Arts, Culture and Sport
History and Politics
Literary Londoners
London Landscape
London Lives > Literary Londoners
Click on the ISBN to find the London Lives recommendations in your London library.
Books indicated with
are available in accessible formats; check with
Revealweb
for further details.
London Lives has been created in association with the National Portrait Gallery - check out the pictures where you see the National Portrait Gallery logo.
Vintage, ISBN: 0749391766
For the first time, Ackroyd has given us a comprehensive picture of "English Blake" as the artist and engraver that he primarily was during his own lifetime. And he has shown how the development of Blake's art and poetry was influenced by the work he was obliged to do in order to keep body and soul together. Ackroyd clearly loves Blake's work. He also tries hard to understand the man himself, the society in which he lived, and the influence that his background, his training, his interests, and his friends and patrons had on his creations. He is a painstaking and knowledgeable biographer, and he has drawn on all the known sources, as well as many new resources, to bring Blake's life and works together. So, Ackroyd's Blake is less the unworldly, mystical, visionary poet who wrote prophetic books, conversed with Biblical figures, and saw angels in the fields of London. He is more the hard-working, prickly, intelligent, opinionated Cockney artisan who, with the constant help and support of his wife, Catherine, yet found time to develop his own philosophical ideas and to write (and sing) and illustrate his poetry.
-- Lambeth
Puffin, ISBN: 0141311401
Not an autobiography (because the author insists that it isn't), more a memoir of Roald Dahl's childhood containing some hilariously true stories, such as the great mouse plot of 1924 and the car ride which nearly cost the author his nose.
-- BexleyFaber, ISBN: 0571200435
The winner of the Whitbread Best First Novel 1990, this is the story of Karim Amir, "an Englishman born and bred - almost", who lives with his English mother and Indian father in the South London suburbs.
-- BromleyCLR James: A Life - Farrukh Dhondy
Wiedenfeld and Nicholson, ISBN: 0297646133
This biography is actually more of a memoir, with various riffs and diversions, some of which have more to do with Dhondy than James. The subject lodged with the author for a time, and there are some lovely personal touches, illustrating James's ability to make connections: "The Civil Rights movement," he once insisted in conversation, "began with nylon... the cotton economy was destroyed." But it's mighty hard to come to grips with such a diverse life, and Dhondy succeeds only in snatches.
-- LambethFanny Burney, author - Claire Harman
Flamingo/HarperCollins, 10/01, ISBN: 0006550363
An acclaimed insight into both Burney's extraordinary life, and eighteenth century London.
-- KingstonISBN: 0006544800
Probably no English poet of the 19th century is so widely read or greatly loved as Gerard Manley Hopkins. Yet in his lifetime he was almost entirely unpublished, and only a handful of his close friends knew that he wrote poetry at all. Martin is the first biographer to have had unrestricted access to Hopkins' surviving papers. The result is, in places, revelatory. Martin shows that the homosexuality many find latent in Hopkins' poetry blossomed in his undergraduate love for a flamboyant friend, and how the severity of Jesuit discipline constricted his creative faculty, at times almost to the point of strangulation.
-- NewhamThe Life & Works of Alfred Bestall - Caroline Bott
Bloomsbury, 10/04, ISBN: 0747573360
Written by Bestall's goddaughter, this book draws together a unique archive of illustrations and artwork, diaries and letters reflecting a fascinating life.
-- KingstonISBN: 0099461064
Critically acclaimed novelist Kingsley Amis was born in Norbury and educated at Norbury College and the City of London School. He used the local area as inspiration for his books and spent many hours studying in Norbury Library where he was grateful for the support and encouragement given to him. These memoirs describe his family life and school days in South London as well as his time at Oxford and the move from academic to full-time writer.
-- Croydon