Book Review: "London" by Peter Ackroyd (Pt. 3)

From the beginning of chapter 11, we begin to get quite a different look at London. First of all, we learn that shops had their own places and these were based on geographical locations or streets. Peter Ackroyd teaches us about the segregations of these streets and how each street and/or place was dedicated to different types of shops all the way from clothes down to, later on, pornography. Honestly, if we were to sit and think about it, apart from the market places where everything is sold, we don't have many changes against that today. Instead of streets dedicated to one type of shop though our culture has been able to consolidate our entire day's worth of shopping into one space: the multiplex or shopping centre. Yes it is far more convenient but there is always a question of giving up small business in order to get it. What are we missing out on?

Theatre features a lot of course, there's an entire section dedicated to London Theatre. Ackroyd describes the ways in which play and performance took over the city from Punch and Judy shows all the way down to the performance of class and social rank through colour and dress by everyday people. I love reading about the pomp of the rich and the way in which they discern themselves from the rest, but when it comes to theatre, it seems like they are the most theatrical as well. We get access to men like Shakespeare and the average makeshift theatres of the London streets. No, this is not a chronology of London, but what I'm beginning to see is that it tells the stories of various London 'parts'. It is as though the city's secrets are being revealed to us through themes and ideas rather than a straightforward story.

London is a theatre itself though and this is what Ackroyd wants us to see. The 'Cockney' accent itself is reliant on the comical, the theatrical and the almost offensive ideals existing within language and almost does not exist side by side with more received pronunciations of words that populate the same geographical space. Ackroyd tells us about the fact that not only is the history of London a part of the city's sprawling landscape, but that the Londoners themselves as performers of this landscape are just as important. From a story in which we gain access to shows like Punch and Judy, we learn about the way in which comedy is not used (as it is today) to placate the masses, but rather to give them a comical image of themselves. They too, are part and parcel of the experience of the city. In this, Ackroyd tells us about the ways in which fairs employed the tactics of bringing those with the most notable parody of 'Cockney' London to the forefront, telling another story in which William Wordsworth went to a fair to let our interest in that fester and grow.

From this, we move away from fairs themselves and we look at the people simply existing within the city. We are taken through slang and how it formed, we look at the ways in which Londoners interact with each other. We have already learnt about the noise and the constant shouting, humming, the notes of the city that are some of the loudest in the world. And so, as we consume Ackroyd's story of how these same London folk are also performing the aspect of London being this way in their everyday lives, the city itself becomes theatre. I absolutely love this and have thoroughly enjoyed learning about the ways in which London interacts with its own people. I do however think that London has lost that sense of allure and theatre, there seems to be a greyscale to it now - it is no longer that same city that it once was.

As we move into the next parts of the book, I am aware that I have already learned so much about the city. This is not a chronological history but rather the biography of a city as a person. It is all the different things that make up its personality, the loud, the dark, the light and the theatrical. I just hope it continues to be this interesting as we move along.