Venice

Yet another wonderful biography of a city -- Lesley McDowell * The Independent on Sunday * He is brilliant on beginnings... Ackroyd covers an immense amount of ground with verve and elegance * Independent on Sunday * Ackroyd tells the story well...where he excels is in his descriptions...he writes beguilingly * Guardian * Ackroyd is hugely intelligent and formidably industrious; there can be few people, Venetian or foreign, who know Venice better than he... It is full of good things * Daily Telegraph * Elegant... Interweaving psychogeographical investigation with history, picking out defining characteristics which were present from its earliest days * Scotsman * Peter Ackroyd has the gift of transmuting other men's sober research into the golden sentences that make his books on men and cities so irresistible, entrancing, occasionally weird but undeniably grand...Ackroyd...has turned their diligence into effulgent, mesmeric, satisfying prose -- Richard Davenport-Hines * Literary Review * Combative, omnivorous and beady-eyed as ever, the author has no trouble in persuading us, nonetheless, that the 'pure city' is not quite ready to collapse into its primal mud -- Jonathan Keates * The Spectator * It is all here, in Ackroyd's dense and articulate prose. He writes in short, sharp sentences, firing out facts with machine-gun speed. He pulls the reader through the city's winding calli on a vivid, frenzied journey of discovery. It is an ever-shifting scenery of stern-faced Dogi, secretive statesman, canny merchants, thieve, whores, artists, geniuses: all jostling for favour in Ackroyd's city of intrigue.... Highly evocative...he writes beautifully and succinctly -- Sarah Vine * The Times * Ackroyd takes an erudite and entertaining look at the city of doges, gondolas, carnival masks and canals -- Eithne Farry * Marie Claire * Ackroyd has managed... to give us a beautifully crafted, ruminative, well-illustrated, and utterly readable volume...vibrant and evocative -- David Laven * History Today *