The Publisher Says: Celebrated novelist, biographer, and critic Peter Ackroyd paints a vivid picture of one of the world's greatest cities in this brilliant and original work, exploring how the city's many hues have come to shape its history and identity.

Think of the colors of London and what do you imagine? The reds of open-top buses and terracotta bricks? The grey smog of Victorian industry, Portland stone, and pigeons in Trafalgar square? Or the gradations of yellows, violets, and blues that shimmer on the Thames at sunset—reflecting the incandescent light of a city that never truly goes dark. We associate green with royal parks and the District Line; gold with royal carriages, the Golden Lane Estate, and the tops of monuments and cathedrals.

Colors of London shows us that color is everywhere in the city, and each one holds myriad links to its past. The colors of London have inspired artists (Whistler, Van Gogh, Turner, Monet), designers (Harry Beck) and social reformers (Charles Booth). And from the city’s first origins, Ackroyd shows how color is always to be found at the heart of London’s history, from the blazing reds of the Great Fire of London to the blackouts of the Blitz to the bold colors of royal celebrations and vibrant street life.

This beautifully written book examines the city's fascinating relationship with color, alongside specially commissioned colorized photographs from Dynamichrome, which bring a lost London back to life.

London has been the main character in Ackroyd's work ever since his first novel, and he has won countless prizes in both fiction and non-fiction for his truly remarkable body of work. Here, he channels a lifetime of knowledge of the great city, writing with clarity and passion about the hues and shades which have shaped London's journey through history into the present day.

A truly invaluable book for lovers of art, history, photography, or urban geography, this beautifully illustrated title tells a rich and fascinating story of the history of this great and ever-changing city.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Gifting the Anglophile on your list is always a doddle, right? "Something about England!" the generous, but innocent, gifter thinks. "This will be a snap!"

*cue hollow laughter at callow ignorance*

What part of England...north, south, west, Kent? What time in English history...Thatcher's 1980s, Victoria's imperial experiment, William the Bastard's conquering hordes of French-speaking Vikings? England England or Britain...Britain as a whole, the constituent parts?

I know it's not going to soothe your frazzled last nerve enough to make the idea of a cocktail unnecessary...but there aren't a lot of people who read seriously who haven't heard of, and probably read something by, Peter Ackroyd. He's a cultural monadnock. While one might not adore his prose, or even want to read about his relentlessly centered-on-London stories, it's a whole different kettle of fresh-from-the-Thames eels to think of reading his spear-sharp and sword-long prose about London...accompanied by these startlingly colorized vintage photos of London's past. The firm Dynamichrome makes this its business, and let me tell you that they are clearly destined to be leaders in a revolution for instead of the hitherto prevalent against the colorizing trend. These are images of London from all periods in its history. They're as beautiful as photos of London get. They're also enhanced by the careful and painstaking additions of colors commensurate with the time in history as well as the time of day that they reveal.

The book's organizing principle is seen in the Table of Contents on the recto above presented. Ackroyd's essays, which I suggest is the best way to present and think of these nominal chapters, riff on the colors, the affects, the gestalt of the visual impact of London. The publishers then chose vintage images and Dynamichrome brought their intense, archivally trained eyes to bear on enlivening them with colors appropriate to and emblematic of the times.

Bloody gorgeous, mate.

London's suitability for gifting your Anglophile without getting the weak smile and the slide from a slack, uninterested hand that we all dread is nonpareil. It's been the focus of immense amounts of attention in the moments of history as well as scholarship about that history, so it is readily scannable. It is a major player in the world's economic life, and its social norms have both set and influenced the social norms of many, many countries with past and present ties to it. London isn't England (me, I prefer York, or Chester) but it is called "the Capital" for a reason. It is the head of the government, the home of the economy's engine-controlling bodies, the monarchy's most famous symbols reside there...London is part of the mental furniture of the world's mind.

It's a simple task to find illustrations for a book about London, and an even easier one to gloss over the role of color in Humankind's experience of its world. We are fortunate to have photographic evidence of the reality of London's nineteenth-century past on forward. Beginning just slightly earlier, we have color illustrations of life in London from the eighteenth century. Printing technology has improved and improved in the centuries since Gutenberg married woodblock image-making to moveable type in 1454. That's been a key development in history's accelerating climb into prosperity from subsistence levels to reliable surpluses to wretched excess. Knowledge and ideas are easily transmissible when they're on paper.

They're also ephemeral, and subject to manipulation; they're also incomplete and misleading. But they're less likely to vanish without a trace as, for example, the cure for scurvy did in the sixteenth century when French captain Jacques Cartier heard from Native Americans that his men's scurvy would vanish if he made them drink spruce-needle tisane. It did...but he didn't do much to make it known, and it got lost in archives. Much as that has impacted our view of scurvy's history, the lack of color in vintage photos has made our vision of the past flat and one-dimensional.

We've always lived in a world of color. Nature's colors, but also mankind's. Rescue your Anglophile's imagination from the curse of flat black-and-white thinking with this book. It's vivid, and in its vividness lies its power to inform and to build on our knowledge of one of the world's most important cities: It was always modern, it was always intense, it was always brightly and intensely modern. Celebrate that this Yule gifting season. ( )

Colors of London: A History, by Peter Ackroyd, offers an engaging history of London through colors. This is both a tribute to the city's beauty and a way to engage with an urban area with a different perspective.

I think this is one of those books that will speak to each reader in very different ways. I have only been to London a few times so as Ackroyd launched into some of his examinations through color, I did relate some of it to memories. But because of my limited experience in the city, I was even more taken with the many references, textual and through images, to works of art and literature. His writing gave these passages an added resonance.

I came to think of these chapters, each devoted to a different hue, as a kind of stroll through history paying attention to specific qualities. The next chapter was another stroll but with different qualities under examination. This is quite an enjoyable read as well as an attractive book to simply look through. Combined, it makes for a wonderful experience.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )