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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 ru≤ 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.

Fire. Explosions. Meteorites. Chaos. Early life on Earth included all manner of freakish, alien creatures until the eventual arrival of the big-brained Homo sapiens. Peter Ackroyd explains the beginnings of the Earth in this book which is part of his epic ten-volume history of the world for children. Dare you voyage back through the mists of time...to the beginning?

During the 1970s and the early 1980s Peter Ackroyd wrote countless book reviews and articles for the Spectator, on literature, film and a number of social and cultural issues. The collection offers a selection of these incisive and entertaining pieces, which established Ackroyd's reputation as a writer. Since 1986, Ackroyd has been chief book reviewer for The Times, and in this capacity he has reviewed some of the most important biographies and novels published over the last fifteen years. A selection of his Times reviews are included here. These reviews, and his articles for the Sunday Times display his characteristic attitudes to literature and art. They also throw interesting lights on his own work as a prize-winning novelist and biographer. The Collection also contains a number of Ackroyd's interesting and provocative lectures on 'The Englishness of English literature', 'London Luminaries and Cockney Visionaries' and 'William Black, a Spiritual Radical'. In addition, several essays on subjects such as Ackroyd's own writing and contemporary painters such as Frank Auerbach have been included. Finally, three of Ackroyd's short stories have been reproduced, one of which was his first published work of fiction. The Collection is a revealing and fascinating anthology of Ackroyd's ideas and preoccupations. As such, it is the ideal companion volume to his novels and biographies. With the exception of five pieces, none of the writing contained in this volume has ever been collected: The Collection also contains much previously unpublished material.

Plato, the orator, summons the citizens of London on ritual occasions to impart the ancient history of their city. He dwells particularly on the unhappy era of Mouldwarp (AD 1500-2300), which existed before the dimming of the stars and the burning of the machines. He lecturesupon THE ORGIN OF SPECIES by the nineteenth-century novelist Charles Dickens and upon the pantomimic routines of Sigmund Freud. But then he has a dream, or vision, or he goes on a real journey - opinions are divided - and enters a vast underground cavern, where citizens of Mouldwarp London still live. When Plato returns with stories of this lost world he is put on trial for corrupting the youth by means of lies and fables. Are their lives part of some greater reality? And, if they learn to doubt, perhaps they will be able to recognise a truth beyond that of their own world. All will depend upon the judgement of Plato by his fellow citizens.

Poet, painter, engraver and visionary, William Blake was a radical spirit fired by genius. This work shows Blake in the context of his period, reveals the true affinities between Blake's art and his poetry, and recreates the atmosphere of 18th-century London.

London in the eighteenth century is a city of extremes: squalor and superstition vie with elegance and enlightenment as the capital's brilliant architect Nicholas Dyer is commissioned to build several new churches in the aftermath of the great fire. Two hundred and fifty years later in the vast, sprawling metropolis of London the legacy of the past lives on, as CID Detective Nicholas Hawskmoor investigates a series of macabre murders that have occurred on the sites of certain eighteenth century churches in the City ...

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.

Existe una laguna en la biografía del poeta John Milton que nadie ha podido cubrir satisfactoriamente hasta el momento: en 1660, debido a su apoyo a Cromwell y la Commonwealth y ante la llegada de Carlos II, Milton vio su vida en peligro. Peter Ackroyd aventura una hipotesis de un viaje transoceanico hasta Nueva Inglaterra donde descubrira las costumbres de los indios y de los colonos puritanos. Territorio Ackroyd.