A biography of the city of London. It takes us on a journey - historical, geographical and imaginative - through the city of London.

An abridged edition of Peter Ackroyd's magisterial biography of the city of London. Prize-winning historian, novelist and broadcaster, Peter Ackroyd takes us on a journey - historical, geographical and imaginative - through the city of London. Moving back and forth through time, Ackroyd is an effortless, exuberant guide to times of plague and pestilence, fire and floods, crime and punishment, and sex and theatre. He brings the ever changing streets alive for the reader and shows us what lies beneath our feet and above our heads. His biography is as rich in detail and fizzing with vitality as the city itself.

Review
“Peter Ackroyd is the greatest living chronicler of London” Independent “Peter Ackroyd was born to write the biography of London...a brilliant book” Sunday Telegraph “It would be no exaggeration to say that Peter Ackroyd's 'biography' of our captial is the book about London” — A N Wilson Daily Mail “You will not find a better, more visionary book about a place we take for granted” Observer "[London] may be several years old but it remains one of the leading narratives as he cleverly weaves through centuries of history to reveal to us the hundreds of different cities within a city." — Fiona Hamilton The Times

Peter Ackroyd has written acclaimed biographies of Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Charles Dickens, William Blake, Shakespeare and Thomas More, as well as short books about Chaucer, J.M.W. Turner, Isaac Newton, Edgar Allan Poe and, most recently, Wilkie Collins. A bestselling biographer, historian, novelist and broadcaster, he holds a CBE for services to literature. He is also the author of Albion: The Origin of the English Imagination, Venice: Pure City and Thames: Sacred River. He lives in London.