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Peter Ackroyd
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Thames: The Biography
Автор: Peter Ackroyd Жанр: Daedalus Books Издательство: Daedalus Books Год: 2008 Страниц: 481 Дата загрузки: 13 декабря 20102011-09-22
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In this perfect companion to London: The Biography, Peter Ackroyd once again delves into the hidden byways of history, describing the river's endless allure in a journey overflowing with characters, incidents, and wry observations. Thames: The Biography meanders gloriously, rather like the river itself. In short, lively chapters Ackroyd writes about connections between the Thames and such historical figures as Julius Caesar and Henry the VIII, and offers memorable portraits of the ordinary men and women who depend upon the river for their livelihoods. He visits all the towns and villages along the river from Oxfordshire to London and describes the magnificent royal residences, as well as the bridges and docks, locks and weirs, found along its 215-mile run. The Thames as a source of artistic inspiration comes brilliantly to life as Ackroyd invokes Chaucer, Shakespeare, Turner, Shelley, and other writers, poets, and painters who have been enchanted by its many moods and colors. In his signature entertaining and informative manner, Ackroyd allows the reader to dip into chapters in his own spirit, or to follow the Thames from source to sea. Illustrated with maps and photographs, THAMES is a vivid, highly original mosaic of life by and on the water.
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London Under
Автор: Peter Ackroyd Жанр: Random House Inc. Издательство: Random House, Inc. Год: 2011 Страниц: 208 Дата загрузки: 17 августа 20132014-02-19
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From the author of the bestselling London: The Biography, a poetic and powerful urban history of life and legend beneath London. Under is a wonderful, atmospheric, imaginative, oozing short study of everything that goes on under London, from original springs and streams and Roman amphitheatres to Victorian sewers, gang hideouts and modern Tube stations. The depth below is hot, warmer than the surface, and tunnels down through the geological layers, meeting the creatures that dwell in darkness, real and fictional — rats and eels, monsters and ghosts. There is a Bronze Age trackway under the Isle of Dogs, Anglo-Saxon graves were found under St Paul's, and the monastery of Whitefriars lies beneath Fleet Street. In Kensal Green cemetery a hydraulic device lowered bodies into the catacombs below — 'Welcome to the lower depths' — while a door in the plinth of the statue of Boadicea on Westminster Bridge leads to a huge tunnel, packed with cables for gas, water and telephone lines. When the Metropolitan Line was opened in 1864 the guards asked for permission to grow beards to protect themselves against the sulphurous fumes, and called their engines by the names of tyrants — Czar, Kaiser, Mogul — and even Pluto, god of the underworld. 'The vastness of the space, a second earth', writes Peter Ackroyd, 'elicits sensations of wonder and of terror. It partakes of myth and dream in equal measure.' Going under London is to penetrate history, to enter a hidden world.
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London: The Biography
Автор: Peter Ackroyd Жанр: Random House Inc. Издательство: Random House, Inc. Год: 2001 Страниц: 822 Дата загрузки: 21 августа 20092003-07-14
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Much of Peter Ackroyd's work has been concerned with the life and past of London but here, as a culmination, is his definitive account of the city. For him it is an organism with its own laws of growth and change, so this book is a biography rather than a history. Ackroyd reveals the dozens of ways in which the continuity of the city survives — in ward boundaries unchanged since the Middle Ages, in vocabulary and in various traditions — showing London as constantly changing, yet forever the same in essence.
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Foundation: A History of England
Автор: Peter Ackroyd Жанр: Macmillan Publishers USA Издательство: Macmillan Publishers Год: 2011 Страниц: 352 Дата загрузки: 25 июня 20132012-06-18
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Having written enthralling biographies of London and of its great river, the Thames, Peter Ackroyd now turns to England itself. This first volume of six takes us from the time that England was first settled, more than 15,000 years ago, to the death in 1509 of the first Tudor monarch, Henry VII. In it, Ackroyd takes us from Neolithic England, which we can only see in the most tantalising glimpses a stirrup found in a grave, some seeds at the bottom of a bowl to the long period of Roman rule; from the Dark Ages when England was invaded by a ceaseless tide of Angles, Saxons and Jutes, to the twin glories of medieval England its great churches and monasteries and its common law. With his extraordinary skill for evoking time and place, he tells the familiar story of king succeeding king in rich prose, with profound insight and some surprising details. The food we ate, the clothes we wore, the punishments we endured, even the jokes we told are all found here, too.
