s main thesis, which is that while the city grew and changed immensely over the centuries, its past is alive and well in everything from street names, land use patterns, language and accents, and recurring patterns of urban life.

⭐London: A Biography is not a biography in the usual sense of the term. True, Ackroyd is an excellent writer who is adept at weaving together bits of archeology with a historical note and a dollop of quotes from a novelist. I did enjoy the book, but it was not what I expected.As a Londoner, I hoped to discover new insights into the nether regions of the past and present. That hope was realised. In fact, I am looking for some of the books Ackroyd mentioned in his closing essay.I suppose any biographer has to pick and choose among the events in a long life that tell an interesting story. The author has chosen well. Would I have chosen differently? Yes. I would like more about science and history with fewer quotations from literary sources. I read about so many churches, but I did not learn much about the interaction of the people with their churches. I read about a few royals and captains of industry, but most of the time I was reading about those who struggled to survive. I almost expected to see family names when he took us down dour lanes for a dip in the cloudy culture of those hamlets south of the Thames.

⭐How can one read a book of almost 800 pages in the midst of a busy life? This question is daunting to many readers.As a Londoner permanently fascinated by my birthplace I started this immense read by dipping into aspects that first interested me, because the contents are conveniently arranged by subject area (theatre, architecture, etc.). Then I expanded my interests until, finally, I had read it all–at least at a superficial level. Only repeated readings will enable the reader to assimilate it as part of an individual intellectual landscape and memory. This is a veritable ‘groaning board’ of data.Peter Ackroyd’s scholarship is meticulous and results in a work of dense information matched by high levels of entertainment–he is an excellent writer. However well one might know individual aspects of London, there are constant surprises and insights that engage the curious reader.This is not a tourist guide book, quite unlike the various ‘London walks’ offerings that are frequently delightful and helpful, but is the Ackroyd’s attempt to explain the mystery of London over the centuries. It is a tribute to the immense effort he put into this work that it works well at many levels. His ‘Essay on Sources’ with which he closes the book is itself a mine of information and will send many readers scurrying to the bookshelf or library for further exploration.For anyone with a love of London, this is essential reading.

⭐A very idiosyncratic stroll through the history of London. It’s not a standard history book, more vignettes of various topics related to the city. It’s perfect book for bedside reading. Not a page turner that you can’t put down, more like a leisurely stroll with an interesting friend with a conversation that ranges all around London. The writing is very good, and I find myself repeatedly amazed at how the author was able to organize and present such a plethora of relatively unrelated information in such a cogent manner.

⭐A “biography” is the story of a life, usually told more or less in chronological order. Peter Ackroyd’s London, however, is really a series of interconnected essays on London: on food, on drink, on the weather, on fog, on darkness, on streetlights, etc. Too many of these essays take the form of a set of quotes, each followed by a sentence or two of explication, rather than brief narratives. Ackroyd has found some great quotes, and some fascinating facts, and does a superb job evoking the feeling of the city at different times and in different aspects. When he does tell a story, such as the story of the Gordon riots, he tells it well. I was left looking for more story, and fewer quotes.

⭐The book is written more as an emotional story of the city than a historical document. The author keeps the reader engaged with the various themes that London has had throughout its history. Entertaining and insightful.

⭐”London, the Biography” by Peter Ackroyd differs from “London: The Autobiography” (by Lewis) in that the latter is a collection of writings about London by time period. In Ackroyd’s Biography of London, the chapters are arranged by time period, with historical information, maps, drawings, and some quotations. Ackroyd’s book is a treasure trove for the tourist visiting London’s neighborhoods and monuments. The book is also very helpful with research into particular periods, offering innumberable examples and quotations from the locals. It is easier to find the odd and astounding fact in Ackroyd’s book. I liked both books equally well, but have found Ackroyd’s easier and more fully developed for research into this amazing, historic city.

⭐Recently was re-reading William Gibson’s “Distrust That Particular Flavor” (2012) and was taken with his recommendation of this book. What a great thing for him to have suggested it. We Americans often forget that the world existed before our ‘exceptional’ country and that London has existed in one form or another for 3,000 years and more, as shown by the layers of past versions of the city when digs occur in building or archeology. Simply an amazing read.

