![]() ![]() It is a biography of a living, changing body, "half of stone and half of flesh", which has existed from pre-history, survived plague, fire, famine and wars, and has been called, variously, "this fair city", a "Little World", "Babylon" and "the Great Wen".Īckroyd's book is as various as London itself, and the reader, as he says, "must wander and wonder. Personal enough to explore little known byways where the eccentric and the mad wander, as well as the more familiar haunts and habits of the City, its surroundings and its suburbs.Īnd it is not a history: not by any means a dry chronology of facts. "I am a Londoner who wishes to lead others in the directions which I have pursued over a lifetime". ![]() "I am not a Vergil prepared to guide aspiring Dantes around a defined and circular kingdom", he writes in his preface. Only a besotted Londoner could have written this book: but perhaps only Peter Ackroyd could have done it so well. ![]()
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