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Three Brothers
Автор: Peter Ackroyd Жанр: Random House Inc. Издательство: Random House, Inc. Год: 2013 Страниц: 256 Дата загрузки: 28 марта 20162016-09-10
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Three Brothers follows the lives and fortunes of Harry, Daniel and Sam Hanway, a trio of brothers born on the same day in the middle of last century, in a grim council estate in Camden. After their mother inexplicably abandons the family, each boy is forced to make his own way in the world. From the bustling cut-throat world of Fleet street, hallowed London publishing offices, and the wealth and comfort of Chelsea, to the smoky shadowy streets of Limehouse and Hackney, this is a trip around the city, down its streets, riding on the tubes, at a very particular moment of history, and unusually for Ackroyd's fiction, all within living memory. London is the backdrop and the connecting fabric of these three lives, reinforcing Ackroyd's grand theme that history and the city both makes and creates us, surrounds and engulfs us.
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The Lambs Of London
Автор: Peter Ackroyd Жанр: Random House Inc. Издательство: Random House, Inc. Год: 2008 Страниц: 256 Дата загрузки: 26 мая 20112011-02-29
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Mary Lamb is confined by the restrictions of domesticity: her father is losing his mind, her mother watchful and hostile. The great solace of her life is her brother Charles, an aspiring writer. It is no surprise when Mary falls for the bookseller's son, antiquarian William Ireland, from whom Charles has purchased a book. But this is no ordinary book — it once belonged to William Shakespeare himself. And William Ireland with his green eyes and his red hair, is no ordinary young man...The Lambs of London brilliantly creates an urban world of scholars and entrepreneurs, a world in which a clever son will stop at nothing to impress his showman father, and no one knows quite what to believe. Ingenious and vividly alive, The Lambs of London is a poignant, gripping novel of betrayal and deceit.
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Shakespeare — The Biography
Автор: Peter Ackroyd Жанр: Random House Inc. Издательство: Random House, Inc. Год: 2006 Страниц: 560 Дата загрузки: 24 июля 20092010-03-22
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Peter Ackroyd's marvellous biography is a living attempt to reach into the heart of Shakespeare. He creates an intimate and immediate connection with his subject, so that the book reads like the work of a contemporary — meeting Shakespeare afresh on his own ground. Written with intuition and imagination unique to Peter Ackroyd, this is a book by a writer about a writer, and a fascinating and detailed depiction of the world Shakespeare inhabited.
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The Fall of Troy
Автор: Peter Ackroyd Жанр: Random House Inc. Издательство: Random House, Inc. Год: 2008 Страниц: 256 Дата загрузки: 26 мая 20112011-02-29
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Sophia Chrysanthis is only 16 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 tieing canvas sacking to her legs so that she can kneel on the hard ground in the trench, removing the earth methodically, identifying salient points, lifting out amphorae and bronze vessels without damaging them. 'Archaeology is not a science', Obermann says. 'It is an art'. Obermann is very good at the art of archaeology — perhaps too good at it. The amosphere at Troy is tense and mysterious. Sophia finds herself increasingly baffled by the past ... not only the remote past that Obermann is so keen to share with her in the form of his beloved epics of the Trojan wars, but also his own, recent past — a past that he has chosen to hide from her. But she, too, is very good at the art of archaeology ...
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Poe: A Life Cut Short
Автор: Peter Ackroyd Жанр: Random House Inc. Издательство: Random House, Inc. Год: 2009 Страниц: 176 Дата загрузки: 12 апреля 20132012-04-25
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Edgar Allan Poe served as a soldier and began his literary career composing verses modelled on Byron; soon he was trying out his 'prose-tales' — often horror melodramas such as The Fall of the House of Usher. As editor of the Literary Messenger he was influential among critics and writers of the American South. His versatile writings — including, for example, The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Raven — continue to resonate down the centuries. Peter Ackroyd's biography of Poe opens with his end, his final days – no one knows what happened between the time when friends saw him off on the steam-boat to Baltimore and his discovery six days later dying in a tavern. This mystery sets the scene for a short life packed with drama and tragedy (drink and poverty) combined with extraordinary brilliance. Poe has been claimed as the forerunner of modern fantasy, and credited with the invention of psychological dramas (long before Freud), science fiction (before H.G. Wells and Jules Verne) and the detective story (before Arthur Conan Doyle). Tennyson described him as 'the most original genius that America has produced'. He influenced European romanticism and was the harbinger of both Symbolism and Surrealism. Peter Ackroyd, who places significance on Poe's childhood (his travelling actor parents were miserably poor, his mother had TB and he was orphaned), claims that Poe found his family among writers — writers not only of his time but of the future generations who were influenced by the power of his imagination.
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Blake
Автор: Peter Ackroyd Жанр: Random House Inc. Издательство: Random House, Inc. Год: 1998 Страниц: 464 Дата загрузки: 23 декабря 20092001-04-12
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Poet, painter, engraver and visionary, Blake’s was a radical spirit fired by genius. Yet his life has remained an enigma.In this magnificent biography Peter Ackroyd discloses the true nature of William Blake’s life and art.
