The English Ghost - Peter Ackroyd

The English Ghost: Spectres Through Time
Peter Ackroyd
Vintage Books
Copyright: October 31, 2011
978-0099287575

The amazon.com product description:

An enormously enjoyable spooky collection of ghost-sightings over the centuries, full of the spirit of place, in true Ackroyd style.

The English, Peter Ackroyd tells us in this fascinating collection, see more ghosts than any other nation. Each region has its own particular spirits, from the Celtic ghosts of Cornwall to the dobies and boggarts of the north. Some speak and some are silent, some smell of old leather, others of fragrant thyme. From medieval times to today stories have been told and apparitions seen -- ghosts who avenge injustice, souls who long for peace, spooks who just want to have fun.

The English Ghost is a treasury of such sightings which we can believe or not, as we will. The accounts, packed with eerie detail, range from the door-slamming, shrieking ghost of Hinton Manor in the 1760s and the moaning child that terrified Wordsworth's nephew at Cambridge, to the headless bear of Kidderminster, the violent daemon of Devon who tried to strangle a man with his cravat and the modern-day hitchhikers on Bluebell Hill. Comical and scary, like all good ghost stories, these curious incidents also plumb the depths of the English psyche in its yearnings for justice, freedom and love.

After reading London Under, and hearing people raving about how good his other books like The Biography of London are, I had high hopes for The English Ghost. Hopes that were, sadly, disappointed. I couldn't even finish the book.

Based on Peter Ackroyd's other books, I thought I was going to be reading perhaps a detailed account through time of a few noted haunted sites. Or, perhaps a history of ghost sightings around Englind. Well, maybe that's what The English Ghost was meant to be.

However, what I found the book to be was more or less just a collection of eighteenth and ninetheenth century accounts of ghost sightings with nothing to connect them together. Nothing about repeated accounts from the same location, nothing from Peter Ackroyd himself to tie the individual accounts together. Not at all what I was expecting.

To me, the book felt rushed, and didn't live up to the standards I expected from Peter Ackroyd. I'm afraid this one's going on the rare "abandoned" pile.

Friday Favourites: Your Favourite Book From June

Friday Favourites - a chance to rave about a favourite reading/book related topic each week.

Sometimes you just want a chance to rave about some favourite aspect of reading that doesn't really come up during regular blogging posts - that's what this is about. I'm willing to bet that at least some of those will come up one week or another.

Better late than never for two reasons this week: first, that I should have asked this question last week rather than asking about your favourite movie, and second, that I'm posting this so late today.  This week's question is: What was your favourite book from the month of June?

I'm going to have to say that my answer is Peter Ackroyd's book London Under. It was well written, intriguing and gave me a different view of that wonderful old city, while making me wish I was more familiar with it. That was my one gripe with this book: the lack of maps. Peter Ackroyd seems to assume that the reader is going to be familiar enough with London to recognize the districts and geographical features he mentions.

Despite that, this book was one that I found nearly impossible to put down until it was finished, and it left me wishing I could see some of the sites described, such as the Underground station that's been abandoned since the early nineteen hundreds but it still has the old posters on the walls.

What was your favourite book from June?

London Under - Peter Ackroyd

London Under
Peter Ackroyd
Nan A. Talese
Copyright: November 2011
978-0385531504

The amazon.com product description:

London Under is a wonderful, atmospheric, imagina­tive, oozing short study of everything that goes on under London, from original springs and streams and Roman amphitheaters to Victorian sewers, gang hideouts, and modern tube stations. The depths below are hot, warmer than the surface, and this book tunnels down through the geological layers, meeting the creatures, real and fictional, that dwell in darkness—rats and eels, mon­sters and ghosts. When the Underground’s Metropolitan Line was opened in 1864, the guards asked for permission to grow beards to protect themselves against the sulfurous fumes, and named their engines after tyrants—Czar, Kaiser, Mogul—and even Pluto, god of the underworld.

To go under London is to penetrate history, to enter a hid­den world. As Ackroyd puts it, “The vastness of the space, a second earth, elicits sensations of wonder and of terror. It partakes of myth and dream in equal measure.”

Ever thought that there was a world beneath the London we see today? Hidden, but just as alive and busy? No, I'm not describing another fantasy novel here, it's the world that Peter Ackroyd delves into in the book London Under.

For a fairly short book (240 pages), he covers a lot too. The book starts with the geology of London, some of the noted prehistoric finds and goes forward through time until the present. At the same time, he narrows in on specific aspects of London's underground history such as the various rivers and canals that have been covered over through the years.

Much of the book covers the medieval era to the present, although there are mentions of some of the prehistoric and Roman era discoveries that were made during the building of the sewers and the Underground (Tube) tunnels.

After the rivers, Ackroyd looks at the various sewer tunnels that were built during the middle ages to the eighteenth centuries and the effects they had on London, followed by the earliest versions of underground transport right up to the modern-day Underground system.

I'd be willing to bet that this book goes extremely well with Ackroyd's other book London: The Biography, which leads into my main complaint about London Under: the lack of maps. This book seems to be assuming that the reader is fairly familiar with London and it's geography. I for one am not, although I have visited a couple of times. Therefore, I found it rather hard to visualize the streets and intersections as Ackroyd mentions and follows them through the pages.

In spite of that, this is a book I have to recommend. It's fascinating, hard to put down and makes for a very different view of London and the history of that fine city. It also made me wish I could see some of the sights that the author mentions, such as the abandoned Underground stations where the posters are still on the walls, and have been since the early 1900's. The whole thing is written in a way that captures the imagination. I could see writers being inspired by reading London Under and setting up whole civilizations using what Peter Ackroyd set out.

That's something else that he focused on in this book. Peoples's views and stereotypes about the underground and tunnels as well as the people who used them and lived in them, as was the case for some people. It's interesting, the way it all ties into ideas about things like underground movements, religion, and class.

Overall, London Under is a book that definitely peaked my curiosity about London, it's history, present and future. I just wish there is a way I could see some of the things he described - most of it is closed off for various reasons, and of course, I live far too far away to get there. Definitely worth the read - and a fairly quick read too. Might be worth reading before the London Olympics to get a different view of the city.