Peter Ackroyd (1) (1949–)

The Publisher Says: Celebrated novelist, biographer, and critic Peter Ackroyd paints a vivid picture of one of the world's greatest cities in this brilliant and original work, exploring how the city's many hues have come to shape its history and identity.

Think of the colors of London and what do you imagine? The reds of open-top buses and terracotta bricks? The grey smog of Victorian industry, Portland stone, and pigeons in Trafalgar square? Or the gradations of yellows, violets, and blues show more that shimmer on the Thames at sunset—reflecting the incandescent light of a city that never truly goes dark. We associate green with royal parks and the District Line; gold with royal carriages, the Golden Lane Estate, and the tops of monuments and cathedrals.

Colors of London shows us that color is everywhere in the city, and each one holds myriad links to its past. The colors of London have inspired artists (Whistler, Van Gogh, Turner, Monet), designers (Harry Beck) and social reformers (Charles Booth). And from the city’s first origins, Ackroyd shows how color is always to be found at the heart of London’s history, from the blazing reds of the Great Fire of London to the blackouts of the Blitz to the bold colors of royal celebrations and vibrant street life.

This beautifully written book examines the city's fascinating relationship with color, alongside specially commissioned colorized photographs from Dynamichrome, which bring a lost London back to life.

London has been the main character in Ackroyd's work ever since his first novel, and he has won countless prizes in both fiction and non-fiction for his truly remarkable body of work. Here, he channels a lifetime of knowledge of the great city, writing with clarity and passion about the hues and shades which have shaped London's journey through history into the present day.

A truly invaluable book for lovers of art, history, photography, or urban geography, this beautifully illustrated title tells a rich and fascinating story of the history of this great and ever-changing city.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Gifting the Anglophile on your list is always a doddle, right? "Something about England!" the generous, but innocent, gifter thinks. "This will be a snap!"

*cue hollow laughter at callow ignorance*

What part of England...north, south, west, Kent? What time in English history...Thatcher's 1980s, Victoria's imperial experiment, William the Bastard's conquering hordes of French-speaking Vikings? England England or Britain...Britain as a whole, the constituent parts?

I know it's not going to soothe your frazzled last nerve enough to make the idea of a cocktail unnecessary...but there aren't a lot of people who read seriously who haven't heard of, and probably read something by, Peter Ackroyd. He's a cultural monadnock. While one might not adore his prose, or even want to read about his relentlessly centered-on-London stories, it's a whole different kettle of fresh-from-the-Thames eels to think of reading his spear-sharp and sword-long prose about London...accompanied by these startlingly colorized vintage photos of London's past. The firm Dynamichrome makes this its business, and let me tell you that they are clearly destined to be leaders in a revolution for instead of the hitherto prevalent against the colorizing trend. These are images of London from all periods in its history. They're as beautiful as photos of London get. They're also enhanced by the careful and painstaking additions of colors commensurate with the time in history as well as the time of day that they reveal.

The book's organizing principle is seen in the Table of Contents on the recto above presented. Ackroyd's essays, which I suggest is the best way to present and think of these nominal chapters, riff on the colors, the affects, the gestalt of the visual impact of London. The publishers then chose vintage images and Dynamichrome brought their intense, archivally trained eyes to bear on enlivening them with colors appropriate to and emblematic of the times.

Bloody gorgeous, mate.

London's suitability for gifting your Anglophile without getting the weak smile and the slide from a slack, uninterested hand that we all dread is nonpareil. It's been the focus of immense amounts of attention in the moments of history as well as scholarship about that history, so it is readily scannable. It is a major player in the world's economic life, and its social norms have both set and influenced the social norms of many, many countries with past and present ties to it. London isn't England (me, I prefer York, or Chester) but it is called "the Capital" for a reason. It is the head of the government, the home of the economy's engine-controlling bodies, the monarchy's most famous symbols reside there...London is part of the mental furniture of the world's mind.

It's a simple task to find illustrations for a book about London, and an even easier one to gloss over the role of color in Humankind's experience of its world. We are fortunate to have photographic evidence of the reality of London's nineteenth-century past on forward. Beginning just slightly earlier, we have color illustrations of life in London from the eighteenth century. Printing technology has improved and improved in the centuries since Gutenberg married woodblock image-making to moveable type in 1454. That's been a key development in history's accelerating climb into prosperity from subsistence levels to reliable surpluses to wretched excess. Knowledge and ideas are easily transmissible when they're on paper.