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The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein
Автор: Peter Ackroyd Жанр: Random House Inc. Издательство: Random House, Inc. Год: 2009 Страниц: 416 Дата загрузки: 05 июня 20112011-05-12
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'It was at Oxford that I first met Bysshe. We arrived at our college on the same day; confusing to a mere foreigner, it is called University College. I had seen him from my window and had been struck by his auburn locks'. The long-haired poet — 'Mad Shelley' — and the serious-minded student from Switzerland spark each other's animated interest in the new philosophy of science which is over-turning long-cherished beliefs. Perhaps there is no God. In which case, where is the divine spark, the soul? Can it be found in the human brain? the heart? the eyes? Victor Frankenstein begins his anatomy experiments in a barn in the secluded village of Headington, near Oxford. The coroner's office in Clarendon Street provides corpses — but they have often died of violence and drowning: they are damaged and putrifying. Victor moves his coils and jars and electrical fluids to a deserted pottery manufactury in Limehouse. And, from Limehouse, makes contact with the Doomesday Men — the resurrectionists. He pays better than any hospital for the bodies of the very recently dead. Even so, perfect specimens are hard to come by ... until that Thames-side dawn when Victor, waiting, wrapped in his greatcoat, on his wooden jetty, hears the splashing of oars and sees in the half-light that slung into the stern of the approaching boat is the corpse of a handsome young man, one hand trailing in the water....
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The Canterbury Tales
Автор: Peter Ackroyd Жанр: Penguin Group Издательство: Penguin Group Год: 2010 Страниц: 464 Дата загрузки: 26 декабря 20122013-02-16
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The Canterbury Tales is a major part of England's literary heritage. From the exuberant Wife of Bath's Arthurian legend to the Miller's worldly, ribald farce, these tales can be taken as a mirror of fourteenth-century London. Incorporating every style of medieval narrative — bawdy anecdote, allegorical fable and courtly romance — the tales encompass a blend of universal human themes. Ackroyd's retelling is a highly readable, prose version in modern English, using expletive and avoiding euphemism, making the Tales much more accessible to a new generation of readers. The edition also includes an introduction by Ackroyd, detailing some of the historical background to Chaucer and the Tales, and why he has been inspired to translate them for a new generation of readers.
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Hawksmoor
Автор: Peter Ackroyd Жанр: Penguin Group Издательство: Penguin Group Год: 2010 Страниц: 288 Дата загрузки: 14 августа 20122013-09-24
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Penguin Decades bring you the novels that helped shape modern Britain. When they were published, some were bestsellers, some were considered scandalous, and others were simply misunderstood. All represent their time and helped define their generation, while today each is considered a landmark work of storytelling. Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor was first published in 1985. Alternating between the eighteenth century, when Nicholas Dyer, assistant to Christopher Wren, builds seven London churches that house a terrible secret, and the 1980s, when London detective Nicholas Hawksmoor is investigating a series of gruesome murders on the sight of certain old churches, Hawksmoor is a brilliant tale of darkness and shadow.
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The Fall of Troy
Автор: Peter Ackroyd Жанр: Daedalus Books Издательство: Daedalus Books Год: 2007 Страниц: 212 Дата загрузки: 22 мая 20102008-06-11
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Heinrich Obermann, a celebrated German archaeologist, has uncovered the ancient ruins of Troy on a Turkish hillside. He fervently believes that his discovery will prove that the heroes of the Iliad, a work he has cherished all his life, actually existed. Sophia, Obermann's young Greek wife, works at the site carefully preserving the ancient treasures she uncovers. But Sophia soon comes to see another side of her husband. He is mysteriously vague about his past and the wife he claims died years before. When she finds a cache of artefacts Obermann has hidden away, her suspicions about him rise, feelings that escalate when a visiting archaeologist who questions Obermann's methods dies from a mysterious fever. The arrival of a second, equally sceptical archaeologist brings Sophia's doubts to a head — and spurs Obermann to make even greater claims about the evidence he has found and the profound importance of his achievements. In The Fall of Troy, Peter Ackroyd again demonstrates his ability to evoke time and place, and to transform history into compelling fiction. Like the Homeric epics that entrance Obermann, The Fall of Troy is in part accurate, in part fantastic. It is a brilliantly told story of heroes and scoundrels, human aspirations and follies, and the temptation to shape the truth to fit a passionately held belief.
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Thames: Sacred River
Автор: Peter Ackroyd Жанр: Random House Inc. Издательство: Random House, Inc. Год: 2008 Страниц: 512 Дата загрузки: 17 сентября 20132011-02-19
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Offers a guide to this extraordinary river and the towns and villages which line it. Exploring its history since prehistoric times, this book shows the fishes that swam in the river and the boats that plied its surface; about floods and tides; hauntings and suicides; miasmas and malaria; locks, weirs and embankments; bridges, docks and palaces.
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