It is violent, often sickly, and suffered several waves of plague. Here, the London of Peter Ackroyd takes its place in the long line of writers who, like Daniel Defoe (1725 : 78), felt that “ London consumes all, circulates all, exports all, and at last pays for all and this is trade this greatness and wealth of the city, is the soul of the commerce to all the nation.”ĥThe big city is corrupted by vice, prostitution, gambling, drink and smoking. The author describes how Soho took on, by 1844, French characteristics, due to the importance of the immigrants from across the Channel to this district. These migrants brought with them a little of the places they had left for London. In 1870, the author tells us, London housed more Irish than Dublin and more Catholics than Rome. She is irrigated by the flow of immigrants. The project is chaotic, another of London’s character traits, according to the author, who notes that all its grand urban projects have ended up with results very far removed from the original intentions.ĤIn its daily life, the city feeds on men and the ideas which they provide it with. Their activity collapsed from the 1970s onwards and were reborn with the internationalisation of finance which led to the development of the Isle of Dogs, on which Canary Wharf today stands. The docks were then at the heart of London’s prosperity. This was the case in 1840: London was then both capital of an empire, a financial centre on an international scale and the commercial centre of the world. The Thames reflects the diverse activities conducted by Londoners to make their city the world’s largest conglomeration. The city owes the river its appearance and its character, Ackroyd claims.
Treating the big city as a human body allows the author to bring out London’s most characteristic traits: commerce and violence.ģThe big city engages in trade and the Thames – to which the author has since dedicated another book to – is its backbone.
This original approach is announced by the author from the introduction on, although it is more evident in the second part of the book than in the first 100 pages, which retrace the human origins of the city from pre-historical times onwards. These include, for example, “London as theatre”, “Pestilence and flame”, “London as crowd” and “Blitz”. Peter Ackroyd knows this well and glides skilfully between the different themes which, together, constitute London in the human image. When the city becomes the protagonist of the story, rather than being merely the substratum on which men’s actions take place, it is no longer necessary to follow urban development in a chronological manner. This process, which consists in considering London as a subject rather than an object, is common in literature: Thomas Mann, Henry James, Friedrich Nietzsche and Marcel Proust have applied it to Venice, while Honoré de Balzac and Victor Hugo have done the same with Paris.ĢIt is true that such anthropomorphism grants the author a great deal of freedom. In London: The Biography, Peter Ackroyd has chosen to see London as a human body, shot through with arteries, made up of organs and subject to violent moods.
Different authors have compared these cities to social bodies, monsters devouring souls and Nature, animals recovering from the blows meted out to them or organisms growing without limit or logic. 1The largest cities have often provided food for metaphor.
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