The Great Fire of London

by Peter Ackroyd

Book Overview

Spenser Spender wants to make a film of Dickens' "Little Dorrit" using a contemporary London prison as a set. But he is not the only person interested in Dickens. Unwittingly he becomes the catalyst... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 014017110X
• ISBN13: 9780140171105
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Penguin
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.32 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.8" x 0.4" x 5.0"

Customer Reviews

It certainly wasn't the best of times.

The making of a movie about Dickens' "Little Dorrit" is the story around which the events of this short book revolve. The cast of characters even seem to have come from Dickens. Ackroyd is a biographer of and authority on Dickens, so it's no surprise that he should write a novel in his style - albeit many of hundreds of pages lighter. All of the events figure, at least indirectly, in the filming of the movie. We have a director who is trying to get it made with government help; a disaffected professor turned writer with stars in his eyes; a lady who has some metaphysical involvement with the history of the area; her boyfriend who becomes involved with the writer and some others who affect those folks and the movie itself. Witty at times and sad at others, this is smoothly written and easy to follow. If you enjoy Ackroyd's newer writings, you'll like this early example of his fiction.