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On sale Jan 26, 2016 | 32 Pages | 9781101972526

A Vintage Shorts Travel Selection

Peter Ackroyd’s staggering and prodigious capstone accomplishment, London: A Biography, details the history and—perhaps most ardently—the tenor of his hometown with indelible care. From the Iron Age to present day, Ackroyd’s narrative sweeps through the centuries with an effortless immediacy, bringing the city to life.

In this selection, the bestselling and award-winning author delivers a resonant account of the raids on London during the Second World War. Bombs and fires flare, naturally, but it is Ackroyd’s esteem of Londoners themselves that endows this story with energy: “It was the invisible and intangible spirit or presence of London that survived, and somehow flourished, in [this] period of devastation.” A rich, immersive plunge into some of London's darkest days. 

An eBook Short.
Peter Ackroyd is the author of London: The Biography, Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination, Shakespeare: The Biography, and Thames: The Biography. He has written acclaimed biographies of T. S. Eliot, Charles Dickens, William Blake, Sir Thomas More, and Charlie Chaplin, as well as several successful novels. He has won the Whitbread Book Award for Biography, the Royal Society of Literature’s William Heinemann Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the South Bank Award for Literature. His most recent book was a brief biography of Wilkie Collins. View titles by Peter Ackroyd

About

A Vintage Shorts Travel Selection

Peter Ackroyd’s staggering and prodigious capstone accomplishment, London: A Biography, details the history and—perhaps most ardently—the tenor of his hometown with indelible care. From the Iron Age to present day, Ackroyd’s narrative sweeps through the centuries with an effortless immediacy, bringing the city to life.

In this selection, the bestselling and award-winning author delivers a resonant account of the raids on London during the Second World War. Bombs and fires flare, naturally, but it is Ackroyd’s esteem of Londoners themselves that endows this story with energy: “It was the invisible and intangible spirit or presence of London that survived, and somehow flourished, in [this] period of devastation.” A rich, immersive plunge into some of London's darkest days. 

An eBook Short.

Author

Peter Ackroyd is the author of London: The Biography, Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination, Shakespeare: The Biography, and Thames: The Biography. He has written acclaimed biographies of T. S. Eliot, Charles Dickens, William Blake, Sir Thomas More, and Charlie Chaplin, as well as several successful novels. He has won the Whitbread Book Award for Biography, the Royal Society of Literature’s William Heinemann Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the South Bank Award for Literature. His most recent book was a brief biography of Wilkie Collins. View titles by Peter Ackroyd

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