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Authors: Peter Ackroyd

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Albion

BOOK: Albion
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Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Illustrations

Chronology

INTRODUCTION - Albion

Patterns of Eternity

CHAPTER 1 - The Tree

CHAPTER 2 - The Radiates

Old English

CHAPTER 3 - Listen!

CHAPTER 4 - Why Is a Raven Like a Writing Desk?

CHAPTER 5 - A Rare and Singular Bede

CHAPTER 6 - The Song of the Past

CHAPTER 7 - The Lives of Others

CHAPTER 8 - A Land of Dreams

CHAPTER 9 - A Note on English Melancholy

CHAPTER 10 - The Rolling Hills

CHAPTER 11 - It Rained All Night

CHAPTER 12 - The Prose of the World

CHAPTER 13 - The First Initials

CHAPTER 14 - Anglo-Saxon Attitudes

Middle English

CHAPTER 15 - The Alteration

CHAPTER 16 - He Is Not Dead

The Piety of England

CHAPTER 17 - Faith of Our Fathers

CHAPTER 18 - Old Stone

CHAPTER 19 - Part of the Territory

The Poetry of England

CHAPTER 20 - A Song and a Dance

CHAPTER 21 - Fathers and Sons

CHAPTER 22 - The Foolish Giant

Solitaries and Recusants

CHAPTER 23 - The Mysterious Voice

CHAPTER 24 - The Inheritance

Women and Silence

CHAPTER 25 - The Female Religion

A Renaissance

CHAPTER 26 - But Newly Translated

CHAPTER 27 - The Italian Connection

Mungrell Tendencies

CHAPTER 28 - A Short History of Shakespeare

CHAPTER 29 - And Now for Streaky Bacon

Antiquarianism and English History

CHAPTER 30 - Among the Ruins

CHAPTER 31 - The Conservative Tendency

CHAPTER 32 - A Short History Lesson

In the English Tradition

CHAPTER 33 - The Song of the Sea

CHAPTER 34 - A Brief Excursion

CHAPTER 35 - A Miniature

CHAPTER 36 - I Saw You, Missis

An English Bible

CHAPTER 37 - In the Beginning

Cockney Visionaries

CHAPTER 38 - London Calling

A Wealth of Characters

CHAPTER 39 - An Essay on the Essay

CHAPTER 40 - The Hogarthian Moment

CHAPTER 41 - Some Eminent Novelists

CHAPTER 42 - A Character Study

CHAPTER 43 - The Fine Art of Biography

Women and Anger

CHAPTER 44 - Femality and Fiction

Melodrama

CHAPTER 45 - Blood and Gore

CHAPTER 46 - Ghosts

Philosophy, Mockery and Learning

CHAPTER 47 - Practice Makes Perfect

CHAPTER 48 - Prolix and Prolific

CHAPTER 49 - Some More Dunces

Green England

CHAPTER 50 - The Secret Garden

Looking Backwards

CHAPTER 51 - Forging a Language

CHAPTER 52 - The Romantic Fallacy

CHAPTER 53 - English Music

EPILOGUE - The Territorial Imperative

Notes

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

About the Author

Also by Peter Ackroyd

Copyright Page

For Murrough O’Brien

Illustrations

“Trees V: Spreading Branches,” 1979, by Henry Moore (Tate, London 2002)

Twelfth-century spiral markings, church of St. Laurence Pittington, County Durham (Peter Burton and Harland Walshaw)

Ornamental page with the beginning of the
Gospel according to John
, from the Lindisfarne Gospels (AKG/British Library)

Photograph of Charles Dickens dreaming, 1861, by John and Charles Watkins (National Portrait Gallery, London)

Stone portrait of John Donne in his shroud, St. Paul’s Cathedral, London (London UK/Bridgeman Art Library)

Ornamental page with monogram from the Lindisfarne Gospels (AKG/British Library)

“Sir Bedivere throws the sword Excalibur into the water.” Manuscript illumination, early fourteenth century (AKG/British Library)

Arthur, Prince of Wales, eldest son of Henry VII (National Portrait Gallery, London, loan, courtesy of private collection)

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert dressed as Queen Guinevere and King Arthur, at the Bal Costumé of 12 May 1842, by Edwin Landseer (from the Royal Collection by gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen)

“Figure of Guinevere,” circa 1858, by William Morris (Tate, London 2002)

“Guenever”: illustration to the Arthurian legend, by David Jones (Tate, London 2002)

“Babooneries”: photographs by Peter Burton/Harland Walshaw and a selection of details from the Luttrell Psalter, c. 1340 (AKG/British Library)

The Chapter House of Wells Cathedral (Peter Burton and Harland Walshaw)

“Sir Jeffery Chaucer and the Nine and Twenty Pilgrims on their Journey to Canterbury,” by William Blake, detail (Glasgow Museums, Stirling Maxwell Collection)

“Longways Dance” by Thomas Rowlandson (Tate, London 2002)

Thomas Tallis and William Byrd (Lebrecht Music Collection)

Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, by Nicholas Hilliard (National Portrait Gallery, London)

Edmund Spenser, engraving by George Vertue, 1727 (National Portrait Gallery, London)

William Shakespeare, seventeenth-century engraving by Martin Droeshout (National Portrait Gallery, London)

“Britannia”: frontispiece illustration to William Camden’s Britannia, 1600, by John Stow (Guildhall Library, Corporation of London)

The Pillars of Hercules, title page of Francis Bacon’s Instauratio Magna, 1620 (The British Museum, London)

English clowns: Richard Tarlton and Will Kemp

Title page to the Bible translated into English, 1539 (Fotomas)

