The Great City of London lives in our collective childhood imagination, from London Bridge, Oliver Twist, and Mary Poppins to Chaucer, Samuel Pepys, and Shakespeare. The cobblestones, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and Buckingham Palace are always there. But so is mystery, known only to Londoners and heralded by the “London Particular,” also known as London fog. The writer Peter Ackroyd describes a cruel, almost mindless topography, streets that tease and bewilder.
Ackroyd’s latest book is like a friendly Dickensian ghost, leading us through the centuries and over the rows of smoking chimneys. And always with affection for the people on the street, like the evening farewell during the Blitz “Good Night, Good Luck!” It is London, a biography.
Guests:
Peter Ackroyd, author, London: The Biography.