For Peter Ackroyd, London is a living organism, with its own laws of growth and change, so his London is a "biography", not a history. It differs from other histories, too, in the range and diversity of its contents. The book is not a chronological record. There are chapters on the history of light, the history of childhood and the history of suicide, the history of Cockney speech and the history of drink. Anecdotal, brilliant and wonderfully entertaining, London is animated by Ackroyd's concern for the close relationship between the present and the past as well by what he describes as the peculiar "echoic" quality of London whereby its texture and history actively affect the lives and personalities of its citizens.
