Press

What the critics say

Yet another wonderful biography of a city
- 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
- 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
- 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
- The Times

Ackroyd takes an erudite and entertaining look at the city of doges, gondolas, carnival masks and canals
- Marie Claire

Ackroyd has managed... to give us a beautifully crafted, ruminative, well-illustrated, and utterly readable volume...vibrant and evocative
- History Today

Elegant and erudite
- Tatler

Ackroyd's view of Venice is not that of an infatuated lover... but more the magisterial distillation of much knowledge and reading, conveyed in prose that aspires to the glassy elegance of La Serenissima herself
- Financial Times, Travel books of the year

Opulent, shimmering prose
- The Times, Christmas books

Ackroyd does Venice, his sonorous, scene painting prose advancing in rhythmic columns until no quarter of the city has escaped assimilation.
- Guardian

Ackroyd's achievement is to bring the city back to life and help you to experience differently. Take it with you next time you visit.
- The Times

His dark tapestry ... deserves a place in every visitor's luggage
- Independent

Ackroyd writes about Venice as an idea, with stylish meditations on such topics as time, light, water, sexuality, politics and psychopathology...he writes so well that at times he'd drive you mad - 'Venice represented an idea that was itself eternal' - but if you just climb into his gondola and go where he takes you, the rewards are great indeed
- The Irish Times

Many books have been written about Venice by authors like Mary McCarthy and Jan Morris. Ackroyd's advantage is his poetic eye
- Sunday Herald

Ackroyd writes beguilingly as he weaves his way around the lagoon, supplying interesting details en route...
- The Times