A Celebration (And Map!) Of London: The Biography
Peter Ackroyd's masterwork approaches its quarter-century.
It’s one of the greatest books ever written about the capital. Peter Ackroyd’s London: The Biography (2000) is a sprawling tome that explores our city’s past through themed chapters. I owe this book a great debt. It first set me off on what became a lifelong obsession with the city. As it approaches its quarter-century, I’ve re-read the whole thing to see how it’s aged with time.
***And I’ve also mapped it.***
Yup, every single street, building, station, park and “noisome alley” that Ackroyd mentions within the ~900 pages. I’m not even sure why. It’s just an urge with me. But the results, I hope, will be of interest to those who also adore the book.
Welcome to the most intensely geeky edition yet of Londonist: Time Machine…
But first, two announcements…
📣📣 Thanks everyone for all your support and lovely comments. We’ve been blown away by how many people read this newsletter each week. We’re now eight months old, and it’s been an absolute blast writing these features and watching the reaction. Now feels like the right time to make a few minor tweaks to make the newsletter even better. This Wednesday newsletter will continue as ever, with an in-depth topic from London’s history. There may be occasions (like school holidays) when I take a week off to spend some time exploring the city with my kids… then again, I might still be able to fit it in… we’ll have to see.
For paying subscribers, as mentioned last week, your Friday newsletter will be a little different from now on. I was getting a bit restless with the “5 Historical Quirks to spot in…” format. It was starting to feel formulaic. So instead expect a short newsletter on whatever historical nugget has tickled my fancy over the past week. Sometimes this might relate to a new exhibition or item in the news, other times it’ll be something entirely whimsical, and sometimes (like this week) I’ll use it to go into a bit more depth on the Wednesday topic. Much more fun!
We’ll also be taking the opportunity to bring in some new voices (so it’s not all me, me, me!) in the Sunday newsletter and maybe trying out some new formats… though still with the same aim of bringing you a regular handful of five historical treasures we’ve dug up from the city’s depths. And that’ll now be in the hands of my Londonist colleague/behind-the-scenes Time Machinist Lydia Manch, hopefully with some nice cameos from other London history-lovers to come.
If you’re not a paying subscriber and want to help support us (plus get access to the archive, invitations to events and those bonus newsletters I mention), you can sign up with this button.
📣📣 And even more exciting news. I’m delighted to announce that Londonist will soon be launching a second weekly Substack newsletter. Called Londonist: Urban Palette, the free newsletter will explore all the latest happenings in London’s visual arts scene. It’s headed up by Tabish Khan — a man so into his art that he visits over 1,000 museums and galleries every year. That will be launching really soon, but you can sign up now via Substack.
Now, on to the History Radar!
History Radar
🏛🪶 LEGION: The British Museum's huge new exhibition -- in partnership with Horrible Histories -- is Legion: Life in the Roman Army. Get the lowdown on the West's first modern, professional fighting force through the life and service of a real Roman soldier, Claudius Terentianus. Letters written on papyri by soldiers from Roman Egypt and the Vindolanda tablets -- some of the oldest surviving handwritten documents in Britain -- feature. The exhibition draws on treasures from across Europe, and beyond, and also includes items found in London, including a copper-alloy helmet from Kew. Opens 1 February.
🌳🏡 DULWICH HISTORY: If you’re interested in this particular bit of south London, then sign up for Brian Green’s online talk on Tuesday 6 February (8pm). Brian “has a lifetime’s collection of images of past Dulwich together with first-hand memories, interviews with past residents and hours spent in the archives”, so has plenty to share.
🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️LGBTQ+ WESTMINSTER: Philip Scott leads two of his queer tours of Westminster this month, which whisk you on a journey from the Stuart period to the present day, meeting the likes of trans fencer Chevalier D'Eon de Beaumont and Oscar Wilde. These run on 4 and 23 February as part of LGBT+ History Month.
