Peter Ackroyd, página 2 de 5

This comprehensive biography of the great 19th-century novelist combines extensive research and documentation, including much new speculation on the nature of his affair with Ellen Ternan, with imaginative reconstruction of the writer's thoughts.

The English, Peter Ackroyd tells us in this fascinating collection, see more ghosts than any other nation. Each region has its own particular spirits, from the Celtic ghosts of Cornwall to the dobies and boggarts of the north. Some speak and some are silent, some smell of old leather, others of fragrant thyme. From medieval times to today stories have been toldand apparitions seen - ghosts who avenge injustice, souls who long for peace, spooks who just want to have fun.

Highly original and magnificent in scope, Ackroyd's latest work discovers the roots of English cultural history in the Anglo-Saxon period, and traces it through the centuries.What does it mean to be English? This dazzling book demonstrates that a quintessentially English quality can be discovered in all forms of English culture, not only in literature but also in painting, music, architecture, philosophy and science. Just as "London: The Biography" guided the reader through the capital city with a mixture of narrative and theme, so "Albion", employing the same techniques, engages the reader with stories and surprises - from Beowulf to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, via Chaucer and Shakespeare, to the Bronte sisters, 'Alice through the Looking Glass' and 'Lord of the Rings'. "Albion" moves from medieval mystery plays to music hall and pantomime; painting is here, with Hogarth and Turner; and music, with Purcell and Vaughan Williams. Even the English obsession with gardening is represented. Witty, provocative and anecdotal, this is Peter Ackroyd at his most brilliant and exuberant.

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 rua 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.

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.

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?

Ficticio relato autobiográfico en el que se narran las vicisitudes de sus últimos años, la pobreza y el exilio parisino de quien había llegado a ser el dramaturgo más aplaudido y admirado de Londres.

Famous for its ingenuity and wit, "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 and medieval society. Incorporating every style of Medieval narrative - bawdy anecdote, allegorical fable and courtly romance - the tales encompass the blend of universal human themes and individual personal detail that have fascinated readers for over 600 years. Here they are retold in full by Peter Ackroyd. The edition also includes an introduction by Ackroyd, detailing some of the historical background to Chaucer and the Tales, and details why he has been inspired to translate them for a new generation of readers.