Peter Ackroyd
Author
Language
English
Description
A TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
Drawing on an exceptional combination of skills as literary biographer, novelist, and chronicler of London history, Peter Ackroyd surely re-creates the world that shaped Shakespeare—and brings the playwright himself into unusually vivid focus. With characteristic narrative panache, Ackroyd immerses us in sixteenth-century Stratford and the rural landscape–the industry, the
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Peter Ackroyd is our preeminent chronicler of London. In Queer City, he looks at the metropolis in a whole new way - through the history and experiences of its gay population. In Roman Londinium the penis was worshipped and homosexuality was considered admirable. The city was dotted with lupanaria ('wolf dens' or public pleasure houses), fornices (brothels) and thermiae (hot baths). Then came the Emperor Constantine, with his bishops and clergy, monks...
4) Mr Cadmus
Author
Language
English
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Description
"The arrival of an enigmatic stranger wreaks havoc on the denizens of the idyllic English village of Little Camborne; most notably two apparently harmless women. Miss Finch and Miss Swallow, cousins, have put their pasts behind them and settled into conventional country life. But when Theodore Cadmus - from Caldera, a Mediterranean island nobody has heard of - moves into the middle cottage, the safe monotony of their lives is shattered.The fates of...
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English
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Sophia Chrysanthis is only sixteen when the German archaeologist Herr Obermann comes wooing: he wants a Greek bride who knows her Homer. Sophia passes his test, and soon she is helping to excavate the amphorae and bronze vessels at the battle site of Troy without damaging them. Obermann is very good at the art of archaeology—perhaps too good at it. The atmosphere at Troy is tense and mysterious. Sophia finds herself increasingly baffled by the...
Author
Language
English
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Description
If your tastes run to Victorian mysteries and murder, you'll enjoy Peter Ackroyd's special blending of fact and fiction in this magnificent recreation of the bizarre murders that rocked Victorian England. Drawing on surviving police records and court transcripts, Ackroyd paints a fascinating portrait of a savage murderer, the terror that rippled across London, and the innocent woman charged with the crimes.
Author
Language
English
Description
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,...
Author
Series
History of England volume 6
Language
English
Description
Innovation, the sixth and final volume in Peter Ackroyd's magnificent History of England series, takes readers from the Boer War to the Millennium Dome almost a hundred years later.
Innovation brings Peter Ackroyd's History of England to a triumphant close. In it, Ackroyd takes readers from the end of the Boer War and the accession of Edward VII to the end of the twentieth century, when his great-granddaughter Elizabeth II had been on the throne...
Author
Language
English
Description
In the first in a new series of brief biographies, bestselling author Peter Ackroyd brilliantly evokes the medieval world of England and provides an incomparable introduction to the great poet's works.Geoffrey Chaucer, who died in 1400, lived a surprisingly eventful life. He served with the Duke of Clarence and with Edward III, and in 1359 was taken prisoner in France and ransomed. Through his wife, Philippa, he gained the patronage of John of Gaunt,...
10) Queer City
Author
Language
English
Description
In Queer City, the acclaimed Peter Ackroyd looks at London in a whole new way–through the complete history and experiences of its gay and lesbian population. In Roman Londinium, the city was dotted with lupanaria ("wolf dens" or public pleasure houses), fornices (brothels), and thermiae (hot baths). Then came the Emperor Constantine, with his bishops, monks, and missionaries. And so began an endless loop of alternating permissiveness and censure....
Author
Language
English
Description
Based on Geoffrey Chaucer's immortal work, this retelling of The Canterbury Tales follows a party of travelers as they tell stories amongst themselves about love and chivalry, saints and legends, travel and adventure. Through allegory, satire, and humor, the tales help pass the time during their journey.
Author
Series
History of England volume 3
Language
English
Description
Examines the Stuart dynasty during a turbulent seventeenth century marked by civil war, the execution of Charles I, the rule of Oliver Cromwell, and the deposition and exile of James II.
Author
Publisher
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Pub. Date
2009
Language
English
Formats
Description
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
Here are two thousand years of London’s history and folklore, its chroniclers and criminals and plain citizens, its food and drink and countless pleasures. Blackfriar’s and Charing Cross, Paddington and Bedlam. Westminster Abbey and St. Martin in the Fields. Cockneys and vagrants. Immigrants, peasants, and punks. The Plague, the Great Fire, the Blitz. London at all times of day and night,...
Here are two thousand years of London’s history and folklore, its chroniclers and criminals and plain citizens, its food and drink and countless pleasures. Blackfriar’s and Charing Cross, Paddington and Bedlam. Westminster Abbey and St. Martin in the Fields. Cockneys and vagrants. Immigrants, peasants, and punks. The Plague, the Great Fire, the Blitz. London at all times of day and night,...
Author
Language
English
Description
"Three Brothers follows the fortunes of Harry, Daniel, and Sam Hanway, a trio of brothers born on a postwar council estate in Camden Town. Marked from the start by curious coincidence, each boy is forced to make his own way in the world--a world of dodgy deals and big business, of criminal gangs and crooked landlords, of newspaper magnates, backbiters, and petty thieves. London is the backdrop and the connecting fabric of these three lives, reinforcing...
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Language
English
Formats
Description
Thomas More (1478-1535) was a renowned statesman; the author of a political treatise, Utopia; and, most famously, a Catholic martyr and saint. Born into the professional classes, Thomas More applied his formidable intellect and well-placed connections to become the most powerful man in England, second only to the king. In reconstructing the life of Thomas More, Peter Ackroyd provides an unmatched portrait of the everyday, religious, and intellectual...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
This study of sixth-century Hebrew thought, a part of the Old Testament Library series, grew out of Peter Ackroyd's influential Hulsean Lectures on the same topic.
The Old Testament Library provides fresh and authoritative treatments of important aspects of Old Testament study through commentaries and general surveys. The contributors are scholars of international standing.
Author
Series
History of England volume 2
Language
English
Description
Ackroyd brings the age of the Tudors to vivid life, charting the course of English history from Henry VIII's cataclysmic break with Rome to the epic rule of Elizabeth I.