Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination - Hardcover

Peter Ackroyd

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1856197212 ISBN 13: 9781856197212

Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 2002

Synopsis

Peter Ackroyd follows his acclaimed London: The Biography with a book that once again plumbs the history of England and uncovers the continuities that link past and present. A dazzling, highly original exploration of English culture from its roots in the Anglo-Saxon period to the present day, ALBION demonstrates that a quintessentially English quality imbues every form of cultural expression—not just literature, but also painting, music, architecture, philosophy, and science.

In an intricate, expertly crafted mixture of narrative and theme, Ackroyd travels through time and across cultural categories as he seeks out the roots and the essence of the English imagination. With an irrepressible curiosity and contagious enthusiasm, he moves from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf, Hogarth to Hockney, Purcell to Vaughan Williams, Inigo Jones to Edward Lutyens. His lively biographical sketches and incisive exegeses of the work of figures both well known and less familiar deepen our understanding and appreciation of our inherited culture. Like London: The Biography, ALBION contains unexpected treasures, including a thought-provoking look at immigration and assimilation and a delightful digression into the English obsession with gardening. Black-and-white photographs and drawings, and two lavish four-color inserts add visual appeal throughout.

Ackroyd’s talent for distilling information and presenting it with novelistic flair shines on every page of ALBION. It is Peter Ackroyd at his most brilliant and exuberant.

About this title

From the Back Cover

“Ackroyd covers not only literature but art, architecture, music and almost everything else that has passed through the minds of the English...just one damn interesting thing after another.” -- Sunday Times

“Albion is an explosion, full of particles whizzing through air...crammed, digressive, learned, knotted.” -- Daily Telegraph
From the Trade Paperback edition.

About the Author

Peter Ackroyd is the author of biographies of Dickens, Blake, and Thomas More, and of the bestselling London: The Biography. He has won the Whitbread Book Award for Biography, the Royal Society of Literature’s William Heinemann Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, The Guardian Fiction prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the South Bank Award for Literature. He lives in London.
From the Trade Paperback edition.

Edition details

• Publisher: Chatto & Windus
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1856197212
• ISBN 13: 9781856197212
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 516