They're also ephemeral, and subject to manipulation; they're also incomplete and misleading. But they're less likely to vanish without a trace as, for example, the cure for scurvy did in the sixteenth century when French captain Jacques Cartier heard from Native Americans that his men's scurvy would vanish if he made them drink spruce-needle tisane. It did...but he didn't do much to make it known, and it got lost in archives. Much as that has impacted our view of scurvy's history, the lack of color in vintage photos has made our vision of the past flat and one-dimensional.

We've always lived in a world of color. Nature's colors, but also mankind's. Rescue your Anglophile's imagination from the curse of flat black-and-white thinking with this book. It's vivid, and in its vividness lies its power to inform and to build on our knowledge of one of the world's most important cities: It was always modern, it was always intense, it was always brightly and intensely modern. Celebrate that this Yule gifting season. show less

Peter Ackroyd's The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2009) is a retelling of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein story through the eyes of the creator himself. While I need to re-read the original to be sure, it seems clear that some license has been taken with the plot of that novel, and with the biographical details of the Shelleys themselves. They appear here, of course, as Ackroyd brings Frankenstein into their orbit and moves him to England where he carries out his show more "researches."

Ackroyd presents us with the background to Frankenstein's pursuit of the "stuff of life," including his early queries at Oxford and his interests in electricity, galvanism, and other scientific inquiries. His depiction of the workings of the "resurrection men," who find and deliver the bodies Frankenstein uses for his experiments, is delightfully morbid, but the final experiment itself is absolutely repulsive (Ackroyd's creative power is on full display here - the sequence gave me the willies).

The creature itself figures in no small way here, as it pursues Frankenstein in search of revenge and fulfillment. Or, does it? I'll spare the spoilers, but the last few pages will have you thinking deeply about gothic fiction and narrative authority.

I had trouble getting into the novel at the start, but once the action got going I was hooked, and read through the last 200 pages in a single sitting. Gripping stuff, even if it turns some of our ideas about Frankenstein and his monster on their heads. Good for a nice long winter afternoon.

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2009/12/book-review-casebook-of-victor.html show less

What makes a Peter Ackroyd biography almost guaranteed a five star rating?

I think that it is the fact that one knows that the author will have done as much research as is humanly possible upon his subject; not for Mr Ackroyd, a quick skim through a few easily accessible documents. Then, having soaked up every known fact about the person (or place!) about whom he is going to write, he sifts their accuracy with an almost computer like lack of personal slant. What appears on the page is as show more near to the true story as one is ever likely to read. Peter Ackroyd writes with such authority, that were he to say that I were dead, I should purchase a coffin immediately.

So, we can take it as read that this is a good biography of Geoffrey Chaucer, but as he died way back, in the mists of time; were the details available to give a rounded view of, not just Chaucer the poet, but also, Chaucer the man? Again, the answer is a resounding, "Yes!". This book is part of a series called, 'Brief Lives' and, whilst it is true that the book reaches only 163 pages, do not be fooled: it contains all that the average reader requires in a biography. Having read same, I feel that, were Geoffrey Chaucer to walk through my door, I would know as much about him as his mum.

I was vaguely aware that Chaucer was employed by the state machinery, but had no idea as to his importance to fourteenth century British statesmanship, or that in his day, he was known as a King's man who wrote a bit, rather than a great writer. He is, of course, most famous, nowadays, for writing 'the Canterbury Tales'. Time is given to an explanation as to why this work should be given credit and an insight into both Chaucer's thinking and the general view of the literary world, at the time that they were produced.

My ultimate test of any literary biography is; does it instil the urge to return to the subject's work? Suffice to say, that my Canterbury Tales looks a little more dog-eared now than it did! This book is both a pleasure and an education: thank you Mr. Ackroyd! show less

This is a rich and erudite biography, replete with literary and theological references. As would be expected from this author, the theme of More as a Londoner is brought out quite clearly. The overriding theme, however, is of More as essentially a man of his time, the last great representative of late Medieval Catholicism, with a deeply ingrained belief in order, harmony and peaceful uniformity as represented by the collective piety of his religion, still at this early stage shared by the show more great bulk of the population of London and most of the country. That explains his hatred and violence towards the heretics whom he saw as disturbers of all order and civilisation in the world, not just of the Catholic church; it is the aspect of his life that is most disturbing to the modern reader, seeming to conflict harshly with his great conscience and the heroic nature of his death. But he must be seen in the context of his time when many great educated men on all sides of the religious divide believed in causing the deaths of their opponents to save those opponents' souls. A great, if not easy read, though I felt it lost its way a bit in the middle. show less