Much of Peter Ackroyd's work has been concerned with the life & past of London but here as a culmination is his definitive account of the city. For him it is a living organism with its own laws of growth & change so London is a biography rather than a history. It differs from other histories too in the range & diversity of its contents. Ackroyd portrays London from the time of the Druids to the beginning of the twenty-first century noting magnificence in both epochs but this is not a simple chronological record. There are chapters on the history of silence & the history of light the history of childhood & the history of suicide the history of Cockney speech & the history of drink. London is perhaps the most important study of the city ever written & confirms Ackroyd's status as what one critic has called 'our age's greatest London imagination.'