Peter Ackroyd - Albion. The Origins of the English Imagination [2004][A]

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 gore, a passion for the past, a delight in eccentricity, and much more. A brilliant, engaging and often surprising narrative, Albion reveals the manifold nature of English genius.

Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Even a writer as popular, prolific and inventive as Ackroyd can concoct a bore. Nevertheless, Albion is likely to succeed on his considerable reputation and the success of his bestselling London: The Biography. Here Ackroyd seeks to define and describe what he sees as distinctive qualities of the English imagination as they have developed since the country's beginnings. Quoting the 17th-century Richard Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy, he claims a cultural continuity-"we weave the same web still, twist the same rope again and again." But the Englishman, as Daniel Defoe remarked, and Ackroyd concedes, remained infinitely adaptable, having already assimilated waves of invasion and conquest-and become "Roman-Saxon-Danish-Norman-English." Explaining that "mungrell" mingling in 53 thematic chapters, Ackroyd appropriates nearly every quality in literature and the arts for England (largely ignoring Ireland and downplaying Scotland). He cites love of gardens, worship of trees, cultivation of dream-visionaries, affection for eccentricity, affinity for morbid sensationalism, attraction to understatement, pleasure in alliteration, fondness for cross-dressing, passion for antiquarianism, ease with an empirical temper, relish for detective and ghost stories, penchant for portrait miniatures, creative adaptation of folksong. It is a sentimental stretch. Where London was animated by a brilliant exploitation of anecdote, Albion lacks its verve. Rather, it is armed with a goodly-and defensive-helping of "It has often been said," "it might even be said," "It is no surprise, either, that," and often bogs down in bland thesis and empty persuasion. Yet vastly learned and frequently engaging, it may prove good bedtime reading-a veritable night school. B&w and color illus. not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
Following the triumph of London: A Biography (2001), Ackroyd confidently and entertainingly delves into a far more elusive aspect of the English experience, the origins of England's distinctive, widely influential imagination. Albion is an ancient name for the island as well as for the primeval giant who made it his home, a clue to the two primary characteristics Ackroyd discusses in this marvelous synthesis: the deeply rooted connection between the English and their land and a reverence for the past. Ackroyd begins by discussing how trees became sacred symbols of life and continuity, and, as he does with each ensuing subject, whether it's the sea, stones, rain, gardens, music, painting, or ghosts, he presents a cascade of evocative examples, keenly interpreting various artists, composers, and dozens of writers, including Chaucer, Blake, Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Austen, and J. R. R. Tolkien. The English imagination is stoked by visions and leavened with wit, Ackroyd avers, forming not a linear progression but, rather, a shining circle that leads back to the "original sources of inspiration," be they Celtic, classical, or Christian. A master extrapolator and wonderfully epigrammatic stylist fluent in many disciplines, Ackroyd has created a key to English creativity past, present, and future. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Reviews
“An ingenious essay in cultural anthropology.”--The New York Times Book

“Beguiling. . . . A hugely readable book. . . . Pick it up whenever you need, open it wherever you like, read as much as you want with profit and pleasure.”--The Wall Street Journal

"This work could have been produced only by the liveliest of intellects, drawing on an astonishing depth of experience. Ackroyd in his own writing demonstrates the quality of the English imagination." --The Spectator

"As ever, where Ackroyd excels is in the patient accumulation of suggestive detail or sudden descent unto a distinctive corner of the English world." --The Independent

From the Inside Flap
Highly original and magnificent in scope, Albion discovers the roots of English cultural history in the Anglo-Saxon period, and traces it through the centuries. What does it mean to be English? This dazzling work demonstrates that a quintessentially English quality can be discovered in all forms of English culture, not only in literature but also in painting, music, architecture, philosophy and science.
Just as London: The Biography guided the reader through the great city with a mixture of narrative and theme, so Albion, employing the same techniques, engages the reader with stories and surprises -- from Beowulf to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, via Chaucer and Shakespeare, to the Brontë sisters, Alice Through the Looking Glass and Lord of the Rings. Witty, provocative and anecdotal, this is Peter Ackroyd at his most brilliant and exuberant.

From the Back Cover
“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.” -- Sunday Times

“Albion is an explosion, full of particles whizzing through air…crammed, digressive, learned, knotted.” -- Daily Telegraph

About the Author
Peter Ackroyd is the author of biographies of Dickens, Blake, and Thomas More, and of the bestselling London: The Biography. He has won the Whitbread Book Award for Biography, 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 Award for Literature. He lives in London.