London

Paperback of this exhaustive and minutely researched biography of the city of London, which has been hailed by various critics as "the" book on the city. A vivid and anecdotal overview which takes from the time of the Druids to the turn of the millennium, and which looks at subjects such as childhood, suicide, Cockney sppech and drinking, in relation to London's history. "Nothing can quite match the huge strange echo chamber of life-stories, folktales, and urban myths conjured up in Peter Ackroyd's epic vision of his native city" "Daily Telegraph".

Peter Ackroyd is an award-winning historian, biographer, novelist, poet and broadcaster. He is the author of the acclaimed non-fiction bestsellers London: The Biography, Thames: Sacred River and London Under; biographies of figures including Charles Dickens, William Blake, Charlie Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock; and a multi-volume history of England. He has won the Whitbread Biography Award, the Royal Society of Literature's William Heinemann Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award and the South Bank Prize for Literature. He holds a CBE for services to literature.