The Lambs of London

I just finished reading The Lambs of London, a fictionalised biography of Charles and Mary Lamb by the extremely prolific Peter Ackroyd. I'm tired just looking at that bilbiography.

It was a pleasant enough book but quite slight. To put it baldly: the Lambs are siblings with difficult family circumstances. They become friends with a chap who comes across some papers associated with Shakespeare. Thomas De Quincey pops up for a few drinks. Mary has some emotional trouble. The end.

Early nineteenth-century London is almost another character in the book, a landmark in every chapter, its streets populated with beggars and pickpockets. Characters wander around Southwark to look at the site of the Globe Theatre. They think about St Paul's and work in the East India Company House.

But this 'fiction' based on a selection of facts troubles me a bit because, unless you're an expert, it's hard to know what's true (or at least demonstrably based on the historical record) and what's made up. I remembered reading the Lambs' Tales from Shakespeare when I was young and vaguely remembered that Mary was meant to be mad. Ackroyd uses this. De Quincey wrote a wonderfully clever ande extremely funny essay attributing the collapse of the Roman empire at least in part to their failure to invent breakfast. Strangely enough, this isn't mentioned but details from his Life as an English Opium Eater are used as background. I've never heard of William Ireland who talked about Shakespeare a lot and I don't know that it's worth finding out.

The writing is allusive. (There's some symbolism about these young Lambs sacrificing their youth and ambition for various reasons). There's a lot of Shakespearean pastiche which is nice. I certainly enjoyed it more than his book about Dr Dee which had a really awkward combination of 16th and 20th century plots. But I can't help wishing Anthony Burgess had written this book. For one thing, it would have been really funny.