London
  • Published: 2 July 2012
  • ISBN: 9780099570387
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 688
  • RRP: $49.99
Categories:

London

The Concise Biography

Formats & editions
Paperback
2 Jul 2012
Tr. Paperback
2 Nov 2001
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An abridged edition of Peter Ackroyd's magisterial biography of the city of London.

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.
  • Published: 2 July 2012
  • ISBN: 9780099570387
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 688
  • RRP: $49.99
Categories:

About the author

Peter Ackroyd

Peter Ackroyd is an award-winning historian, biographer, novelist, poet and broadcaster. He is the author of the acclaimed non-fiction bestsellers London: The Biography, Thames: Sacred River and London Under; biographies of figures including Charles Dickens, William Blake, Charlie Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock; and a multi-volume history of England. He has won the Whitbread Biography Award, the Royal Society of Literature's William Heinemann Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award and the South Bank Prize for Literature. He holds a CBE for services to literature.

portrait photo of Peter Ackroyd

Also by Peter Ackroyd

Queer City
London Under
Wilkie Collins
Charlie Chaplin
Thames: Sacred River
Venice
The Canterbury Tales: A retelling by Peter Ackroyd
See all

Praise for London

It's this decade's finest work of non-fiction.

Jude Rogers, The Word

[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

The definitive history of London... a must read for anyone interested in the subject.

Gary Kemp, Daily Express

In this outstanding biography of the capital Peter Ackroyd brings the streets alive with tales young and old.

Charlotte Vowden, Daily Express

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

A fantastically detailed book

David Troughton, Daily Express