⭐This book is a survey work rather than a narrative. The thematic approach works very well. Ackroyd is a master of style and the book is very readable, absorbing and entertaining.However, his sources are often quite vague and in some cases he plunges into total and hopeless messes with material he neither understands or knows about. He might cite another work but there are usually no notes that would tell you exactly which page or section it comes from. Sometimes (often in fact) he does not tell you where his information came from. As a serious work of reference the book is in that regard therefore useless. Quite a lot of the citations of sources are so woolly it would be impossible to chase them up anyway. On p. 37 he refers to a ‘hoard of several thousand coins’ of the Norman Invasion period ‘found by the Walbrook’. Key to understanding this would be the date of the latest coin and the monarchs included. Ackroyd omits all that, and provides no further detail. One has the impression he has found the hoard in a secondary work and not bothered either to identify it or chase it up to establish its true relevance.On p. 259 is a very good example of an ambiguous and hopelessly muddled reference that leaves one with the impression that Ackroyd is confused and completely out of his depth with basic history. While talking about the bankers Child and Hoare, Ackroyd says ‘As Edward, earl of Clarendon put it in his autobiography of 1759 …’ If you were none the wiser you would obviously assume Ackroyd was referring to the mid-18th century. This is in fact Edward Hyde, Charles II’s Lord High Chancellor and the first Earl of Clarendon who lived 1609-74. His autobiography was published posthumously in 1759, almost a century after he wrote it. Ackroyd isn’t exactly wrong here but the way he has written the text is not only confusing but avoids making it clear when or who exactly he is writing about. Clarendon isn’t referred to anywhere else in the book so unless you know who he is, you will have no idea why Ackroyd has brought him in or why he is an authority of any validity. It’s not clear whether Ackroyd assumes the reader knows who Clarendon was and when he lived or whether he doesn’t know himself. As it turns out he indeed appears to have no idea at all who Clarendon was.Puzzled, I found the index reference which mysteriously says ‘Clarendon, Edward Hyde, 5th Earl of 259’. At this stage I began to realise just how confused Mr Ackroyd is. The 5th earl was also called Edward Hyde but he lived from 1846 to 1914 so he would have had a problem publishing an autobiography in 1759, 87 years before he was born. Ackroyd has therefore confused two earls of Clarendon and appears know nothing about either of them. It gets worse.In any case it seems strange to to give the posthumous publication date of 1759 as the only date in this passage when in reality the first earl of Clarendon was writing about his own time in the mid-17th century. Ackroyd clearly states that the quote he has provided was Clarendon talking about the bankers Francis Child and Richard Hoare. I looked Clarendon’s 1759 posthumous autobiography up – he makes no reference to either of these men and instead only refers to a half dozen or so goldsmiths of great repute.Further searching suggested that Ackroyd is the only source of this association of the quote and the specific named bankers, apart from a later book by AN Wilson which seems to have been ‘inspired’ by Ackroyd. This is hardly surprising since Child and Hoare’s banking days really came after Clarendon’s death. To have included them Clarendon would have had to spot and anticipate their prominence in the last year or so before he died. Indeed, Child’s goldsmith business only became a bank after his death in 1713. Ackroyd’s text bears all the hallmarks of something taken from a secondary source in a half-baked and mixed-up fashion by someone without the faintest idea of what he has read. Had Ackroyd even the faintest and basic knowledge of the period he could neither have written this passage in the way he has nor install the totally irrelevant 5th earl in the index. It’s such an egregious and clumsy mess it’s impossible not to wonder how many other examples there are in the book. More incredible is the fact that his exalted reviewers who heaped plaudits on the book have been so uncritical in their reading of the book that they haven’t noticed.On p. 373, chapter 34 opens with this statement which is a rare instance of a source being cited in an apparently knowledgeable and detailed way: ‘A foggy day. Tacitus mentions it [fog] in his account of Caesar’s invasion’. No reference. This comes from Tacitus, Agricola 12.3 where the Latin reads ‘caelum crebris imbribus ac nebulis foedum’ which literally means ‘the sky is made foul by frequent rains and cloud’. Nebulis (clouds) can also mean fog but the context of rain makes cloud more likely – Britain’s prevailing south-westerly winds which bring most of the rain are not a source of fog which arises in more static conditions. The reference is not in connection with Caesar’s invasion but a more general description of Britain that Tacitus derived from other sources. It certainly isn’t specifically to do with London. Tacitus does cover Caesar’s invasions but only in a single sentence in a later passage. Caesar was not affected by fog and does not refer to it in his own account of his invasions. Ackroyd is not exactly wrong here but one can see how his colourful style has manipulated his source material. It is difficult to be convinced he has actually consulted them directly.The only Roman invasion of Britain in which fog specifically played a part was in 296 when the praetorian prefect Asclepiodotus used fog in the Solent to hide his fleet during the campaign to unseat the usurper Allectus. This is of course unmentioned.I was intrigued by the plate depicting ‘Moll Cut-Purse’. Rather uselessly she is not indexed. Her real name was Mary Frith, referred to on p. 527 where her pseudonym is given as Moll Cutpurse (sic), confounding my initial