🛬🌍 CROYDON AIRPORT: Once London’s main air strip (and the largest airport terminal in the world), Croydon Airport has been well-preserved as a museum. It’s open on the first Sunday of every month (4 Feb) and makes an excellent half-day out. To whet your appetite, here are 11 surprising facts about the airport. Also on the Sunday, the Kirkaldy Testing Museum in Southwark has one of its periodic open days (prebook). Perhaps you could fit both in?
🏛 ATHENAEUM 200: The private members’ club in St James’s is 200 years old this year. In a free public lecture at the nearby Society of Antiquaries (Tue 6 Feb), Michael Wheeler discussed the club’s history and some of its prominent members, who were chosen on the basis of their achievements rather than on their background or political affiliation.
🎤🙎♀️👩🏻 LADIES WHO LONDON: Have you ever listened to the Ladies Who London podcast? Each week, hosts Alex and Fiona dive deep into a lesser-known topic from London’s history. It’s not dissimilar to what we do in this newsletter. Anyhow, their first ever live recording is coming up on 20 March at the wonderful Wanstead Tap. The ladies will be joined by Leo Hollis, the author of numerous excellent books about the city’s past. Tickets are sure to sell out quickly, so book now if you’re interested.
Now, back to Mr Ackroyd…
Re-Reading, And Mapping London: The Biography
“Yet the ancient city and the modern city literally lie beside each other; one cannot be imagined without the other. That is one of the secrets of the city’s power.”
I’ve read London: The Biography three times. Once when it debuted in 2000; again a decade later; and once more at the tail end of 2023. I can confirm that, on a third reading, it is still utterly enchanting.
If you’ve never had the considerable pleasure, London: The Biography is a ~900 page history of the capital told with idiosyncratic gusto. It is vaguely chronological, but with themed chapters (fire, ghosts, play, smells…) that ricochet through the ages like temporal popcorn.
What really sets it apart from other London histories, though, is the tone. London is anthropomorphised into some kind of quasi-sentient organism. It remembers. It anticipates. It has a life of its own. Certain areas maintain their essence or character through many centuries, as though guided by a genius loci. At one point the city “dances upon its own ashes”. This is a history full of romantic flourish. It’s a device that has won Ackroyd many fans, but also many critics.
Reading for a third time, I can appreciate both views. But I remain a card-carrying fan of the Ackroydian method. If you want the cold, hard facts of history, then buy a reference book like the London Encyclopaedia. If you’re after a compelling read that inspires you to further action, then nothing, nothing beats London: A Biography.
It can change your life.
I first read the volume in 2000, the year it came out. I didn’t know the city particularly well at that stage, having moved down from Yorkshire a couple of years before. I’d never been to Hackney, or Shoreditch, or even Notting Hill. Ackroyd opened my eyes to a wider London, but more especially to a deeper one. No book I’ve read since has bettered it for describing London as a series of overlapping layers of incident, anecdote and human interaction. It inspired me to get out there, to walk the streets and to look for their hidden histories.
It’s a habit I never kicked. Indeed, the habit somehow — miraculously — grew to become my career. I’ve had the most wonderful 20 years, exploring and writing about the capital, and eventually writing my own books (and newsletters!) about London. And it all began with this one inspirational read at the turn of the Millennium. I owe Peter Ackroyd an incalculable debt for sparking that interest. And I know I’m not alone.
So I wanted to use today’s newsletter (and the Friday one for paying subscribers), to take a closer look at London: The Biography. In fact, I’m going to take a closer look than anyone’s attempted before: because I made this…
London: The Biography’s Geobibliome!
What, prey tell, is a geobibliome? It’s my made-up word for a map of all the geographic content within a book, or series of books. You may remember that I did it for the works of Charles Dickens a few months ago. This time round, I re-read London: The Biography and, every time the author mentions a mappable location, I added it to the growing chart1. If a street or location is not mentioned, then it doesn’t go on. This map even includes buildings and streets that no longer exist. These are shown in red.
In this way, we build up a map that shows everything the author is interested in, but leaves white space in places he has not covered. That is a geobibliome.
