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Title: Literary chaos
Review: As an admirer of Ackroyd's other books, I hate to say it--but this book is a stinker. It's not a history but a series of anecdotes and scattered facts. The feeling of reading it is rather like reading an encyclopedia from cover to cover: interesting but scatterbrained. London is my second home and I've read many histories of her. As a companion volume, Ackroyd's book might be acceptable. But let the reader beware that this IN NO WAY will suffice as one's first history of London. This book needed a better editor to restrain its author's robust energy.
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