Acclaim for Peter Ackroyd’s
London: The Biography
“The book requires a leisurely pace; anything quicker would endanger the pleasure to be had from the variety on offer…. There is nothing quite like it.”
—The Boston Globe
“Ackroyd gives London a gift, the likes of which more callow cities can only hope, one day, to get.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Invariably exciting and immensely enjoyable…. Ackroyd coruscates with ideas and fancies…. The total effect is spectacular and vastly stimulating. ‘When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.’ The same could be said with equal justice of any reader who finds no pleasure or instruction in Ackroyd’s books.”
—The Spectator
“Ackroyd writes in a wonderfully graphic style that carries the reader through historical byways effortlessly.”
—The Denver Post
“A tour de force by a writer of immense skill…. A treasure of information and anecdote about one of the world’s great cities, a book to be taken up again and again for the pleasures that lie within.”
—The Seattle Times
“Ackroyd deserves great praise for writing a book equal to its gargantuan subject…. [It] succeeds on the most expansive and most intimate levels.”
— The Orlando Sentinel
“Packed with strange delights and bizarre occurrences…. Ackroyd is a writer of memorable, eccentrically rhythmic sentences that one wants to quote at length.”
—Newsday
“Enthralling…. Witty and imaginative.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred)
“Wonderful and weighty…. Ackroyd has created a rich celebration of a unique city.”
—The Wall Street Journal
By the same author
FICTION
The Great Fire of London
The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde
Hawksmoor
Chatterton
First Light
English Music
The House of Doctor Dee
Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem
Milton in America
The Plato Papers
BIOGRAPHY
T. S. Eliot
Dickens
Blake
The Life of Thomas More
POETRY
The Diversions of Purley
CRITICISM
Notes for a New Culture
Peter Ackroyd
London
Peter Ackroyd is a bestselling writer of both fiction and nonfiction. His most recent books include the biographies Dickens, Blake, and Thomas More and the novels The Trial of Elizabeth Cree, Milton in America, and The Plato Papers. He has won the Whitbread Biography Award, the Royal Society of Literature’s William Heinemann Award (jointly), the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and The Guardian fiction prize. He lives in London.
