Fiction: Most would agree that it is difficult to recall when we first heard of Shakespeare. The Bard, it seems, exerts a cultural monopoly so all- pervasive that even stories originally written by others become most vividly known to us through Shakespeare's versions, writes Eileen Battersby.
If Bach is the abiding patriarch of music, Shakespeare has a mighty claim to that thing we call literature. Yet many would also agree that our earliest introduction to those yarns so brilliantly hijacked by the great Elizabethan was a charming volume: Lamb's Tales from Shakespear.
First published in 1807 the tales were the collaborative effort of the essayist, Charles Lamb (1775-1834), and his sister, Mary (1764-1847). On the surface it appears fairly straightforward: London literary siblings brought together through a shared interest. The outcome: a book that has introduced millions of children to the one of the world's most enduring writers. Except that nothing was quite straightforward about the Lambs. Both suffered from periodic madness.
In 1796, Mary became so overwrought by family life that she killed their mother. Luckily for her, and quite surprisingly considering his own history, Charles was granted charge of Mary and they continued to live together, eventually producing their classic tales of Shakespeare, which were followed in 1808 by their versions of individual episodes from Homer's Odyssey.
All of which leads the reader to the mercurial and industrious Peter Ackroyd, a Londoner by birth and a writer by nature. His passion for England's past, and in particular London's history, with its multiplicity of personalities and stories, is no secret. After all, who else would have written London: The Biography? In common with the grand maverick himself, J.G. Ballard, Peter Ackroyd, whether as novelist, biographer, commentator or critic, remains one of the handful of inherently original contemporary British writers who is always worth reading.
The Lambs of London is his 12th novel in a career begun with some brilliance in 1982 with The Great Fire of London and continued with The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (1983). There have also been a number of non-fiction books, including biographies of T.S. Eliot, Dickens, Blake and Thomas More, as well as a brief life of Chaucer. Ackroyd's finest fiction to date remains Hawksmoor (1985), his third novel. A majestic, awesomely atmospheric performance as funny as it is sinister and horrible, it won the Whitbread Novel of the Year prize and also the Guardian Fiction Prize.
Chatterton followed two years later. Shortlisted for the 1987 Booker Prize, it is an evocative investigation of the short life and dramatic, oddly graceful death of the young poet who instigated the Romantic movement. It is also a study of mortality, of plagiarism and of the nature of poetry.
Since then Ackroyd's writings have continued to wander through the streets of London as well as across the English landscape, and through the alleys of England's artistic heritage. Even if the novels don't quite succeed as narratives they are always interesting and often entertaining because Ackroyd's mind is singularly interesting and entertaining. His biography of William Blake (1995) is an important book on several counts. Aside from its own merits, it highlights the fusion of Ackroyd's scholarship and imagination at its most brilliant. It also serves as a major step between two of his most remarkable achievements, the wayward but fascinating novel, English Music (1992), and his dazzling cultural history, Albion (2002), both of which celebrate the English imagination.
This new novel is light and funny, familiar and convincingly offbeat, with Ackroyd making no apology for playing around a bit with the facts and chronology. Against the known background of the Charles and Mary Lamb story, their love for Shakespeare and their frustration with life in general, Ackroyd adds their father, a man caught in the twilight zone of his fading grasp on reality, and their mother, a woman rendered irritating in the extreme by her domestic situation.
In true Ackroyd style, the effect is funny and horrible. His comedy invariably borders on the burlesque. Charles and his pals attempt to put on a play, but there are problems. One of the friends proves an unwilling actor: " 'Charles, I cannot walk on stage with a wig and false beard. It is simply not possible.' Benjamin Milton smoothed back his hair. 'I would look ridiculous. Besides, I cannot act.' "
Into the chaos comes William Ireland, the infamous forger of Shakespearean plays and papers. In the narrative, Ireland is aged only 17. History (rather than Ackroyd) informs us that he was born in 1777; therefore, the action of the novel is set in about 1794 - or two years before Mary stabbed her mother.
In the novel, Mary takes a liking to the young William. They both love books, and of course adore Shakespeare. There beats a pulse of romance of the gentle and yearning variety.
Meanwhile, Charles Lamb is also young, only two years older than Ireland, and already intent on a literary career. However, even at that tender age the future essayist is already trapped by his job as a clerk for the East India Company, in East India House (where he would remain until retirement in 1825, aged 50, nine years before his death). Much of the story is merely hinted at, and some of the facts are changed. Ackroyd alludes to Charles Lamb's unhappiness through references to drinking binges, but concentrates mainly on the weirdly plausible activities of William Ireland.
Ireland is as keen on becoming a writer as is Lamb. But, more importantly, he wants to impress Samuel, his bookseller father. The discovery of a book believed to have been owned by Shakespeare sets the young Ireland off on a wild path of forgery which culminates in the penning of a play, a "lost" tragedy named Vortigern. Initially he is believed and hailed by all, including James Boswell, who apparently kissed the parchments. History confirms it was Edmond Malone who eventually exposed Ireland's trickery.
Ackroyd's narrative races along, a mixture of fact and fancy engagingly served by nimble characterisation and conversational, rather than weighty, dialogue. William Ireland is not quite a cad; instead he emerges as a son desperate to please his father. At first, when the youth's deception is believed, his father is delighted. Mary Lamb, portrayed sympathetically as an idealist possessed of many dreams and no real hopes, is particularly thrilled by this communication from the grave. For her, it is as if Shakespeare has returned.This belief is also the perfect escape from the misery of her life with a father who has lost his mind and a mother who is threatening her sanity.
The cheeky young Ireland (and it seems his deceptions were forgiven) is given a line that could also be taken as the code by which Ackroyd's imagination has danced: "There is always more to explore. This is London."
London, as ever in Ackroyd, gyrates and shimmers throughout the narrative. The Lambs of London is a good yarn, fast and funny, colourful and touching too, in the respective failures of its central characters, none of whom secures their dreams. A family saga with a twist, the novel conjures up the feeling that history, as Ackroyd has long since detected, invariably proves the surest of storytellers.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times.