Peter Ackroyd's The Life of Thomas More is a masterful reconstruction of the life and imagination of one of the most remarkable figures of history. Thomas More (1478-1535) was a renowned statesman; the author of a political fantasy thatgave a name to a literary genre and a worldview (Utopia); and, most famously, a Catholic martyr and saint.
Born into the professional classes, Thomas More applied his formidable intellect and well-placed connections to become the most powerful man in England, second only to the king. As much a work of history as a biography, The Life of...

From the imagination of one of the most brilliant writers of our time and bestselling author of The Life of Thomas More, a novel that playfully imagines how the -modern- era might appear to a thinker seventeen centuries hence.
At the turn of the 38th century, London's greatest orator, Plato, is known for his lectures on the long, tumultuous history of his now tranquil city. Plato focuses on the obscure and confusing era that began in A.D. 1500, the Age of Mouldwarp. His subjects include Sigmund Freud's comic masterpiece -Jokes and Their Relation to the Subconscious, - and Charles...

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK

Here are two thousand years of London s history and folklore, its chroniclers and criminals and plain citizens, its food and drink and countless pleasures. Blackfriar s and Charing Cross, Paddington and Bedlam. Westminster Abbey and St. Martin in the Fields. Cockneys and vagrants. Immigrants, peasants, and punks. The Plague, the Great Fire, the Blitz. London at all times of day and night, and in all kinds of weather. In well-chosen anecdotes, keen observations, and the words of hundreds of its citizens and visitors, Ackroyd reveals the...

With his characteristic enthusiasm and erudition, Peter Ackroyd follows his acclaimed London: A Biography with an inspired look into the heart and the history of the English imagination. To tell the story of its evolution, Ackroyd ranges across literature and painting, philosophy and science, architecture and music, from Anglo-Saxon times to the twentieth-century. Considering what is most English about artists as diverse as Chaucer, William Hogarth, Benjamin Britten and Viriginia Woolf, Ackroyd identifies a host of sometimes contradictory elements: pragmatism and whimsy, blood and...

The poet John Milton is transposed to the New World, where he has travelled to flee the tyranny of the Old. His adventures with his amanuensis, Goosequill, are by turns picaresque and delightful. However, Paradise Found will ultimately be lost in the most appalling and bloody circumstances.

On ritual occasions, Plato, the orator, summons the citizens of London to impart the ancient history of their city, dwelling particularly on the unhappy era of Mouldwarp (AD 1500-2300). He lectures upon "The Origin of Species" by the nineteenth-century novelist Charles Dickens and on Sigmund Freud while providing a glossary of twentieth-century terms, and explaining such early myths of creation as "super-string theory'"and "relativity." But then he has a dream, or vision, or he goes on a real journey - opinions are divided - and enters a vast underground cavern, where citizens of Mouldwarp...

Geoffrey Chaucer enjoyed an eventful life, serving with the Duke of Clarence and with Edward III. Through his wife, Philippa, he gained the patronage of John of Gaunt, which helped him carve out a career at Court. His official posts included Controller of Customs at the Port of London, Knight of the Shire for Kent, and King's Forester. He went on numerous adventurous diplomatic missions to France and Italy, and in 1359 was taken prisoner in France and ransomed.
He began to write in the 1360s, and his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, dominated the last part of his life. He died in 1400....

Dickens' final, unfinished novel has inspired generations of speculation Choirmaster John Jasper is a man of deep hypocrisy. His public reputation is flawless yet privately he leads an immoral life, frequenting squalid opium dens. Although outwardly he seems delighted with the betrothal of his nephew Edwin Drood to Rosa Bud, one of his choristers, secretly he is consumed by jealousy. But he is not alone in hoping for Edwin's demise. Among others, hot-tempered Neville Landless has also made an enemy of Drood--so when Edwin disappears, at whom should the accusing finger point?

As the case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce--a long and hopeless lawsuit over a disputed will--drags slowly on through the courts, it begins to wear down all those caught in its complicated web. Esther Summerson, an orphan placed in the care of the kind and gentle John Jarndyce at Bleak House, can only watch on as the people she loves are consumed by the proceedings. But when Esther's past comes looking for her, will the discovery of her true identity finally lead her to the answers she has been searching for?