A Harlot’s Progress,
plate two, 1732, etching and engraving by William Hogarth (The Trustees of the Weston Park Foundation, UK/Bridgeman Art Library)

Henry Fielding, engraving after William Hogarth, c. 1762 (National Portrait Gallery, London)

Bust of Sir Christopher Wren by Edward Pierce, c. 1673 (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)

Silhouette of Jane Austen (National Portrait Gallery, London)

The Spanish Tragedy
by Thomas Kyd, woodcut dating from 1615

Thomas Hobbes, engraving by Wenceslaus Hollar, after J. B. Caspar

The Royal Observatory at Greenwich, 1675 (Greenwich Local History Library, London)

Sketch of Miss Gertrude Jekyll with sunflower, doodle by Sir Edwin Lutyens (RIBA)

Title page of William Byrd ’s “Psalmes, Sonnets, and Songs of Sadness and Piety,” 1588 (Lebrecht Music Collection)

COLOUR PLATE SECTIONS

“Carpet” pattern, from the Lindisfarne Gospels, c. 698–700 (AKG/British Library)

“King David with Musicians,” Anglo-Saxon illuminated manuscript of the eighth century (AKG/British Library)

Shoulder clasp from the Sutton Hoo ship burial, Anglo-Saxon, c. 625–30 A.D. (gold, garnet and millefiori glass) (British Museum, London UK/Bridgeman Art Library)

“King Edgar between the Virgin Mary and St. Peter Dedicates the Charter Christus,” Anglo-Saxon illuminated manuscript, c. 966 (AKG/British Library)

“Driven by the Spirit into Wilderness”: panel from the “Christ in the Wilderness” series, 1939, by Stanley Spencer (1891–1959) (Stanley Spencer Gallery, Cookham, Berkshire, UK/Bridgeman Art Library, Copyright © Estate of Stanley Spencer 2002. All Rights Reserved, DACS)

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?,” illustration by Sir John Tenniel for
Through the Looking-Glass
by Lewis Carroll (Copyright © 1911 Macmillan Publishers Limited. Illustrations colored by Harry Theaker and Diz Wallis)

Sir Ian McKellen in the 2001 film of Tolkien’s
Lord of the Rings
(
Lord
of the
Rings: Fellowship of the Ring,
New Line/Saul Zaentz/Wing Nut. Courtesy Kobal)

“Event on the Downs,” c. 1934, by Paul Nash (1889–1946) (Old Admiralty Building, Whitehall, London UK/Bridgeman Art Library)

“Seascape Study with Rainclouds” by John Constable (1776–1837) (Royal Academy Photographic Archive)

Durham Cathedral, the nave, c. 1093 (London/Bridgeman Art Library)

“The Wilton Diptych,” portable altarpiece for the private devotion of Richard II, c. 1395–99 (National Gallery, London)

The Canterbury Tales: illuminated initial, with a portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer holding a book, c. 1400 (AKG/British Library)

St. Leonard with crozier and manacles, St. Agnes or St. Catherine with sword and book. Two saints, from a screen in St. John’s Maddermarket, Norwich, mid-fifteenth century (V & A Picture Library)

Miniature by Nicholas Hilliard: Queen Elizabeth I, 1572 (National Portrait Gallery, London)

“The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke” by Richard Dadd, unfinished in 1864 (Tate, London 2002)

“A Hilly Scene” by Samuel Palmer, c. 1826–28 (Tate, London 2002)

“Daniel Delivered out of Many Waters” by William Blake, c. 1805 (Tate, London 2002)

“Sir Galahad, Sir Bors and Sir Percival” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1864 (Tate, London 2002)

Gawain, production at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Music by Harrison Birtwistle, libretto by David Harsent, based on the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Clive Barda/Performing Arts Library)

John Milton, c. 1629, artist unknown (National Portrait Gallery, London)

Edward Gibbon by Henry Walton (National Portrait Gallery, London)

Mrs. Gaskell, 1851, by George Richmond (National Portrait Gallery, London)

Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1958–61, by Sir Gerald Kelly (National Portrait Gallery, London)

“Self-Portrait” by William Hogarth, c. 1757 (National Portrait Gallery, London)

“The Shrimp Girl” by William Hogarth (National Gallery, London)

Samuel Johnson by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1756–57 (National Portrait Gallery, London)

Kemble as Hamlet, 1801, painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence (Tate, London 2002)

“No reasonable offer refused”: Widow Twankey (V & A Picture Library)

Front cover of the music score for “The Doctor” sung by Dan Leno (colour litho) by H. G. Banks (nineteenth century) (Private collection/ Bridgeman Art Library)

“Mr. and Mrs. Andrews” by Thomas Gainsborough (National Gallery, London)

“Mr. B Finds Pamela Writing,” illustration from Richardson’s
Pamela
by Joseph Highmore (1692–1780) (V & A Museum, London UK/ Bridgeman Art Library)

Pegwell Bay, Kent, “A Recollection of October 5th 1858” by William Dyce (Tate, London 2002)

“Margate from the Sea” by J. M. W. Turner (National Gallery, London)

“The Great Day of His Wrath,” one of the three pictures in John Martin’s Judgement series, 1851–53 (Tate, London 2002)

The Death of Chatterton,
by Henry Wallis, 1856 (Tate, London 2002)

“Stroud: An Upland Landscape,” painting of the Malvern hills by Philip Wilson Steer in 1902 (Tate, London 2002)

“An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump,” 1768, by Joseph Wright of Derby (National Gallery, London)

Main block, designed by Richard Rogers (photo), Lloyds of London, Lime Street (London UK/Roger Last/Bridgeman Art Library)

BOOK: Albion
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