Peter Ackroyd Totally Explained

Everything about Peter Ackroyd totally explained

Peter Ackroyd (born 5 October 1949, East Acton, London) is an English author.
Ackroyd has always shown a great interest in the city of London and one of his most recent 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: ť "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?" 'Cultists' Go Round in Circles', Barry Hugill, The Observer, Sunday, 28 August 1994

Life

Ackroyd's mother worked in the personnel department of an engineering firm, and his father left the family home when Peter Ackroyd was a baby. He was reading newspapers at the age of 5 and wrote a play about Guy Fawkes, aged nine. He also reputedly first realised he was gay at the age of 7.
   Ackroyd was educated at St. Benedict's, Ealing and at Clare College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a double first in English and was a Mellon Fellow at Yale University, in the United States.
   His career started in poetry, including works such as London Lickpenny (1973) and The Diversions of Purley (1987). He later moved into fiction and has become an acclaimed author, winning the 1998 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the biography Thomas More and being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987.
   Ackroyd worked at The Spectator magazine between 1973 and 1977 and became joint managing editor in 1978. He was nominated a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984 and is currently a regular radio broadcaster and book critic.
   More recently, he's written London: The Biography (2000), and followed this with the most scholarly yet of his popular books, Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination (2002), a work of intellectual history that traces themes in English culture from the Anglo-Saxon era to the present.
   From 2003 to 2005, Ackroyd wrote a six-book non-fiction series (Voyages Through Time), intended for readers as young as eight. This was 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

The Great Fire of London – 1982
The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde – 1983
Hawksmoor – 1985
Chatterton – 1987 (shortlisted for the Booker Prize, 1987)
First Light – 1989
English Music – 1992
The House of Doctor Dee – 1993
Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem – 1994 (also published as The Trial of Elizabeth Cree)
Milton in America – 1996
The Plato Papers – 1999
The Clerkenwell Tales – 2003
The Lambs of London – 2004
The Fall of Troy – 2006

Adult Non-fiction

Notes for a New Culture: An Essay on Modernism – 1976

Dressing Up: Transvestism and Drag: The History of an Obsession – 1979

T. S. Eliot: A Life – 1984

Dickens' London: An Imaginative Vision – 1987

The Life of Thomas More – 1988

Ezra Pound and his World – 1989 ISBN 0500130698

Dickens – 1990

An Introduction to Dickens – 1991

Blake – 1996

London: The Biography – 2000

Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination – 2002

Chaucer (first in planned series of Ackroyd's Brief Lives) – 2005

Shakespeare: The Biography – 2005

Turner (second book in the 'Brief Lives' series) – 2006

Newton (third book in the 'Brief Lives' series) – 2007

Thames: Sacred River – 2007

Poe: A life cut short – 2008

Children's non-fiction (Voyages Through Time series)

The Beginning – 2003

Escape From Earth – 2004

Kingdom of the Dead – 2004

Cities of Blood – 2004

Ancient Greece – 2005

Ancient Rome – 2005

Plays

The Mystery of Charles Dickens – 2000

Television / documentary

BBC unless otherwise noted

2004, London (television)

2006 The Romantics

2007 London Visions, (documentary series) Artsworld. See a review here

.Further Information

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