Maybe it takes a geek, nerd or dweeb to revel in a textbook, but we do exist and sometimes textbooks are a joy. I’m not talking
calculus, nor French syntax, though I’d warrant there are mathematicians and
linguists who would get a real charge from them. I’m talking more from the
standpoint of a history buff who scans for writing inspiration, and recently
had the pleasure of working through 800+ pages of delight.
Peter Ackroyd’s London,
the Biography is not strictly a textbook, of course, but a popular volume: one of my most enjoyable reads in a long time. It was
picked up in a book exchange for me last year by my family, and when I finally
got around to tackling the intimidating brick of a book, I discovered a lively,
light-scholarly text so packed with fascinating information it amazed at the
turn of every page. This is Ackroyd’s academic field, his works are numerous
and I will be on the lookout for others. As a Brit ex-pat I have an enduring
interest in my mother-country, and have visited London on a few occasions. The
city as a focus of historic development, of empire and a crossroads of the world
is a story of almost unimaginable scope; Ackroyd traces human habitation on the
site from the Bronze Age to the present day, though the volume, while trending
from the ancient to the modern, is not in fact arranged chronologically, but by
topic areas.
Fascinating information, facts and figures, spill from its
pages. Past ages are brought to life through the words of those present from
Roman times onward, and the city is seen as a separate entity from the country
around it. The city remained, snug inside its Roman walls, throughout Late
Antiquity, when Britain returned to a largely tribal state and the few civitates struggled to preserve the
order of Imperial times within their own boundaries. Yet Londinium remained,
prospered, spread and sprawled, and was rebuilt many times. The city burned
over and over, the great fire of 1666 is the one best recorded by history, but
it was merely one of many in the ages when flammable structures crowded close
in rookeries and warrens.
Every topic is covered – religion, civic planning, architecture,
ethnicities and immigration, the royal seat, trade and empire, ancient and
modern warfare, pollution, transport, sewerage, technical innovation, art,
literature, disease, crime and punishment, the horrors of the old prisons – I
never knew the gallows at Tyburn were designed to hang 24 at once…
A fair few stories suggested themselves to me as I worked
through the book, and I wrote up notes for some. The volume provides an
extensive bibliography so the sources for further reading on specifics are
there. As a window on the London of medieval, Tudor, Elizabethan, Cromwellian, Georgian and Victorian
times, this book is remarkable, bringing the ages to life both with direct
citation and a pithy and perceptive interpretation of the ocean of records
which still exist.
Under the streets of London are the cities of the past, and
it is amazing to discover that there are streets which have followed the same
course for over a thousand years. Layer upon layer of foundations can be
located, Roman relics are common, and throughout the city one may chart waves
of development and redevelopment, the poor in the industrial warrens of the
east, the wealthy in the swank suburbs of the west, while south of the river
burgeoned in crime and squalor from the 1600s onward. And what about the old
London Bridge? A marvel of medieval engineering, a castle-like span bearing
over 100 buildings, many four stories tall, which lasted until only a few
hundred years ago – what a feat for the age!
Similarly, the people of the past are brought to vivid life,
with verbal portraiture of the maladies of congested urban life – the effects
upon people of vast population and great want. London was known as the deepest
pit of poverty, filth and disease in Western Europe, and possibly the world,
European travellers were appalled by the conditions they encountered. Yet every
voice is heard, from guildsmen of Chaucer’s day to the journals of Samuel Pepys
(his eye witness account of the great fire is especially evocative), the
writings of Charles Dickens and his contemporaries, a host of civil
commentators throughout the ages – too many to enumerate, but all serving to
bring history to life.
If, like me, you enjoy history for its own sake, with or
without the archaeological perspective, and have any affinity for Britain, I
thoroughly recommend London, the
Biography. It was my bedside companion for some two months and I have not
reshelved it yet – it is so natural to pick it up and immerse myself in history
for just a little longer!
Cheers, Mike Adamson