For Jain Johnston
and
Frederick Nicholas Robertson
Contents
List of Illustrations
Chronology
Acknowledgements
The City as Body
From Prehistory to 1066
1 The Sea!
2 The Stones
3 Holy! Holy! Holy!
The Early Middle Ages
4 You Be All Law Worthy
London Contrasts
5 Loud and Everlasting
6 Silence Is Golden
The Late Medieval City
7 This Companye
Onward and Upward
8 Rather Dark and Narrow
9 Packed to Blackness
10 Maps and Antiquarians
Trading Streets and Trading Parishes
11 Where Is the Cheese of Thames Street?
A London Neighbourhood
12 The Crossroads
London as Theatre
13 Show! Show! Show! Show! Show!
14 He Shuld Neuer Trobell the Parish No More
16 Violent Delights
17 Music, Please
18 Signs of the Times
19 All of Them Citizens
Pestilence and Flame
20 A Plague Upon You
21 Painting the Town Red
After the Fire
22 A London Address
23 To Build Anew
Crime and Punishment
24 A Newgate Ballad
25 A Note on Suicide
26 A Penitential History
27 A Rogues Gallery
28 Horrible Murder
29 London’s Opera
30 Raw Lobsters and Others
31 Thereby Hangs a Tale
Voracious London
32 Into the Vortex
33 A Cookery Lesson
34 Eat In or Take Away
35 Market Time
36 Waste Matter
37 A Little Drink or Two
38 Clubbing
39 A Note on Tobacco
40 A Bad Odour
41 You Sexy Thing
42 A Turn of the Dice
London as Crowd
43 Mobocracy
44 What’s New?
The Natural History of London
45 Give the Lydy a Flower
46 Weather Reports
47 A Foggy Day
Night and Day
48 Let There Be Light
49 Night in the City
50 A City Morning
London’s Radicals
51 Where Is the Well of Clerkenwell?
Violent London
52 A Ring! A Ring!
Black Magic, White Magic
53 I Met a Man Who Wasn’t There
54 Knowledge Is Power
A Fever of Building
55 London Will Soon Be Next Door to Us
56 Nothing Quite Like It
London’s Rivers
57 You Cannot Take the Thames with You
58 Dark Thames
59 They Are Lost
Under the Ground
60 What Lies Beneath
Victorian Megalopolis
61 How Many Miles to Babylon?
62 Wild Things
63 If It Wasn’t for the ‘ouses in Between
London’s Outcasts
64 They Are Always with Us
65 Can You Spare a Little Something?
66 They Outvoted Me
Women and Children
67 The Feminine Principle
68 Boys and Girls Come Out to Play
Continuities
69 Have You Got the Time?
70 The Tree on the Corner
East and South
71 The Stinking Pile
72 The South Work
The Centre of Empire
73 Maybe It’s Because I’m a Londoner
74 Empire Day
After the Great War
75 Suburban Dreams
Blitz
76 War News
Refashioning the City
77 Fortune not Design
Cockney Visionaries
78 Unreal City
79 Resurgam
An Essay on Sources
List of Illustrations
BLACK-AND-WHITE INSERT I
Early Londoner admiring London Stone (Guildhall Library, Corporation of London)
John Stow (Guildhall Library, Corporation of London)
Charter of William I (Corporation of London Records Office)
Marcellus Laroon, Street merchants
Aerial sketch of London, 1560 (Guildhall Library, Corporation of London)
View of London Bridge by Anthonis van den Wyngaerde (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)
Panorama of London by Hollar (Guildhall Library, Corporation of London)
View of Old St. Pau
l’s by Hollar (Guildhall Library/Corporation of London, UK/Bridgeman Art Library)
The Royal Exchange by Hollar (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
Detail of map charting the Great Fire of London, 1666 (Royal Academy of Arts Library, London, UK/Bridgeman Art Library)
17th c. firemen (Royal Academy of Arts Library, London, UK/Bridgeman Art Library)
Hanging outside of Newgate Prison by Rowlandson (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
Moll Cut-Purse (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
Newgate Prison (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
National Temperance map of London (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
Café Monico, Piccadilly Circus (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
COLOR INSERT I
London from Southwark, Dutch School, c.1630 (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
Entrance to the River Fleet, Samuel Scott (Guildhall Art Gallery, Corporation of London)
Detail of the City from Braun and Hogenberg’s map of London, 1572 (Guildhall Library, Corporation of London, UK/Bridgeman Art Library)
Johann B. Homann’s map and prospect of London, 1730 (British Library, London, UK/Bridgeman Art Library)
The Great Fire of London, 1666 aquatint after Philippe de Loutherbourg (Guildhall Library, Corporation of London, UK/Bridgeman Art Library)
The Burning of the Houses of Parliament, 16th October 1834, J.M.W. Turner (Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, USA/Bridgeman Art Library)
Jack Sheppard, William Thornhill (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
Tom, Jerry and Logic Visiting Condemned Prisoners of Newgate Prison, George and Isaac Cruikshank (Guildhall Library, Corporation of London, UK/Bridgeman Art Library)
The Curds and Whey Seller, Cheapside, c. 1730, British School (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
The Meat Stall from The London Markets, engraved by M. Dubourg after James Pollard (Guildhall Library, Corporation of London, UK/Bridgeman Art Library)
Smithfield Market, engraved by R.G. Reeve after James Pollard (British Museum, London, UK/Bridgeman Art Library)
The Frozen Thames, c.1677, Abraham Hondius (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
Punch or May Day, Benjamin Haydon (Tate Gallery, London/Art Resource, NY)
A Rake’s Progress IV: The Arrested, Going to Court, William Hogarth (Courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum, London/Bridgeman Art Library)
The Four Times of Day: Morning, William Hogarth (Upton House, Oxfordshire, UK/Bridgeman Art Library)
Whitehall and the Privy Gardens from Richmond House, Canaletto (By courtesy of the Trustees of the Goodwood Collection)
View of the Adelphi from the River Thames, William Marlow (Christie’s Images, London, UK/Bridgeman Art Library)
COLOR INSERT II
The Laying of the Water Main in Tottenham Court Road, George Scharf (British Museum, London, UK/Bridgeman Art Library)
