London: The Biography

Rating:
Summary: "This Fair City"...
Review: ...is just one of the many descriptive terms used to describe London. Babylon is another; a less affectionate name to be sure but as Peter Ackroyd shows here it's quite appropriate. Appropriate because it conveys the reality of shifting moods and changing temperaments. Such descriptions are normally associated with individuals but are used here in talking about a city that has such a living presence - "half of stone and half of flesh" that instead of a history, it requires a more personal touch. Thus we have LONDON: THE BIOGRAPHY.

This approach means that we look at London from a perspective other that a chronological retelling of its advance over its 2000 year history. An approach from different angles also means that the traditional London attractions such as Buckingham Palace get only brief mention. Sections entitled "Women and Children" "Cockney visionaries" and "Crime and Punishment" provide some idea of the unusual perspectives. There are chapters on the history of suicide, of light, silence, and drink. We look at the smells, tastes, sounds and people of the city. At 800 plus pages there is certainly room enough for some of the more typical topics you would expect when looking at a city. London's streets, rivers, and it's development - from prehistory to present day - are ably covered. Discussions about commerce and culture are enlightening, especially in the areas London is best known for - finance and theatre.

Since it's a biography the writing style needs to be lively, not dry and academic. That it is. It's an absorbing tale that will be of interest to cultural history buffs, geographers, those with an interest in urbanism, and simply anyone who is curious about how cities come about, thrive, and for the great ones like London, emerge with a personality of their own.

Rating:
Summary: Needs a story
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A Feast
Review: A wonderful book. Don't neglect to read the bibliography, which is a feast in itself.

Rating:
Summary: Don't be scared away from a wonderful city by this book
Review: Ackroyd's book is full of wonderful images of a most fascinating city, but the book has two central flaws. I'll start with the easiest to detail -- its structure. The book's title London: the biography. First, I'll object to the use of "the" as if this book is the final word. Maybe "a biography". The book is certainly not a "history" in the strictest sense. History is generally told chronologically, and this book is anything but. Ackroyd does begin chronologically, but abandons chronology at whim to spend several chapters on long, parenthetical essays. Example: following mention of the Great Fire of 1666 and Newgate Prison as one of the first building reconstructed after the fire, Ackroyd goes into a multi-chapter essay on crime and punishment in London over the centuries. This extended essay isn't always presented chronologically either, with nineteenth century quotes used to support eighteenth century images, for example.
My second "beef" with the book is more important. Does Ackroyd even like London? I know that he lives there, but does he like the city. He reminds the reader, at every opportunity, that London's history has been "dark," "dirty," "chaotic," and "violent". He continually refers to the city as "a prison," "a disease" or "a madhouse". I have visited London, and I love the city. I find the city energetic and vibrant. I find Londoners welcoming, friendly, courteous and helpful. Almost none of this appears in Ackroyd's book. If I were reading this book, and I had never visited London, I'd be scared to death of the place. This book is certainly no homage to one of the great cities in the world; the book is certainly no compliment to some of world's most wonderful people.
So, why do I give it any stars at all? Because, the images Ackroyd paints of London are true. The list of images he chooses to present are, unfortunately, terribly incomplete. I wish he had not dwelt almost exclusively on the negative.

Rating:
Summary: Don't be scared away from a wonderful city by this book
Review: Ackroyd's book is full of wonderful images of a most fascinating city, but the book has two central flaws. I'll start with the easiest to detail -- its structure. The book's title London: the biography. First, I'll object to the use of "the" as if this book is the final word. Maybe "a biography". The book is certainly not a "history" in the strictest sense. History is generally told chronologically, and this book is anything but. Ackroyd does begin chronologically, but abandons chronology at whim to spend several chapters on long, parenthetical essays. Example: following mention of the Great Fire of 1666 and Newgate Prison as one of the first building reconstructed after the fire, Ackroyd goes into a multi-chapter essay on crime and punishment in London over the centuries. This extended essay isn't always presented chronologically either, with nineteenth century quotes used to support eighteenth century images, for example.
My second "beef" with the book is more important. Does Ackroyd even like London? I know that he lives there, but does he like the city. He reminds the reader, at every opportunity, that London's history has been "dark," "dirty," "chaotic," and "violent". He continually refers to the city as "a prison," "a disease" or "a madhouse". I have visited London, and I love the city. I find the city energetic and vibrant. I find Londoners welcoming, friendly, courteous and helpful. Almost none of this appears in Ackroyd's book. If I were reading this book, and I had never visited London, I'd be scared to death of the place. This book is certainly no homage to one of the great cities in the world; the book is certainly no compliment to some of world's most wonderful people.
So, why do I give it any stars at all? Because, the images Ackroyd paints of London are true. The list of images he chooses to present are, unfortunately, terribly incomplete. I wish he had not dwelt almost exclusively on the negative.

Rating:
Summary: Generally well done, but beware the grandiloquence
Review: Ackroyd's London is not history in terms of names and dates, Important People and their Parliamentary Acts, or hard statistics. It is primarily a series of vivid descriptions of human activities in the city, a history of London from the bottom up -- but not very far up. Overall I thought it was a treat to read, filled with engrossing lore and occasionally extraordinary writing.

