Summary
Albion by Peter Ackroyd (Vintage, Pounds 12.99) PETER ACKROYD is expanding. He's done London; here he takes on England, or rather, the origins of the English imagination. He combs the country, sifting cultural artefacts, then arranging them into intricate patterns, each with a different theme, like ghosts, or the sea, or riddles.
Ackroyd's theory is that the English imagination is circular, not linear, that it perpetually absorbs the foreign, then returns to its roots. "Forget blood or genes. National traits come with the territory. The common ground we have is the ground itself vital and wild, which matters more than the people who move upon it."See the full content of this document
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So it's a shame Ackroyd stops his investigations at around 195...
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