Rating: 
Summary: A guide to life in The City
Review: This is a long book, but it reads pretty quickly. There are some short comings, some boring parts. The book reminded me of touring a new city with an enthusiastic friend who knows the details and the story of every crossroads. What better city than London, the book made me enjoy my own city for the sometimes unappealing elements, but more importantly is a real asset when I have turned to any piece of literature that talks about London. The author mentions how some literary figures have used London as a setting, and the different sections of the city can now evoke the emotion the author, like Dickens, or even LeCarre meant by what part of London they are talking about. I recommend this to anyone interested in their own community, in the past, and in good writting.
The writing is very good, and the book is finely crafted to lead from one section of the city to another as he progresses from one topic to another. The good, the bad, and the ugly of London have made me want to take a trip across the pond I have put off too long already.
Rating: 
Summary: Yeah, but...
Review: This is a strange, ultimately disquieting book. While highly informative and entertaining, it can't legitimately be called a "biography" -- the term presupposes at least some pretense towards a well-rounded, inclusive approach to the subject. This book is focused so exclusively on only half the story -- on the poor, indigent and underclass -- that it reads like a history of cruelty, filth and despair. You have only to look at a sample of chapter headings:
Violent Delights
Painting the Town Red [as in, with blood]
A Note on Suicide
Horrible Murder
A Rogues Gallery
Waste Matter
A Bad Odour
The Stinking Pile
And so on. It's all true, certainly, but it should be obvious that it must be only half the story: where's the art? the music? the literature? Where are the decent people and institutions without which no city could have grown, much less survived plague, famine and fire? What of schools, hospitals, museums? Oh, they're there, for twelve pages or so...
At one point the author implicitly acknowledges this extreme bias himself: "The poor and desperate have always been a part of London's history, and it might be said that the city is most recognisable by the shadow they cast." Might; might not.
And I'm utterly mystified by blurbs touting this as a "gift" and "tapestry of inspiration and love" -- I absolutely suspect a few lazy reviewers didn't actually read the book. After all, at one point he declares that "Life, in London, can be construed as a game which few can win." Again: "The city itself becomes a vast zoo in which all of the cages have been unlocked." And just so we're clear about it: "The citizens of London live in a state of unnatural energy and uproar; they live in foul houses with no light or air; they are driven by the whip of business and money-making; they are surrounded by all the images of lust and violence. They are living in Bedlam." Some tapestry of love, that.
The author also has a regrettable tendency to strain reaching for the Grand Summation:
"Here, too, is part of the mystery of London where suffering and mimicry, penury and drama, are aligned with each other to a degree where they become indistinguishable." ... Say what?
"The connection between money and ordure is here flagrantly revealed." ... What connection is that, exactly?
"Sex, in the city, has commonly been associated with dirt and disease... The resemblance exists even within the language itself; "hard core," in a London context, was that of "hard, rock-like rubbish;" where there is rubbish, there is also death." ... Huh?
At times this verges on the hysterical: in reference to a comment that Victorian London was "like the heart of all the universe," Ackroyd states: "There is a suggestion that London is an emblem of all that is darkest, and most extreme, within existence itself. Is it the heart of empire, or the heart of darkness? Or is one so inseparable from the other that human effort and labour become no more than the expression of rage and the appetite for power?"
And I'm troubled most by an underlying current of something that is either existential despair or exceptional condescension on the author's part -- he writes: "To live in the city is to know the limits of human existence... To be perpetually reminded that the single human life is worth very little, that it is reckoned merely as a part of the aggregate sum, may induce a sense of futility." This from a man who has been awarded, and presumably accepted, the Whitbread Biography Award; the Royal Society of Literature's William Heinemann Award; the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; and The Guardian's fiction prize.
So life is hard, is it? Indeed. What makes that a biography of London?
Rating:
Summary: Very well researched pot pourri of facts
Review: This is described as a biography rather than a history - but what is the difference? According to my dictionary : one is an account of a life, the other is an account of past events - same thing?In fact the first 4 chapters are a conventional history, from pre-Roman through to Early Middle Ages. It's only thereafter that we get chapters on individual 'themes' that cover all ages, so you keep going back & forth hundreds of years every few pages. Unless you're a native/resident of London, you'll probably enjoy the book better if you have a London Tourist Guidebook to hand. There are a couple of Modern maps, but only of the City & West End, so trying to understand what's being described outside the Roman City Walls is sometimes difficult. For example, why wouldn't a stranger think that Kentish Town is near Kent, ie to the South & East, when in fact its to the North & West? Also an Underground/Subway map might be useful. Whilst there's descriptions of the transformation due to the docks & the railways, there's no mention of air travel (whether it be from Croydon/Heathrow/Gatwick/City). In fact it is interesting to note all the things that never get a mention : OK so the book is about London, but there's not a word about Queen Victoria (Winston Churchill gets a one-line quote). There's a picture of the Thames Flood Barrier on the front cover, but no mention of it in the chapter dedicated to flooding. Plenty of pictures of London Bridge over the ages (and very nice they are too), but no pictures whatsoever of Big Ben or Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace or Trafalgar Square, Tower Bridge or Tower of London? London is famous for its Museums & Art Galleries, and it would have been interesting to read about their foundation. But apart from 3 mentions of the Tate Modern in the chapter on South Bank, that's your lot. No mention of even the existence of the British Museum, Natural History Museum, Science Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, Tate Gallery, National Gallery, Royal Academy etc etc - surely there could have been 2-3 pages on those? For all the talk about commerce and in which streets you could buy what goods, there's no mention of the foundation of larger emporia such as Harrods or Selfridges?
So all in all, very pleased for what is to be found in there, but disappointed at what has been overlooked.
Rating:
Summary: A City of the Senses
Review: Yes, this biography of London describes historical events, but most engrossing to me was the way Peter Ackroyd gives what is virtually a sensory history of this immense, ungraspable city. He discusses the sights of course, but also the sounds (the vendors characteristic cries, the modes of transportation), the smells ( garbage and sewage were a perpetual problem), and London's fog takes on a tactile character. I could have done without the constant emphasis on a couple pet similes--London as body, London as theatre--which are repeated way too often. My other criticism is the way Ackroyd writes about the vast disparity between rich and poor. While the plight of the poverty-stricken is movingly described, he does not make clear why London in particular had such a huge population of homeless compared to other European capitols. He does describe the shock of French and Italians when faced with this poverty, but does not explain why there is such a difference. I was left wondering whether this was the result of social Darwinish or somethin else.I felt squeemish reading his broad conclusion that London "needs" its poor, meant,I am sure, in a philosophical sense, but still...
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