efforts to search the Amazon preview text for Cut-Purse. Frith is indexed but odd therefore that Cut-Purse/Cutpurse isn’t indexed other than under Frith who goes unmentioned in the plate caption. Ackroyd quotes Mary Frith but as so often gives no hint of where he got the quote from.The index has other inaccuracies. The murderer Christie is indexed at p. 520. He is in fact mentioned on pp. 224-5. That was only the third or fourth entry I looked up. I find it hard to believe I was so unlucky as to find the only mistake so quickly. I imagine there are others.P. 531 shows Whistler’s etching of Billingsgate. It’s true that this is Whistler’s title but I’m surprised Ackyrod hasn’t pointed out that the picture was created looking east towards London Bridge from Blackfriars, nowhere near Billingsgate. Whistler included St Paul Benet’s Wharf which is close to Blackfriars, but rotated the building 90 degrees to have the tower overlooking the wharf. In short the view is both inaccurate and patently from Blackfriars. Billingsgate is beyond London Bridge to the east and out of sight.On p. 553 Ackroyd’s indifference to checking or researching his sources is shown by his vague claim that a turf and timber wall stretched from London all the way to Bradwell on the Essex coast (a considerable distance) where there was a ‘Roman fortress’. We are left none the wiser about where he found his information about a turf and timber ‘wall’. He adds his ‘proof’ in the form of a ‘later chapel’ called St Peter-on-the-Wall’ at Bradwell. Ackroyd did nothing to research this and was content to make a couple of loose associations apparently of his own invention. He cites no basis whatsoever for the earth and timber wall other than to say ‘evidence’ for it was found in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and implies it predated the Roman period. The ‘Roman fortress’ at Bradwell is in fact a late Roman fortified compound in the Saxon Shore fort series built in the 3rd century AD and was called Othona. It is thus about 1700 years old and not 2000 as Ackroyd claims. The fort at Bradwell was matched across the Thames Estuary by another fort at Reculver (which Ackroyd does not mention), the two overseeing the maritime approach to London. The ‘later chapel’ was a 7th century Saxon church built over the west wall of the then obsolete fort at Bradwell (and was built out of the ruins), hence its name ‘on the Wall’ – and nothing to do with any spurious and nebulous ‘wall’ stretching from London, evidence for which you will search fruitlessly. I have certainly never heard of any such thing. Ackroyd grandly claims that ‘other antiquarians’ (unnamed) have found other chapels on this ‘wall’ but cites not a single one. It would be fascinating to find out where he obtained this information but I have drawn a complete blank so far.On p. 610 he tells us only 10 percent of Roman London’s population lived after the age of 45. No evidence cited as usual. It’s a ridiculous claim apart from the fact that we all know only a small proportion of people lived into old age in earlier times. No Roman cemetery from London has ever been excavated. The evidence is limited to scattered individual inhumation graves of the 3rd and 4th centuries, and tombstones – most of which are of soldiers attached to the governor’s garrison and few are complete enough to tell us the age at death. In other words there is no specific basis on from Roman London which to make such a judgement. Let’s not forget that the cemeteries of Roman London were largely outside the city, as was usual Roman practice, and completely inaccessible other than occasionally explorations on building sites.On p. 604 he tells us a ‘a section of the Roman Wall’ was uncovered by the bombing of Cripplegate. The wall section uncovered was in fact the south-west wall of the Roman garrison fort at Cripplegate, which was incorporated into the later Roman wall circuit. Ackroyd seems to know nothing about that though he mentions the fort on p. 20 and makes no connection.On p. 22 we are informed that the existence of a temple of Mithras and its mystery cult of initiation by the mid-3rd century presaged ‘a more disturbed and anxious city’. He seems totally unaware that Mithras worship was common by that date in port cities and forts and not somehow evidence of an exclusive problem in London. The one legible inscription from the London Mithraeum associates it with the army. Mithraism was paralleled also by the growth of other mystery cults, mainly that of Christianity and Isis. There was an Iseum in London in the late 1st century AD and restored in the 3rd century (breezily passed over without further comment by Ackroyd on p. 21) whose cult was an optimistic saviour religion.On p. 27 Ackroyd tells us that the Norse commander Halfdere issued coins based ‘interestingly’ on Roman originals. There was nothing special about that. Many Saxon and Viking coins were derived from Roman originals.On p. 143 we re told that evidence for a Roman theatre south-west of St Paul’s is ‘now very clear’. Typically vague, and no the ‘evidence’ isn’t very clear. The topography makes this the most likely location and that is generally accepted but no conclusive structural remains have yet been found. Again, you will search in vain for any substantiation of Ackroyd’s claim. On p. 20 we are informed that a Roman ‘racing arena’ (ie. a stadium) was sited just south of St Paul’s as if it was an attested fact. This is a ludicrous proposition with which he makes an absurd link to Knightrider St. Only one such stadium is known in Britain, at Colchester and it was way outside the settled area because of its size. Where Ackroyd found his ‘information’ about London’s so-called Roman stadium is of course absent from the book. Oddly, the amphitheatre which actually has been found (and is on display) is mentioned without further comment. Ackroyd seems to be quite unable to distinguish between places or buildings for which actual physical evidence has been found and those he has found some fleeting speculative comment