Peter Ackroyd Ordre des livres

A magisterial portrayal of English Christianity over the last 1,400 years.

An original and superbly entertaining appraisal of the uniquely English approach to stagecraft.

Eine großartige Geschichte der Weltstadt London »London ist so groß und wild, dass es alles in sich enthält«, schreibt Peter Ackroyd und erkundet diese Stadt wie ein menschliches Wesen, das uns betört, verwirrt, aber niemals gleichgültig lässt. Am sinnlichen Detail, am allgegenwärtigen Rot der Sandsteine, an den Gerüchen der vielen Märkte oder am Klangbild, das einst von Glockengeläut und »Balladenverkäufern« geprägt wurde, entschlüsselt er die Epochen, die London geprägt haben. Die Kritiker sind sich einig: Ackroyds Buch macht alle anderen Londonbücher überflüssig. Nie zuvor hat ein Schriftsteller so lebendig und beseelt die ganze Metropole porträtiert: vom Londoner Untergrund bis zu den Theatern des Westends, von der Großen Pest bis zu Jack the Ripper, von den prähistorischen Funden bis zu den Reklametafeln am Piccadilly. Ein Genuss für alle, die diese Stadt lieben. »Ein reiches Buch, voller Witz und Wissen, voller Elan und voller Leben, brillant geschrieben!« Die Zeit Ausstattung: durchgehend s/w-Abb. im Text

In Colours of London Peter Ackroyd tells the history of London through the lens of colour - with specially commissioned colorised photographs from Dynamichrome that bring a lost London back to life.

"Ackroyd, as always, is well worth the read." —Kirkus, starred review Dominion, the fifth volume of Peter Ackroyd’s masterful History of England, begins in 1815 as national glory following the Battle of Waterloo gives way to a post-war depression and ends with the death of Queen Victoria in January 1901. Spanning the end of the Regency, Ackroyd takes readers from the accession of the profligate George IV whose government was steered by Lord Liverpool, whose face was set against reform, to the ‘Sailor King’ William IV whose reign saw the modernization of the political system and the abolition of slavery. But it was the accession of Queen Victoria, at only eighteen years old, that sparked an era of enormous innovation. Technological progress—from steam railways to the first telegram—swept the nation and the finest inventions were showcased at the first Great Exhibition in 1851. The emergence of the middle-classes changed the shape of society and scientific advances changed the old pieties of the Church of England, and spread secular ideas among the population. Though intense industrialization brought booming times for the factory owners, the working classes were still subjected to poor housing, long work hours, and dire poverty. Yet by the end of Victoria’s reign, the British Empire dominated much of the globe, and Britannia really did seem to rule the waves.

EMANUEL SWEDENBORG is acknowledged today as one of the great thinkers of the eighteenth century and a pioneering figure in the history of Western thought. Described by Jorge Luis Borges as the most extraordinary man in recorded history, Swedenborg’s book Heaven and Hell has had a direct influence on William Blake, Honoré de Balzac, Gerard de Nerval, W B Yeats, S T Coleridge, Fyodor Dostoevsky, C G Jung and many others, and his theory of correspondences is rightly understood as one of the defining influences on Romantic and Symbolist thought. More recently, through the work of Czesław Miłosz, Italo Calvino, A S Byatt and Iain Sinclair, we see his name re-emerge in relation to ‘pyschogeography’, ‘historical realism’ and ‘magical realism’. This brief pocket biography, by award-winning author and biographer Peter Ackroyd, is the perfect introduction to Swedenborg and the first in a series of accessible introductory pocket books.PETER ACKROYD is a broadcaster, essayist and one of the UK’s foremost biographers and novelists. He has written nearly 40 works of non-fiction, including studies on William Blake, T S Eliot and Isaac Newton, and nearly 20 works of fiction. Among his many awards and honours are the Guardian Fiction Prize (1985), the Whitbread Biography Award (1984) and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (1998). He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984 and was awarded a CBE in 2003.

The sixth and final volume in Peter Ackroyd's magnificent History of England series, taking us from the Boer War to the Millennium Dome almost a hundred years later.

A darkly playful novel, filled with mystery, revenge, outlandish killings, greed and jealousy, from the multi-award-winning author

The rich and glorious past of one of the great cities of the world is brought vividly to life for today's reader in this collection of letters, diaries and memoirs of visitors to London and of Londoners themselves.