London

It comes as no surprise that the biographer of famous Londoners such as Dickens, Blake and Thomas More should now turn his talents to London itself. The subject almost seems to be one that Ackroyd has been limbering up to tackle for many years, given the prominence that the city assumes in novels such as Hawksmoor, Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem. Claiming that London, a living organism, requires a biography instead of a history, he seeks to capture its vitality and uniqueness through a myriad of sources and many years of experience as one of the greatest connoisseurs of the city's past. Illustrated in both colour and black and white, the book charts the growth of London from the days when mammoths roamed its forests (the bones of one of them were excavated in 1690 at what would later become King's Cross) to the opening of the Tate Modern. But this is not a typical chronological history. London for Ackroyd is a palimpsest still bearing the visible imprints of Roman roads and forts, Saxon churches, Viking raids and medieval wells - all as real and as vibrant, and as much a part of today's London, as the city's more recent landmarks. It is this relationship between the past and the present - what he calls a 'continuity of experience' - that intrigues Ackroyd and makes for some of the book's most fascinating reading. Did you know, for example, that Clerkenwell has been home, at one time or another, to a continuum of social radicals such as Wat Tyler, the Chartists, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, Marx's daughter, Lenin and, most recently, The Big Issue? There are accounts, as you would expect, of well-known events like the plague, the Great Fire and the Blitz, but also sections on smells, children, magic, suicide and murder. The account of murder London-style recounts the history of Jack the Ripper, of course, but also points out the evidence for a serial strangler in the 18th century whose trademark was biting off his victim's noses. Ackroyd states in his Preface that London can never be glimpsed in its entirety, only experienced 'as a wilderness of alleys and passages, courts and thoroughfares'. He does a superb job of guiding us through this maze, leading us through the centuries and, like a Victorian police constable, shining his torch into the most obscure byways to reveal the sinister, the arcane and the marvellous. Reviewed by Ross King, author of Brunelleschi's Dome (Kirkus UK)