What I learned by mapping the Ackroydian Geobibliome
As you can see, it’s quite the beast. Here’s what leaps out at me:
Peter Ackroyd is a very location-hungry author. He namechecks (almost) all the major streets in central London and many, many minor ones. He finds something to say, for example, about every single turnoff from Cheapside, including several that no longer exist. I mean, look again at how densely packed this area is.
The two areas he writes most expansively about, perhaps inevitably, are the Square Mile and West End. It was a challenge to fit in all the labels. The only other area that gets similar density is his home turf2 of Clerkenwell.
Like the cliche of the London taxi driver, Ackroyd doesn’t like going south. Aside from a few sites around Borough High Street and the South Bank, we find mostly white space immediately south of the river. There’s even less to the deeper south, but this is also true of the east, west and north. London: The Biography is mostly Central-London-North-of-the-Thames: The Biography. (Though, to be fair, that is the area with the longest habitation.)
Green Park is perhaps the largest central location not to get a mention. The under-construction Millennium Dome is also absent, even though it was often in the news during the period in which Ackroyd was writing. Rosebery Avenue is a surprising omission, given that it links up to his favoured patch of Clerkenwell. On the whole though — my goodness, he’s thorough.
By the end of the book, I feel like Ackroyd is trolling me. The final chapters spit out a couple-dozen Greater London areas that have not previously been mentioned, as though he’s deliberately trying to get as much as he can onto my map3. It’s at this point – 3.59am on an insomniac Wednesday morning – that I start to question my sanity.
Why bother?
In truth, I don’t have a good reason for making the map. I’ve always felt a compulsion to make lists or maps when reading a book. I’m very much the kind of person who will scribble notes in the margin, or doodle a family tree at the back of a novel. Mapping Ackroyd was just something I’ve always wanted to do.
I was particularly curious to see if Peter Ackroyd had any large biases for certain parts of London. I’d heard others say that he doesn’t bother much with the south. Making a map is a semi-objective way to measure his coverage. And, yes, it’s definitely true that south London misses out somewhat.
It started out as a personal project, but I do hope that at least some readers will find it interesting to explore. In particular, I think it’s instructive to glance over some of the details coloured in red, which show places that have vanished. These include ancient coaching inns and demolished slums, but also more recent losses like the Museum of London and the Hardy Tree.
Finally, the map can also serve as a kind of visual index to the book. At a glance, you can see if the Biography ever visits the parts of town you’re most interested in. (Bad luck if you’re in south London.)
Overall, the experience of re-reading and mapping London: The Biography only increased my respect for Ackroyd’s achievement. Yes, it has its moments of giddy self-indulgence and romanticism. But its ability to enthuse and excite outweighs, in my opinion, any scholarly shortcomings that professional historians might highlight.
There’s much more to say about the book and the map. Paying subscribers can look forward to a supplementary post on Friday, in which I’ll dig a bit deeper into some of the stats (see if you can guess how many times Ackroyd uses the word ‘noisome’). I’ll also discuss a few of the curious errors that crept into that first edition.
Otherwise, enjoy exploring the map. And if it’s inspired you to read or re-read the book yourself, then consider getting a copy from Bookshop.org, which sources from independent bookshops4.
Thanks for reading. I’d LOVE to hear your own views of London: The Biography in the comments below (or you can email me on matt@londonist.com). Next week: I haven’t quite decided yet… but I think I need a bit of a break from historical mapping!
In case anyone’s wondering, I built it up in Photoshop… adding a new street or label each time somewhere new got mentioned. Yes, Illustrator or proper GIS software would have given a more polished map, but Photoshop’s the tool I know best.
Or lack-of-turf, given that one chapter describes the lack of green on Clerkenwell Green.
Even so, coverage of areas beyond Zone 1 is very thin on the ground. Somebody should write Greater London: The Biography.
And, for full disclosure, gives us a tiny commission every time someone buys a book from one of our links. Every little helps keep this newsletter ticking!
This is brilliant, very well done!
Absolutely amazing! Your map is a thing of beauty.