The Scavenger’s Lamentation, engraved by A. Sharpshooter (Guildhall Library, Corporation of London)
The Enraged Musician, William Hogarth (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK/Bridgeman Art Library)
The Railway Station, William Frith (Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, Surrey, UK/Bridgeman Art Gallery)
The Crowd, Robert Buss (Guildhall Art Gallery, Corporation of London)
Piccadilly Circus, Charles Ginner (Tate Gallery, London/Art Resource, NY)
Hammersmith Bridge on Boat Race Day, Walter Greaves (Tate Gallery, London/Art Resource, NY)
Noctes Ambrosianae, Walter Sickert (Castle Museum and Art Gallery, Nottingham, UK/Bridgeman Art Library/© 2001 Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York, NY/DACS, London)
Hammersmith Palais de Danse, Malcolm Drummond (Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery)
A Coffee Stall, Chas Hunt (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
The Coffee House, William Ratcliffe (Southampton City Art Gallery, Hampshire, UK/Bridgeman Art Library)
Allen’s Tobacconist Shop, Hart Street, Grosvenor Square, Robert Allen (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
House, Rachel Whiteread (Anthony d’Offay Gallery)
Two Sleepers, Henry Moore (The Henry Moore Foundation/Walter Hussey Bequest, Pallant House, Chichester, UK/Bridgeman Art Library)
Devastation, 1941: An East End Street, Graham Sutherland (Tate Gallery, London/Art Resource, NY)
Canary Wharf, Isle of Dogs, 1991, Alan Delaney (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
BLACK-AND-WHITE INSERT II
Regent Street in 1886, London Stereoscopic Company (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
Covent Garden Porters, John Thomson (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
Old houses in Bermondsey
Clerkenwell Green
River scavengers
Women sifting through dust mounds
The Great Wheel, Earl’s Court Exhibition, 1890, Charles Wilson (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
Children Following a Water Cart, William Whiffin (Tower Hamlets Local History Library)
Boy selling matches
Children Playing Cricket in Alpha Road, Millwall, 1938, Fox Photos (Hulton/Archive)
A Thoroughbred November and London Particular, engraved by George Hunt after M. Egerton (Guildhall Library/Corporation of London)
Car in smog, Henry Grant (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
A Paraleytic Woman, Géricault (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris)
Protein Man (Davidson/Evening Standard/Hulton/Archive)
Bomb damage in Paternoster Row, 1940 (Cecil Beaton photograph, courtesy of Sotheby’s London)
Near Spitalfields Market (© Don McCullin/Contact Press)
PART OPENERS
Plan of remains of Roman ship (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
Matthew Paris map of London, 1252 (By permission of the British Library [ROY.14.C.VII f2])
Dore, Ludgate Hill
Tudor depiction of the market at Eastcheap (By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library)
Mid-16th c. map of Moorfields (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
Marcellus Laroon, The Merry Milkmaid
The Rookery of St. Giles (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
Punch and Judy puppet show (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
Great Plague of 1665 (Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge)
Christopher Wren and John Evelyn plan of London after the Great Fire, 1666 (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
Rowlandson depiction of hanging (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
Rowlandson, Revellers at Vauxhall (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
Gillray caricature of Sheridan as Punch (Guildhall Library, Corporation of London)
Cockney flower seller in Covent Garden (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
Dore, vagrants huddled on Westminster Bridge
The Sessions House on Clerkenwell Green (Guildhall Library, Corporation of London)
The burning of Newgate Prison, 1780, Gordon Riots (Guildhall Library, Corporation of London)
Title page of Astrologaster of the Figure Caster by John Melton
Scharf, the building of Carlton House Terrace, c. 1830
Girgnion engraving of the Fleet River (Guildhall Library, Corporation of London)
Mayhew, The Sewer Hunter (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
Dore, Seven Dials Slum
Géricault, Pity the Sorrow of a Poor Old Man (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris)
The Mud-lark (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
Scharf, The Original Oyster Shop
Whistler, Billingsgate (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
Hogarth, A Harlot’s Progress
London Underground poster, 1929
St. Paul’s Cathedral (Imperial War Museum, London)
Poster for the Lansbury Council Estate in Poplar (Courtesy of the Museum of London)
Tribute to Christopher Wren (Guildhall Library, Corporation of London)
Chronology
BC
54 Caesar’s first expedition to Britain
AD
41 The Roman invasion of Britain
43 The naming of Londinium
60 The burning of London by Boudicca
61–122 The rebuilding of London
120 The Hadrianic fire of London c.
c. 190 The building of the great wall
407 The Roman withdrawal from London
457 Britons flee London to evade the Saxons
490 Saxon domination over London
587 Augustine’s mission to London
604 Foundation of a bishopric, and St. Paul’s, in London
672 Reference to “the port of London.” The growth of Lundenwic
851 London stormed by Vikings
886 Alfred retakes and rebuilds London
892 Londoners repel Danish invasion fleet
959 A great fire in London: St. Paul’s burned
994 Siege of London by Danish forces
1013 The second siege of London, by conquering Sweyn
1016 Third siege of London by Cnut, repulsed
1035 Harold I elected king by Londoners
1050 The rebuilding of Westminster Abbey
1065 Dedication of Westminster Abbey
1066 The taking of London by William the Conqueror
1078 The building of the White Tower
1123 Rahere establishes St. Bartholomew’s