Quotes from Peter Ackroyd

Approximately 60 per cent of the agricultural population was deemed to be too poor to pay taxes.

The law stated that those with property worth more than £20 a year were obliged to adopt the status of knights; but knighthood was an expensive business, with the cost of equipment alone, and many landowners were ready to pay a relatively large sum to avoid the honour.

Statesmen may plot and plan. Learned men may calculate and conclude. Diplomats may debate and prevaricate. But chance rules the immediate affairs of humankind.

The World makes its own Demons, which then the People see.

The England of Edward I was more populous than that of Elizabeth I or of George II.

My Voice grew faint through the Curtain of my Pain.

after the Black Death, had materially changed the role of law. It was no longer an instrument of communal justice; it had instead become the machinery of exaction designed to control and discipline the lower classes.

A woman is a deep Ditch, said he, her House inclines to Death and her Paths unto the Devil

As early as the 1830s Charles Babbage had managed to construct a "Difference Engine" which could perform simple sums, but he soon became preoccupied with the far more complicated "Analytical Engine" which could add, subtract, multiply and divide as well as solve both algebraic and numerical equations; it had also been able to print out the results of its calculations onto stereotype plates. This was the engine which Gissing had come to see.

Since Christians were not allowed to lend money at interest, some other group of merchants had to be created. The Jews became moneylenders by default, as it were, and as a result they were abused and despised in equal measure.

I mould him as the Baker moulds the Dough before he pops it in the Oven.

Although their populations ranged only from 20 to 200 people, we may see in them the beginnings of urban life in England. The author believes that London was once just such a hill fort, but the evidence for it is now buried beneath the megalopolis it has become.

Anti-Semitism was part of the Christian condition throughout Europe.

name for Manchester was Mamucio, after the

there are no haunted houses...only haunted people

Water is a great leveller...On water all are at an equal level.

Henry III ordained a Statute of Jewry that enforced a number of disciplinary measures, including the compulsory badge of identification. This was a token or tabula of yellow felt, 3 inches by 6 inches (7.5 by 15 centimetres), to be worn on an outer garment; it was to be carried by every Jew over the age of seven years.

the Gulphe in which truth lies is bottomless and it will wash over whatever is thrown into it.

Sexuality was a fluid, infinitely malleable and indefinite condition. It permeated the streets of London like the smell of pies and sweetmeats.

The body of Saint Mark, supposedly preserved in the basilica was the central point of the configuration between the ducal palace, the market, and the Arsenal. This was the sacred geometry of Venetian power.

Una de las grandes maldiciones del género humano es la de temer cuando no hay nada que temer, contestó. Este ánimo supersticioso y amigo de los presagios desarma los corazones de los hombres, ablanda su coraje y hace que ellos mismos atraigan las desgracias sobre sus cabezas.

Is there not something more glorious about making music than making war?

He was a man who combined familial greatness with personal mediocrity.

This would be entirely consistent with a reformation that was less about the assertion of faith and principle than about the redistribution of power and wealth.