The primary problem with this book is Peter Ackroyd. This book isn't so much a history book as a tone poem or amusing essay with unannotated historical tidbits thrown in for framework. It's not really long enough for a proper book, and Ackroyd's long winded and portentious style only makes matte...
Peter Ackroy'd "Foundation" is a good book for casual English history geeks, such as myself. Not too fluffy, not too detailed. While I was sometimes surprised by his approach (unlike other sources I've read, he seems reluctant to diagnose some major royal players, such as Henry VI, as simply in...
I give this book one star for catching my interest. Although at first the "philosophical" writing style is rough reading, the story does catch it's reader during the ascending action. From there it carries a determined reader quickly through to the end and leaves you with an ache after the last p...
One of those stories one must have read. I was surprised to see how relatively unimportant Arthur himself is in the narrative. He plays a role fit for a king, not as the main protagonist, but as a constant and authoritative presence in the background. As if, without his ubiquitous and dominant pr...
What an amazing book! Profound, intriguing, emotionally heart-felt, disturbing. Everything you could want out of book. Which is to say - an incredible novel... but not for everyone.Reading HAWKSMOOR heartily rang the area of my aesthetic bells that J.G. Ballard or Steven Millhauser also chime ...
Ackroyd's usual locale is London, how the city regenerates itself from century to century, and how the ghosts of the past still exist in some way, coeval with the present populace. In a way 'The Plato Papers' followed that vision to its inevitable conclusion, as this time the present (that is to ...
At predictable intervals over the course of the last four centuries, some cynical iconoclast has suggested that William Shakespeare was a simple-minded actor from the hinterlands who was hired by an Oxford-educated aristocrat to serve as the public face for his plays. The latest incarnation of t...
If ever a book was written that reads like a dream, feels like a dream and which you will remember as a dream then it's this novel written by Peter Ackroyd. Instead of a dream I should say nightmare because after finishing the novel I felt like I had woken up from one. The first part of the book ...
Although I was initially unsure of whether I would enjoy reading this book or not, I think it was a very intriguing and thought-provoking read. I can see how some people may not like the text - I myself would not have picked this up if it hadn't been required for my British Studies minor - but I'...
Plot: This is the semi-biographical story of Charles and Mary Lamb, avid readers and fanatical in their love of Shakespeare, as they meet William Ireland an antiquarian book dealer who has made an unusual discovery. Since a lot of the events in this book are a matter of historical record, you may...
«دلقك و هيولا» يا آنگونه كه اسم اصلي‌اش است «دان لنو و گلم لايم‌هاوس» اولين رماني است كه از پيتر اكرويد نويسنده مشهور و پركار انگليسي به فارسي ترجمه شده است. پيتر اكرويد متولد 1949، رمان‌نويس مشهور انگليسي است كه در حوزه‌هاي شعر، نمايشنامه و زندگينامه‌نويسي فعاليت داشته و شهرتي براي خودش به هم زد...
An ordinance of 14 June 1643 had been passed ‘to prevent and suppress the licence of printing’. It was declared necessary to suppress the ‘great late abuses and frequent disorders in printing many false, forged, scandalous, seditious, libellous, and unlicensed papers, pamphlets, and books to the ...
That European revival in humane letters, and in classical scholarship, made a slow and fitful entry into the city. It was not necessarily on congenial soil. The Venetians have never been known for their commitment to scholarship, or to learning for its own sake; they are not inclined to abstract ...
was one of the “university wits,” a friend to both Nashe and Marlowe, who like many of his Oxbridge contemporaries was obliged to earn his living by hack-work. He was very popular at the time—plays like The Honourable History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay and The History of Orlando Furioso were...
It is charted in the pages of Utopia, Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels; the fact that all are fiction has not mitigated the effect. Islanders pride themselves on their ability to travel through inhospitable regions of the earth. When Abbot Brendan and his cohort of monks sailed across the c...
He was writing a story—he used the word casually and naturally now—concerning the resignation of a middle-ranking minister from the Wilson government. It was not the stuff of headlines, but with careful nurturing it could grow. Harry knew that the minister had been hastened from office as a resul...
It was a struggle in which many brave men were killed. The name of this king was Genghis Khan. He had achieved such glory by force of arms that there was no more renowned leader in the entire region. He lacked nothing that pertains to kingship. He faithfully observed all the laws of his religion;...
Beneath these vestiges of a vanished civilisation were Britons, with ivory and wooden pins showing that their shrouds had been laid in rows. Below these were Roman remains and pieces of Roman pavement. Beneath these Wren found sand and seashells. Ludgate Hill had once been under the sea. A trackw...
He was never actually rude to my face, but I knew that he was avoiding me; I suppose he was jealous of the fact that Uncle had left me £500, together with all the photographic equipment, but he never mentioned the subject. It occurred to me sometimes that he might know all about Uncle’s dirty sec...
Two days after our return from Marlow there had been reports in the London newspapers of the “unexampled tragedy” and “terrible misadventure” that had befallen Bysshe. The details of Martha’s death were recounted in some detail, with particular attention to the “foul creature” and “fiendish villa...
One of its members was congenitally restless, however, and in the spring of 1511 Erasmus travelled to Paris in order to arrange the publication of Moriae encomium. He was on occasions also absent-minded and eventually recalled that he had left some books, borrowed from John Colet, in his ‘cubicul...
Shew, and the false start with Mrs. Locke, had not materially affected Poe's passionate desire for female companionship. In the summer of 1848 he visited Mrs. Locke and her husband at Lowell, in Massachusetts, where he was about to deliver a lecture on “The Poets and Poetry of America.” Mrs. Lock...
