Peter Ackroyd Knihy

Útlá knížka přináší stručný životopis slavného anglického matematika, fyzika a astronoma přelomu 17. a 18. století. Sleduje ho od prvních do posledních dnů života, a to jako chlapce, studenta, profesora, vědce a veřejně činného člověka, spjatého hlavně s univerzitou, londýnskou mincovnou a Královskou společností. Autor využil nejen řadu současných pramenů o jeho životě, ale používá i mnoho citátů Newtonových současníků a zprostředkovává tak autentický pohled nejen na vznik jeho objevů a prací a utváření dodnes platných zásad vědecké práce a profilu vědce. Seznamuje nás i s některými méně známými skutečnostmi z Newtonova života, i s jeho vztahem k lidem, náboženství a alchymii. Především nám umožňuje poznat Newtona jako člověka a pochopit tak plně charakter i jednání jeho rozporuplné a složité osobnosti.

Im Jahr 1900 sitzt Oscar Wilde in einem heruntergekommenen Zimmer des Hotel d'Alsace und beginnt, ein Tagebuch zu schreiben. Dies ist nicht der Wilde, den die Nachwelt kennt – nicht der elegante Dandy, dessen Theaterstücke in London gefeiert wurden. Er ist ein gebrochener Mann, dessen homoerotische Neigungen ihm zum Verhängnis wurden. Sein Schicksal manifestierte sich durch den Maquis von Queensberry, den Vater seines Geliebten Bosie, der alles daran setzte, die Beziehung zu beenden. Wilde sah sich öffentlicher Verleumdung ausgesetzt und klagte Queensberry, doch er unterschätzte die Wucht der öffentlichen Meinung und den Zorn seines Gegners. Letztlich wurde er selbst zum Angeklagten. Gossenjungen, käufliche Knaben und ehemalige Freunde sagten gegen ihn aus, und die Welt, die er einst erobern wollte, offenbarte ihr hässliches Gesicht. Verurteilt zu zwei Jahren Zuchthaus, verließ er das Gericht in Ketten. In diesem fiktiven Tagebuch entfaltet sich das Drama seines Lebens, das von höchsten Empfindungen und tiefsten Abgründen geprägt ist. Peter Ackroyd hat sich mit bemerkenswerter Sensibilität in Wildes Sprache und Stil eingefühlt und ein Werk von großer sprachlicher Eleganz und Eindringlichkeit geschaffen.

"Peter Ackroyd discloses the true nature of Blake's life and art. He traces his progression from early childhood in a Dissenting household, through his apprenticeship as an engraver and his studies at the newly formed Royal Academy Schools, to his full maturity when he produced the masterpieces upon which his reputation rests - works such as Jerusalem, Milton and Songs of Innocence and of Experience, works that were as neglected during his lifetime as they are celebrated today."--BOOK JACKET. "But we also see Blake in the context of his period; we see him caught up in the Gordon Riots, excited by the French Revolution, being tried for sedition during the Napoleonic wars, attracted to various forms of spiritual radicalism and sexual magic."--BOOK JACKET. "This is the first biography to reveal the true affinities between Blake's art and his poetry; in the magnificent biographical narrative we see Blake as a Cockney visionary and a London tradesman, as a prophet and an artisan."--Jacket

Benátky, snad nejkrásnější a nejromantičtější město na světě, každoročně přitahují miliony turistů. Peter Ackroyd je povýšil na hrdinu svého díla, v němž fascinujícím způsobem sleduje vývoj města na 118 ostrovech od založení až k dnešku. Díky tomu máme jedinečnou příležitost vidět Benátky očima nad jiné povolanýma: jak je zevrubně poznal tento anglický prozaik a básník, novinář, literární historik a kritik, známý životopisy osobností jako Shakespeare, Newton, Wilde, More či Blake a zejména bestsellerem o životě svého milovaného města Londýna.

"London: The Biography is the pinnacle of Peter Ackroyd's brilliant obsession with the eponymous city. In this work, Ackroyd brings the reader through time into the city whose institutions and idiosyncrasies have permeated much of his works of fiction and nonfiction.". "Peter Ackroyd sees London as a living, breathing organism, with its own laws of growth and change. Reveling in the city's riches as well as its raucousness, the author traces thematically its growth from the time of the Druids to the beginning of the twenty-first century.". "Anecdotal, insightful, and wonderfully entertaining, London is animated by Ackroyd's concern for the close relationship between the present and the past, as well as 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."--BOOK JACKET.

The second volume of Peter Ackroyd's masterful history of England: the Tudors

Having written enthralling biographies of London and of its great river, the Thames, Peter Ackroyd now turns to England itself. This first volume of six takes us from the time that England was first settled, more than 15,000 years ago, to the death in 1509 of the first Tudor monarch, Henry VII. In it, Ackroyd takes us from Neolithic England, which we can only see in the most tantalising glimpses - a stirrup found in a grave, some seeds at the bottom of a bowl - to the long period of Roman rule; from the Dark Ages when England was invaded by a ceaseless tide of Angles, Saxons and Jutes, to the twin glories of medieval England - its great churches and monasteries and its common law. With his extraordinary skill for evoking time and place, he tells the familiar story of king succeeding king in rich prose, with profound insight and some surprising details. The food we ate, the clothes we wore, the punishments we endured, even the jokes we told are all found here, too.

NOW AN UNMISSABLE FILM STARRING BILL NIGHY, DOUGLAS BOOTH AND OLIVIA COOKE. ‘Mesmerising, macabre and totally brilliant’ Daily Mail Before the Ripper, fear had another name. London, 1880. A series of gruesome murders attributed to the mysterious 'Limehouse Golem' strikes fear into the heart of the capital. Inspector John Kildare must track down this brutal serial killer in the damp, dark alleyways of riverside London. But how does Dan Leno, music hall star extraordinaire, find himself implicated in this crime spree, and what does Elizabeth Cree, on trial for the murder of her husband, have to hide? Peter Ackroyd brings Victorian London to life in all its guts and glory, as we travel from the glamour of the music hall to the slums of the East End, meeting George Gissing and Karl Marx along the way.

'There is no Light without Darknesse and no Substance without Shaddowe' So proclaims Nicholas Dyer, assistant to Sir Christopher Wren and the man with a commission to build seven London churches to stand as beacons of the enlightenment. But Dyer plans to conceal a dark secret at the heart of each church - to create a forbidding architecture that will survive for eternity. Two hundred and fifty years later, London detective Nicholas Hawksmoor is investigating a series of gruesome murders on the sites of certain eighteenth-century churches - crimes that make no sense to the modern mind . . . 'Chillingly brilliant . . . sinister and stunningly well executed' Independent on Sunday Peter Ackroyd was born in London in 1949. A novelist, biographer and historian, he has been the literary editor of The Spectator and chief book reviewer for the The Times, as well as writing several highly acclaimed books including a biography of Dickens and London: The Biography. He lives in London.

Covers the whole of English cultural history from the Anglo-Saxon period to the present day--from the Venerable Bede through English myths such as the legends about King Arthur and Albion to C.S. Lewis; from Chaucer through Spenser to George Eliot; from the English mystics through the philosopher Locke to Iris Murdoch; from Purcell through Elgar to Michael Tippett; from Hogarth through Constable to Turner; from mystery plays through Shakespeare to music hall. Ackroyd's favourite themes are here: the visionary poetry of Blake, the theatrical novels of Dickens, the humanism of Thomas More--and there are also explorations of forgery and plagiarism, Romanticism, artificiality, farce and pantomime, assimilation and energy.--From publisher description