Peter Ackroyd

Peter Ackroyd (born October 5 1949 in London) is a British author.

Ackroyd won a double first in English at Clare College, Cambridge as an undergraduate 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, including shortlisting 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 in 1984 and is currently a regular radio broadcaster and book critic.

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 2002 he followed this with the monumental cultural history of England, Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination.

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 criticallly acclaimed series (Not just sound-bite snacks for short attention spans, but unfolding feasts that leave you with a sense of wonder, 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
Dickens – 1990
An Introduction to Dickens – 1991
Blake – 1996
London: The Biography – 2000
Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination – 2002
Shakespeare: The Biography – 2005

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

External links

*A more in-depth biography
*Guardian Books "Author Page", with profile and links to further articles.
* Excerpt from London: The Biography
*1991 Audio Interview with Peter Ackroyd Discussing the Life of Charles Dickens - RealAudio (29 min 6 s)

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See also

* Children's Non-Fiction / Nonfiction Authors