Highly original and magnificent in scope, Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination discovers the roots of English cultural history in the Anglo-Saxon period, and traces it through the centuries.
This is much more than history; it is a tapestry of inspiration and love
One cannot but marvel at Ackroyd's erudition, his energy in marshallin g minutiae, his ear for quotation, his flair for dazzling juxtapositions, his vibrant imagination and sheer exuberance
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
Peter Ackroyd is an award-winning historian, biographer, novelist, poet and broadcaster. He is the author of the acclaimed non-fiction bestsellers
London: The Biography, Thames: Sacred River and
London Under; biographies of figures including Charles Dickens, William Blake, Charlie Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock; and a multi-volume history of England
. He has won the Whitbread Biography Award, 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 Prize for Literature. He holds a CBE for services to literature.