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Post by 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr on Jul 5, 2021 19:34:53 GMT
Peter Ackroyd is a well known novelist. I can't remember if it was Dickens or Blake that he became so obsessed with that he began to hallucinate him in the room. Probably Blake, as he did the same thing, his specialty was angels. I looked and he has produced a huge amount of books. Most seem instantly forgotten. In my worthless opinion, his London: The Biography is a superb achievement. Not quite in same stratosphere, but still interesting, London Under, a trawl of the city beneath the city. Anyone read his ghost novel, Hawksmoor? His early books at least (no idea about his later work), had historical characters in them or referenced. Hawksmoor references Nicholas Hawksmoor, a gifted architect that worked after the Great fire. Even though he isn't named as such as main character. I've read Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem, which became a film. Dan Leno being a famous music hall star. He wrote one about the tragic boy poet Chatterton, who faked medieval poems. Maybe his Rowley poems are mentioned in one of those books you have dem bones?
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Post by dem bones on Jul 5, 2021 19:40:58 GMT
In my worthless opinion, his London: The Biography is a superb achievement. Not quite in same stratosphere, but still interesting, London Under, a trawl of the city beneath the city. Anyone read his ghost novel, Hawksmoor? His early books at least (no idea about his later work), had historical characters in them or referenced. Hawksmoor references Nicholas Hawksmoor, a gifted architect that worked after the Great fire. Even though he isn't named as such as main character. I've read Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem, which became a film. Dan Leno being a famous music hall star. He wrote one about the tragic boy poet Chatterton, who faked medieval poems. Maybe his Rowley poems are mentioned in one of those books you have dem bones? I'm not sure. The only ones I can spot are 'English Ghosts' and the sewer/ underground one, not sure they'd be in either of them. Did you enjoy Dan Leno & the Limehouse Golem? Just spied a copy of Hawksmoor lurking above the shelves that know no shame ....
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Post by 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr on Jul 5, 2021 19:43:21 GMT
Oh he wrote the House of Doctor Dee. I forgot about that. The famous Elizabethan magician. helruner will know about him. I think it has time travel elements but I haven't read it.
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Post by 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr on Jul 5, 2021 19:50:28 GMT
I'm not sure. The only ones I can spot are 'English Ghosts' and the sewer/ underground one, not sure they'd be in either of them. Did you enjoy Dan Leno & the Limehouse Golem? Just spied a copy of Hawksmoor lurking above the shelves that know no shame .... I can't remember a lot about the book, as the film dominates my memory, and it was gruesome in parts. The Limehouse Golem is a serial killer, and possible suspects include Karl Marx and George Gissing. Gissing wrote a book that was a chore to read, New Grub Street. Edited to say called off strike and will tick like again.
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Post by dem bones on Jul 5, 2021 20:17:24 GMT
I'm not sure. The only ones I can spot are 'English Ghosts' and the sewer/ underground one, not sure they'd be in either of them. Did you enjoy Dan Leno & the Limehouse Golem? Just spied a copy of Hawksmoor lurking above the shelves that know no shame .... I can't remember a lot about the book, as the film dominates my memory, and it was gruesome in parts. The Limehouse Golem is a serial killer, and possible suspects include Karl Marx and George Gissing. Gissing wrote a book that was a chore to read, New Grub Street. Thank you. I guess I really should try his fiction when/ if I can get back into novels - even Witchfinder General is proving a slog. Scanned the Hawksmoor cover for forms sake. Peter Ackroyd - Hawksmoor (Hamish Hamilton, 1985) Russell Mills Blurb: In the London of the early eighteenth century Nicholas Dyer, architect, is planning to build a number of churches. He is a part of the Age of Enlightenment, that period obsessed with the notion of scientific progress and with the primacy of Reason, but he is an uneasy representative of it: he has older and darker allegiances which affect his relationship with such institutions as the Royal Society and which also determine the course of his private life and the nature of his churches. Nicholas Hawksmoor is a twentieth-century man, a senior detective in the C.I.D. who is investigating a series of murders which have occurred on the sites of certain eighteenth-century churches in London. He, like Dyer before him, is racked with doubts and on the verge of mental disintegration. The stench and violence of the eighteenth century, the horrors of Bedlam, the casual murder, all these seem to reach out over two hundred and fifty years, as events from each part of history seem to echo each other and, in so doing, to change each other.
Peter Ackroyd has written an extraordinary novel. In The Great Fire of London he explored the darker aspects of English history. and in The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde he recreated an earlier English culture. ln Hawksmoor he has brought together these two themes in a novel of detection and revelation. In Dyer and Hawksmoor he has created two remarkable characters and, in their two stories which mirror each other, he has fashioned an unforgettable meditation on the nature of time and causality — this is a novel of power, subtlety, and total originality.
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Post by andydecker on Jul 5, 2021 20:41:11 GMT
In my worthless opinion, his London: The Biography is a superb achievement. You are right. I also bought it, as a companion piece to Andrew Hussey's Paris - The Secret History.
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Post by andydecker on Jul 5, 2021 20:51:57 GMT
when/ if I can get back into novels - even Witchfinder General is proving a slog. I know what you mean. Starting stuff from the pile, reading a chapter or two, feeling bored, starting the next one - enjoying not one. Just going through the motions.
