London
The Biography
Edition: paperback
Author:
Peter
Ackroyd
ISBN: 0099422581
Publishers:
Vintage Books, Chatto
& Windus
Price £14.99
Publication Date: 2000
Most
readers on first looking at the title, might well imagine that this is a work
progressing steadily from pre-history through the years and ending with the
Millennium. It’s true that, at the
beginning, the author treats us to an excellent chronology. But what follows is a collection of separate
chapters on a wide variety of subjects.
The
reason there is no total chronology throughout the book becomes clear on
reading it. London, dealt with in the
detail that Mr Ackroyd presents it, is just too massive a subject to be dealt
with in strict chronological order. A
pity - but unavoidable.
The
first three chapters do indeed take us through pre-history. The final chapter, entitled Resurgam, deals
with the London we have today risen from the ashes of The Blitz, followed by
the normal course of modern urban renewal, to the London we have today. So there is a sense of beginning and ending
to the book.
What
the author does in the bulk of the 800 pages is to treat us to seventy-nine
relatively brief chapters, each dealing with a single topic. Each topic itself is dealt with in
chronological order. Thus for example,
London’s weather is examined over the years from the flood in 1090, which
washed London Bridge away, through the occasional freezing over of the Thames
to London’s Hurricane in October 1987.
Occasionally
a group of chapters are linked. Three
such chapters deal with London’s rivers, the lion’s share going to the Thames
and a chapter on the ‘lost’ rivers such as the Tyburn, Walbrook and the Fleet,
all running silently beneath the surface.
Then
there are chapters dealing with a single topic, be it London as theatre, the
Great Fire and after, Crime and Punishment, the Centre of Empire and so
on. There are also chapters giving us
the street sounds and smells of old London and a sense of the squalid nature of
some of the back streets and alleys, their inhabitants, the London fogs,
prostitution, extreme poverty and so on.
For
the lover of the Square Mile itself, the book is a treasure, since much of
London’s early history is bound up in the City itself and later Westminster.
It
is probably churlish to comment on matters which are not covered in any depth
or at all. Public services for
example. The ancient ‘policing’ of
London is well summarised while the modern Metropolitan and City forces have
only brief treatment. Similarly with
the fire service. We learn a great deal
about the nature of the more notable fires, but precious little about the men
who fought them. But this is being
churlish.
Time
travel has yet to allow us a retrospective, first hand glimpse at the
past. The Museum of London and the
Tower Bridge exhibitions in particular, allow us to see and hear something of
the London of yesteryear. But Peter
Ackroyd has provided us with a feast of sights, sounds and smells; of
personalities and events and a real feel of London throughout the ages.
The
only problem facing the reader is whether to read the work right through, or to
treat it as a reference to be dipped into from time to time. A real lover of ancient London is likely to
be sufficiently enthralled to try the cover to cover approach!
PR