Monthly arts column
Peter Ackroyd, stomping tie-less and overcoated round London, doesn't look like a great writer - and he certainly doesn't look like a TV presenter as he declaims his eloquent, resonant script. Yet one quickly falls under the spell of his BBC series 'London'. Both writer and presenter, he sounds much less stilted off-camera. But here he is celebrating his lifetime passion, and the heightened speech seems no less than appropriate.
David Porter
The series was based on Ackroyd's 800-page 'London: the Biography', where his approach is by topic rather than chronology: London is for him a living organism. Shakespeare and his theatres, for example, get only passing attention, but there's a whole chapter on 'London as theatre'. Always, past and present co-exist - the TV series juxtaposed chilling TV recreations of the Gordon Riots with modern demonstrations in Trafalgar Square.