about.The diarists Pepys and Evelyn are quoted several times. He never gives the date of the entry he is citing and the same goes for many other, if not virtually all, documentsThere are odd omissions. One might have imagined the Jack Cade Rebellion of 1450 which included a serious battle on London Bridge would have been mentioned, however fleetingly, but it isn’t. Samuel Johnson’s house in Gough Square is preserved and open to the public and is one of the last extant Georgian houses in its original form in London. Unmentioned even though Johnson is mentioned several times and odd given the number of buildings Ackroyd is prepared to mention for which little or no evidence exists. The new London Bridge of 1831, replacing the old medieval bridge, seems to go without comment even though Ackroyd’s book is filled with references to the period in which John Rennie’s new structure was in use (Rennie is not mentioned). Given the massive significance of London Bridge, this is quite remarkable. St Magnus the Martyr, which still stands, had a passageway onto old London Bridge through its tower. You can still walk through it. Unmentioned. Much the same applies to Wren’s other celebrated post-Fire churches which receive scant mention, if mentioned at all. Given their massive importance as some of the few older buildings still extant in London, this is genuinely odd. The curiosity of St Mary Aldermanbury, its ruins dismantled and transported to Fulton, Missouri, after the War where it has been reconstructed is an exceptional instance of the fate of one of London’s monuments, as of course is the transportation of Rennie’s London Bridge to Lake Havasu City in Arizona. Surely these examples are intriguing and unique parts of London’s remarkable biography? Why have these been omitted when Ackroyd has found room for some of his fanciful inventions?I could cite many others. I know this is the concise edition but the same shortcomings apply to the longer edition.Does this sort of thing matter? Yes. Ackroyd has presented this book as an authoritative biography of a great city and had a privileged commission to produce such a book. I gained the impression reading it that he had indulged himself while writing it. He included anecdotes that took his fancy either accepting something he had found in another secondary work and never checking it, or embellishing it for the sake of misleading the reader with his inventions. It was patently clear to me in a number of instances that he does not know the background history and archaeology. Doubtless he knows his stuff for certain periods but beyond that he is simply out of his depth. He just isn’t familiar enough with some of the background material and either doesn’t care or made things up when it suited him. The result is a text which is a jumble of accurate information, inaccurate information, vague information and outright invention. The clue is in his bibliographical essay which includes a number of very old and out of date works and misses a lot of more modern ones.The result for me was feeling that while this book is a very good read one should take a lot of the content with pinch of salt. In fact you cannot trust anything in it unless you are able to verify it yourself, and you certainly shouldn’t regard it as in any way comprehensive. The information is either too vague, unattributed or distorted to make it a useful book beyond being an entertaining and enjoyable diversion. He is especially weak on anything before early modern. If you are taken with anything Ackroyd says it is likely you will hunt for further elaboration or detail in vain.The only two possible explanations for the various examples I have cited is that Ackroyd has overreached himself with material he doesn’t know much about, or that in reality he has assembled the book with the assistance of unreliable researchers rather than doing the donkey work himself. In either instance he hasn’t been able to distinguish between correct material and mistakes or misunderstandings. The erroneous Clarendon reference in the index suggests he neither indexed the book nor checked the index.For all that it was fun to read. But that was that. After a while his unregulated imagination, careless use of his sources, and misrepresentation began to annoy me because the text is a mix of reliable information and fiction. I stopped trusting anything I read. I’m well aware that this is an author who is celebrated in his field, and been in receipt of numerous awards and accolades, and that anyone reading what I have written may be surprised by the points I have made. Ackroyd has enjoyed enormous success and high volume sales, but seems to have little regard for his readers whom he appears to take for granted and whom he thinks can be told any old yarn. Speaking as an author myself I know how easy to make mistakes but the errors in this book and the indolence involved in its preparation are in a class of their own; it is difficult to believe Ackroyd can really have paid much attention to what he was writing down or else he would have noticed himself.In short, Ackroyd could have done a great deal better and it wouldn’t have taken much to make this into the book some of the credulous professional reviewers claim it already is.

⭐Phenomenal piece of scholarship. This is THE comprehensive book on London. Staggering amount of information and fabulous hidden tales and histories from the London we think we know. I fancied myself as a bit of a historical buff on London but I was holding up the white flag quarter of the way through! Warning to general readers this is a meaty tome at over 900 pages – I took it on a 10 hr flight to the Caribbean and back again and was easily occupied.

⭐I’ve spent many a lazy Sunday afternoon strolling through the West End and the City of London. This old and tortured town has a feel to it that is both unique and timeless. You can almost smell the blood that has flowed through these old streets.

⭐Gave up.

⭐Brilliant, just brilliant!

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