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Post by dem bones on Jul 5, 2021 21:03:31 GMT
when/ if I can get back into novels - even Witchfinder General is proving a slog. I know what you mean. Starting stuff from the pile, reading a chapter or two, feeling bored, starting the next one - enjoying not one. Just going through the motions. In my case it's not lack of enjoyment, more lack of stamina. That, and my concentration seems really shot. The shorter pieces seem so much easier to take in.
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Post by Swan on Jul 5, 2021 21:47:24 GMT
In my worthless opinion, his London: The Biography is a superb achievement. Not quite in same stratosphere, but still interesting, London Under, a trawl of the city beneath the city. Anyone read his ghost novel, Hawksmoor? His early books at least (no idea about his later work), had historical characters in them or referenced. Hawksmoor references Nicholas Hawksmoor, a gifted architect that worked after the Great fire. Even though he isn't named as such as main character. I've read Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem, which became a film. Dan Leno being a famous music hall star. He wrote one about the tragic boy poet Chatterton, who faked medieval poems. Maybe his Rowley poems are mentioned in one of those books you have dem bones? Ackroyd wrote a brief biography of Newton too. I'm curious as to what he says about the calculus war with Leibniz.
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Post by Dr Strange on Jul 5, 2021 21:59:06 GMT
I've read a few of Peter Ackroyd's books, all of which had some horror/fantasy elements - Hawksmoor, First Light, The House of Dr Dee, and Dan Leno & The Limehouse Golem. I remember enjoying them all well enough. The first one I read was First Light, which I found in a flat that I moved into sometime in the early 90s - I read that and liked it enough to keep an eye out for others by him. I think Hawksmoor is probably the best of those, but it's a long time since I read any of them.
On the topic of non-fiction about ghosts, I've got A Natural History of Ghosts (2012) by Roger Clarke (good, but mainly focuses on retelling some very well-known cases), Ghosts: A Haunted History (2015) by Lisa Morton (ditto, but looks more at how ghosts have been handled in popular culture), Ghosts (2006) by P.G. Maxwell-Stuart (ditto again, but with a slightly more "academic" tone - the author is a lecturer in history at St. Andrews Uni. and has also written similar books on wizards, witches and witch hunters, all of which are a lot of fun), and The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts (2007) by Owen Davies (the most "academic" of these, but also my personal favourite and very readable - he's Professor in Social History at the Uni. of Hertfordshire, and has also written a number of books on the social/cultural history of witchcraft and magic, including the brilliant Grimoires: A History of Magic Books from 2009).
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Post by Swan on Jul 5, 2021 22:06:55 GMT
Chatterton died aged 17 of self-inflicted arsenic poisoning. Three days before he had fallen into an open grave while walking through St Pancras churchyard. He had moved to London from Bristol where he had been brought up and where he first began forging his Rowley poems. He sought a literary reputation in London, but found it difficult to make money. There was talent in his work and he is to be mourned for what could have been.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Jul 5, 2021 22:45:59 GMT
Just going through the motions. Like so?
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Post by helrunar on Jul 5, 2021 23:40:17 GMT
Dr Strange, I read library copies of The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde and The House of Dr Dee around the time when they were first published. But I remember nothing, really, of either book, except that the writing was exceptionally thoughtful and at times, beautiful.
Quote about Ackroyd from an internet source, cited from a 2012 interview: "When asked what he did outside of writing, he said, 'I drink, that's about it.'"
H.
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Post by Swan on Jul 6, 2021 0:41:09 GMT
I've read a few of Peter Ackroyd's books, all of which had some horror/fantasy elements - Hawksmoor, First Light, The House of Dr Dee, and Dan Leno & The Limehouse Golem. I remember enjoying them all well enough. The first one I read was First Light, which I found in a flat that I moved into sometime in the early 90s - I read that and liked it enough to keep an eye out for others by him. I think Hawksmoor is probably the best of those, but it's a long time since I read any of them. On the topic of non-fiction about ghosts, I've got A Natural History of Ghosts (2012) by Roger Clarke (good, but mainly focuses on retelling some very well-known cases), Ghosts: A Haunted History (2015) by Lisa Morton (ditto, but looks more at how ghosts have been handled in popular culture), Ghosts (2006) by P.G. Maxwell-Stuart (ditto again, but with a slightly more "academic" tone - the author is a lecturer in history at St. Andrews Uni. and has also written similar books on wizards, witches and witch hunters, all of which are a lot of fun), and The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts (2007) by Owen Davies (the most "academic" of these, but also my personal favourite and very readable - he's Professor in Social History at the Uni. of Hertfordshire, and has also written a number of books on the social/cultural history of witchcraft and magic, including the brilliant Grimoires: A History of Magic Books from 2009). The book on Grimoires looks interesting. Do you have any additional information?
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Post by Dr Strange on Jul 6, 2021 1:36:01 GMT
The book on Grimoires looks interesting. Do you have any additional information? What do you want to know? I've got a copy handy. "Wide-ranging" barely does it justice; here's the blurb from the fly leaf - "The story of Grimoires - books of magic spells - takes us from ancient Egypt, through Kabbalah, medieval sorcery, Scandinavian witchcraft, 19th-century Egyptology, the roots of Mormonism, the post-war German occult boom, West African folk religion, a Chicago mail-order charlatan whose books are banned in Jamaica to this day, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the Santa Muerte cult in Mexico's drug gangs. Grimoires are harmless, priceless, or deadly dangerous - depending on your viewpoint. To understand their history is to understand the spread of Christianity, the development of early science, the cultural influence of the print revolution, the growth of literacy, the impact of colonialism, and the expansion of western cultures across the oceans."
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