But when the prose fails, its pomposity is disastrous. Most difficult to take are the grandiose statements which end far too many of his paragraphs. Fascinating anecdotes are followed by gratuitously solemn and pretentious conclusions about how "The city's topography is a palimpsest within which all the most magnificent or monstrous cities of the world can be discerned" or overwrought metaphorical nonsense in the same vein. I enjoy this sort of thing when it is done with restraint, but Mr Ackroyd is frequently out of control.

The book is also entirely devoid of any sense of humor, but then no one reads Ackroyd for his sharp wit.

Rating:
Summary: A magnificent history
Review: Ackroyd's portrait of London - for it is a portrait, of a living and breathing place - shows the city and its history from a variety of angles, both human and large-scale. The London that emerges from his story is an ancient and voracious one, which has an insatiable appetite for money, power and people. However, it's also a portrait illuminated with love, and the prose is riveting.
Rather than a chronological history, Ackroyd examines small vignettes of the city (for example, its food; darkness and the city; the madness for tea; continuties of buildings), in a way that's all the more compelling and revealing. Even if you know a fair bit about London, be prepared for surprises, and the urge to wander its streets with this book in hand.

Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: I'd Give it 5 Stars If...
Review: As all the previous reviews have made clear, this is a great book. There is nothing about it that would keep me from recommending it except that I think I would have enjoyed it even more if I already knew London to some--any--degree. I don't. I've never been to the city and have read very little about it before this book. So I felt a little overwhelmed and disoriented on this my first "visit". But what a great place it is to visit, even if just by reading this book, especially when you get away from the tour group destinations into the back lanes and dusty nooks and crannies. I may never really get to London, but I feel like I've gotten a glimpse of the soul of the city.

Rating:
Summary: Literary chaos
Review: As an admirer of Ackroyd's other books, I hate to say it--but this book is a stinker. It's not a history but a series of anecdotes and scattered facts. The feeling of reading it is rather like reading an encyclopedia from cover to cover: interesting but scatterbrained. London is my second home and I've read many histories of her. As a companion volume, Ackroyd's book might be acceptable. But let the reader beware that this IN NO WAY will suffice as one's first history of London. This book needed a better editor to restrain its author's robust energy.

Rating:
Summary: A magnificent achievement. However ...
Review: As evidenced by its 779 narrative pages and its 13 pages of sources, LONDON: THE BIOGRAPHY is a prodigious accomplishment by author and city resident Peter Ackroyd. And it did take me five weeks to read it.

Since I'd rather be in London than anywhere else, especially the Southern California I'm in, I began this volume with giddy anticipation. In his narrative of the city from pre-Roman times to the present, Ackroyd touches on the history of many of its diverse aspects: rivers, commerce, architecture, transport, theaters, street ballads, parks, food, weather, maps, neighborhoods, nationalities, fires, fog, pestilences, the effects of the Blitz, public lighting, law enforcement, sanitation and clubs. He also doesn't neglect London's unsavory side: alcoholism, gambling, blood sports, prisons, crime, the homeless, poverty, beggars, mob violence, racism, child labor, prostitution, overcrowding, the insane, slums, air and water pollution, and general squalor and filth. Because the author seemed (to me) so preoccupied with the latter dreary group, I suspect he's a closet social reformer.

LONDON isn't a riveting read. Surprisingly, I could put it down for such jolly pursuits as taking out the trash and cleaning the cats' litter box. Perhaps it's because the author's style, never leavened by any humor, becomes at times almost ponderous. For instance, in the chapter "How Many Miles to Babylon?", he comments:

"Yet there is one more salient aspect to this continual analogy of London with ancient civilisations: it is the fear, or hope, or expectation that this great imperial capital will in its turn fall into ruin. That is precisely the reason for London's association with pre-Christian cities; it, too, will revert to chaos and old night so that the condition of the 'primeval' past will also be that of the remote future. It represents the longing for oblivion... The vision is of a city unpeopled, and therefore free to be itself; stone endures, and, in this imagined future stone becomes a kind of god. Essentially it is a vision of the city as death. But it also represents the horror of London, and of its teeming life; it is a cry against its supposed unnaturalness, which can only be repudiated by a giant act of nature such as a deluge."

Good heavens, man! Get a grip!

I assume that the author loves his city, or he wouldn't have expended such enormous effort to tell its story. However, his affection is ofttimes difficult to infer, as when he writes:

"This is the horror of the city. It is blind to human need and human affection, its topography cruel and almost mindless in its brutality... The image is of a labyrinth which is constantly expanding, reaching outwards towards infinity. On the maps of England it is seen as a dark patch, or stain, spreading slowly but inexorably outwards."

LONDON provides a magnificent tapestry of information, and is a colossal achievement. However, until the last twenty-five or so pages, the author failed both to convince me that he derived any personal joy from residence in the city or to remind me why I love this place so much. Ackroyd's references to a city brutalizing, oppressing and dehumanizing its inhabitants are numerous to the point of being tiresome. Therefore, I finished the book admiring it much more than feeling good about it. Indeed, it wasn't until page 772 that I came across a statement (by Boswell) that struck a very personal emotional chord:

"I was full of rich imagination of London ... such as I could not explain to most people, but which I strongly feel and am ravished with. My blood glows and my mind is agitated with felicity."