London: The Biography
Ackroyd è un londinese che ha scritto, letto e visto molto su Londra; ed è uno scrittore londinese che ha scritto molto sugli scrittori londinesi (compresi libri su Dickens e sui fratelli Lamb): non stupisce quindi trovare qui stipato un gran numero di notizie, curiosità, citazioni, ricordi, immagini, riflessioni su Londra.
Uno degli informatori principali è il diarista del Seicento Samuel Pepys, poi naturalmente Defoe, Fielding, Samuel Johnson, Boswell, Dickens, Hogarth, De Quincey, Charles Lamb (molto meno l’altro grande saggista di inizio Ottocento, William Hazlitt), George Gissing, G. K. Chesterton, George Orwell, ecc. ecc.
Viene voglia poi di esplorare altri, meno noti, apporti basilari del libro: da John Stow (per il Cinquecento) e John Evelyn (un altro importante diario del Seicento) a Charles Booth (autore del gigantesco Life and Labour of the People of London, del , in sette volumi) e Charles Knight («un altro grande storico di Londra»), a Henry Mayhew, autore di una inchiesta sui poveri di Londra, pubblicata sul «Morning Chronicle», poi in volume: London Labour and the London Poor, che pare sia stata tra i riferimenti im
What a shocking bad hat!
Peter Ackroyd’s London: The Biography is as much a history of characterisations of the city as a history of London itself. And although Ackroyd is most concerned with character in the sense of ‘a personality invested with distinctive attributes and qualities, by a novelist or dramatist’, readers of his previous writings will not be surprised to hear that many other meanings of the word also come into play – ‘distinctive features’, ‘essential peculiarity’, ‘nature, style’, certainly; but also ‘distinctive mark, evidence, or token’; ‘a cipher for secret correspondence’; and even ‘a cabbalistic or magical sign or emblem’.
Ackroyd sees heterogeneity as one of London’s defining characteristics, and his work is constructed accordingly. Beginning with ‘the bed of the Upper Jurassic Sea’, which is apparently visible in the fabric of Waterloo Bridge, and ending, nearly eight hundred pages later, with a contemporary vision of Exchange Square at Broadgate, the book has a rough chronological structure. Most of the march-of-history material is con
London: The Biography - Softcover
Synopsis
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
Here are two thousand years of London&#x;s history and folklore, its chroniclers and criminals and plain citizens, its food and drink and countless pleasures. Blackfriar&#x;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.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Believing that London "defies chronology," Ackroyd jettisons linear history in favor of a huge collage of his home city. Most of his seventy-nine chapters take a theme—noise, nature, violence, sex—and range back and forth in time with confusing alacrity. Ackroyd, who has an almost mystical interest in patterns of repetition, is never happier than when, say, he is walking across a parking lot and notices a security camera at a spot where the medieval city wall once stood. He is also more interested in London's outsiders—radicals, eccentrics, criminals—than in its palaces and monarchs; Queen Victoria doesn't rate even a mention. Ultimately, the book successfully emulates its subject: it is hard to navigate but fun to explore—baffling and fascinating by turns.
Copyright © The New Yorker
“Magnificent. . . . Succeeds in animating on the page the life of one of the oldest and greatest cities in the world.”--The New York Times Book Review
“Ackroyd is the most effortless guide. . . . This is much more than history: it is a tapestry of inspiration and love.” --The Observer
“An erudite labour of love, a fan-letter to a fabulous city. . . . As exuberant, energetic and alarming as the c
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