Newgate Street is mostly located within the City Wall, leading west from Cheapside to the site of the gate, and then joining with Holborn Viaduct at the point where the Old Bailey thoroughfare joins to the south and Giltspur Street to the north. A notable discovery here was a Roman tile inscribed with a disgruntled comment that "Austalis has been going off on his own for 13 days".

To the north of the street are the ruins of Christ Church Greyfriars on the site of a medieval Franciscan monastery. To the south is Paternoster Square leading towards St Paul's cathedral.

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Category:Buildings and structures demolished in 1767 Category:London Wall and its gates

In Persia, the title "the Great" at first seems to be a colloquial version of the Old Persian title "Great King". This title was first used by the conqueror Cyrus II of Persia.

The Persian title was inherited by Alexander III of Macedon (336–323 BC) when he conquered the Persian Empire, and the epithet "Great" eventually became personally associated with him. The first reference (in a comedy by Plautus) assumes that everyone knew who "Alexander the Great" was; however, there is no earlier evidence that Alexander III of Macedon was called "''the Great''".

The early Seleucid kings, who succeeded Alexander in Persia, used "Great King" in local documents, but the title was most notably used for Antiochus the Great (223–187 BC).

Later rulers and commanders began to use the epithet "the Great" as a personal name, like the Roman general Pompey. Others received the surname retrospectively, like the Carthaginian Hanno and the Indian emperor Ashoka the Great. Once the surname gained currency, it was also used as an honorific surname for people without political careers, like the philosopher Albert the Great.

As there are no objective criteria for "greatness", the persistence of later generations in using the designation greatly varies. For example, Louis XIV of France was often referred to as "The Great" in his lifetime but is rarely called such nowadays, while Frederick II of Prussia is still called "The Great". A later Hohenzollern - Wilhelm I - was often called "The Great" in the time of his grandson Wilhelm II, but rarely later.

Rulers

Religious figures

Other

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Category:Monarchs Great, List of people known as The Category:Greatest Nationals Category:Epithets

Peter Ackroyd CBE (born 5 October 1949, East Acton, Middlesex) is an English biographer, novelist and critic with a particular interest in the history and culture of London. For his novels about English history and culture and his biographies of, among others, Charles Dickens, T. S. Eliot and Sir Thomas More he won the Somerset Maugham Award and two Whitbread Awards. He was awarded a CBE in 2003.

Life and work

Ackroyd worked at ''The Spectator'' magazine between 1973 and 1977 and became joint managing editor in 1978. He worked as chief book reviewer for ''The Times'' and a regular broadcaster on radio. Since 1984 he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Ackroyd's literary career began with poetry, including such works as ''London Lickpenny'' (1973) and ''The Diversions of Purley'' (1987). In 1982 he published ''The Great Fire of London'', his first novel which is a reworking of Charles Dickens's novel ''Little Dorrit''. The novel set the stage for the long sequence of novels Ackroyd has produced since, all of which deal in some way with the complex interaction of time and space and what Ackroyd calls "the spirit of place". In his novels he often contrasts historical segments with segments set in the present-day (e.g. ''The Great Fire of London'', ''Hawksmoor'', ''The House of Doctor Dee''). Many of Ackroyd's novels play in London and deal with the ever changing, but at the same time stubbornly consistent nature of the city.

Often this theme is explored through the city's artists, especially its writers: Oscar Wilde in ''The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde'' (1983), a fake autobiography of Wilde; Nicholas Hawksmoor, Sir Christopher Wren and Sir John Vanbrugh in ''Hawksmoor'' (1985); Thomas Chatterton and George Meredith in ''Chatterton'' (1987); John Dee in ''The House of Dr Dee'' (1993); Dan Leno, Karl Marx, George Gissing and Thomas de Quincey in ''Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem'' (1994); John Milton in ''Milton in America'' (1996); Charles Lamb in ''The Lambs of London''.

''Hawksmoor'', winner of both the Whitbread Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize, was inspired by Iain Sinclair's poem 'Lud Heat' (1975), which speculated on a mystical power from the positioning of the six churches Nicholas Hawksmoor built. The novel gives Hawksmoor a Satanical motive for the siting of his buildings, and creates a modern namesake, a policeman investigating a series of murders. ''Chatterton'' (1987), a similarly layered novel explores plagiarism and forgery and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

One of Ackroyd's best known works, ''London: The Biography'', is an extensive and thorough discussion of London through the ages. In 1994 he was interviewed about the London Psychogeographical Association in an article for ''The Observer'' where he remarked:

:"I truly believe that there are certain people to whom or through whom the territory, the place, the past speaks . . . Just as it seems possible to me that a street or dwelling can materially affect the character and behaviour of the people who dwell in them, is it not also possible that within this city (London) and within its culture are patterns of sensibility or patterns of response which have persisted from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and perhaps even beyond?"

In the sequence ''London: The Biography'' (2000), ''Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination'' (2002), and ''Thames: Sacred River'' (2007), Ackroyd has produced works of what he considers historical sociology. These books trace themes in London and English culture from the ancient past to the present, drawing again on his favoured notion of almost spiritual lines of connection rooted in place and stretching across time.

His fascination with London literary and artistic figures is also displayed in the sequence of biographies he has produced of Ezra Pound (1980), T. S. Eliot (1984), Charles Dickens (1990), William Blake (1995), Thomas More (1998), Chaucer (2004), William Shakespeare (2005), and J. M. W. Turner. The city itself stands astride all these works, as it does in the fiction. Ackroyd was forced to think of new methods of biography writing in ''T. S. Eliot'' when he was told he couldn't quote extensively from Eliot's poetry and unpublished letters.

From 2003 to 2005, Ackroyd wrote a six-book non-fiction series (''Voyages Through Time''), intended for readers as young as eight, his first work for children. The critically acclaimed series ("Not just sound-bite snacks for short attention spans, but unfolding feasts that leave you with a sense of wonder", ''The Sunday Times'') is an extensive narrative of key periods in world history.

Works

Fiction

Non-Fiction

Television

Honours and Awards

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References

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Category:1949 births Category:Alumni of Clare College, Cambridge Category:Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Category:English biographers Category:English children's writers Category:English historians Category:English novelists Category:English historical novelists Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Category:Living people Category:Old Priorians Category:People from Acton, London Category:Psychogeographers Category:Chaucer scholars Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Category:Postmodern writers