Peter Ackroyd (born 5 October 1949) is an English biographer, novelist and critic with a specialist interest in the history and culture of London. For his novels about English history and culture and his biographies of, among others,

William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the Romantic poetry, poetry and visual art of t ...

Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian er ...

, T. S. Eliot,

Charlie Chaplin Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is conside ...

and

Sir Thomas More Sir Thomas More (7 February 1478 – 6 July 1535), venerated in the Catholic Church as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, judge, social philosopher, author, statesman, and noted Renaissance humanist. He also served Henry VIII as Lor ...

, he won the Somerset Maugham Award and two

Whitbread Awards The Costa Book Awards were a set of annual literary awards recognising English-language books by writers based in UK and Ireland. Originally named the Whitbread Book Awards from 1971 to 2005 after its first sponsor, the Whitbread company, then ...

. He is noted for the volume of work he has produced, the range of styles therein, his skill at assuming different voices, and the depth of his research. He was elected a fellow of the

Royal Society of Literature The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820, by King George IV, to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, the RSL has about 600 Fellows, ele ...

in 1984 and appointed a

Commander of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established ...

in 2003.

Early life and education

Ackroyd was born in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

and raised on a

council estate Public housing in the United Kingdom, also known as council estates, council housing, or social housing, provided the majority of rented accommodation until 2011 when the number of households in private rental housing surpassed the number in so ...

in East Acton, in what he has described as a "strict"

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD * Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a let ...

household by his mother and grandmother, after his father disappeared from the family home. He first knew that he was gay when he was seven. He was educated at St. Benedict's,

Ealing Ealing () is a district in West London, England, west of Charing Cross in the London Borough of Ealing. Ealing is the administrative centre of the borough and is identified as a major metropolitan centre in the London Plan. Ealing was his ...

, and at

Clare College, Cambridge Clare College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. The college was founded in 1326 as University Hall, making it the second-oldest surviving college of the University after Peterhouse. It was refound ...

, from which he graduated with a double first in English literature. In 1972, he was a Mellon fellow at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...

Work

The result of his Yale fellowship was ''Notes for a New Culture'', written when Ackroyd was only 22 and eventually published in 1976. The title, an echo of T. S. Eliot's ''Notes Towards the Definition of Culture'' (1948), was an early indication of Ackroyd's penchant for exploring and re-examining the works of other London-based writers. He worked at ''

The Spectator ''The Spectator'' is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world. It is owned by Frederick Barclay, who also owns ''Th ...

'' magazine between 1973 and 1977 as literary editor and became joint managing editor in 1978, a position he held until 1982. He worked as chief book reviewer for ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' ( ...

'' and was a frequent broadcaster on radio. Since 1984 he has been a

fellow of the Royal Society of Literature The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820, by King George IV, to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, the RSL has about 600 Fellows, elec ...

. His literary career began with poetry; his work in that field includes such works as ''London Lickpenny'' (1973) and ''The Diversions of Purley'' (1987). In 1982 he published ''The Great Fire of London'', his first novel, which is a reworking of

' novel '' Little Dorrit''. The novel set the stage for the long sequence of novels Ackroyd has produced since, all of which deal in some way with the complex interaction of time and space and what Ackroyd calls "the spirit of place". However, this transition to being a novelist was unexpected. In an interview with Patrick McGrath in 1989, Ackroyd said:

I enjoy it, I suppose, but I never thought I'd be a novelist. I never wanted to be a novelist. I can't bear fiction. I hate it. It's so untidy. When I was a young man I wanted to be a poet, then I wrote a critical book, and I don't think I even read a novel till I was about 26 or 27.

In his novels he often contrasts historical settings with present-day segments (e.g. ''The Great Fire of London'', ''Hawksmoor'', ''The House of Doctor Dee''). Many of Ackroyd's novels are set in London and deal with the ever-changing, but at the same time stubbornly consistent nature of the city. Often this theme is explored through the city's artists, especially its writers:

Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...

in ''The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde'' (1983), a fake autobiography of Wilde;

Nicholas Hawksmoor Nicholas Hawksmoor (probably 1661 – 25 March 1736) was an English architect. He was a leading figure of the English Baroque style of architecture in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. Hawksmoor worked alongside the principa ...

, Sir

Christopher Wren Sir Christopher Wren PRS FRS (; – ) was one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history, as well as an anatomist, astronomer, geometer, and mathematician-physicist. He was accorded responsibility for rebuilding 52 church ...

and Sir

John Vanbrugh Sir John Vanbrugh (; 24 January 1664 (baptised) – 26 March 1726) was an English architect, dramatist and herald, perhaps best known as the designer of Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard. He wrote two argumentative and outspoken Restora ...

in ''Hawksmoor'' (1985);

Thomas Chatterton Thomas Chatterton (20 November 1752 – 24 August 1770) was an English poet whose precocious talents ended in suicide at age 17. He was an influence on Romantic artists of the period such as Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth and Coleridge. Alth ...

and George Meredith in ''Chatterton'' (1987);

John Dee John Dee (13 July 1527 – 1608 or 1609) was an English mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, teacher, occultist, and alchemist. He was the court astronomer for, and advisor to, Elizabeth I, and spent much of his time on alchemy, divination, a ...

in ''The House of Dr Dee'' (1993); Dan Leno,

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

George Gissing George Robert Gissing (; 22 November 1857 – 28 December 1903) was an English novelist, who published 23 novels between 1880 and 1903. His best-known works have reappeared in modern editions. They include '' The Nether World'' (1889), ''New Gru ...

and Thomas De Quincey in ''Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem'' (1994);

John Milton John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem ''Paradise Lost'', written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and politica ...

in ''Milton in America'' (1996);

Charles Lamb Charles Lamb (10 February 1775 – 27 December 1834) was an English essayist, poet, and antiquarian, best known for his '' Essays of Elia'' and for the children's book '' Tales from Shakespeare'', co-authored with his sister, Mary Lamb (1764� ...

in ''The Lambs of London''. ''Hawksmoor'', winner of both the

Whitbread Novel Award The Costa Book Awards were a set of annual literary awards recognising English-language books by writers based in UK and Ireland. Originally named the Whitbread Book Awards from 1971 to 2005 after its first sponsor, the Whitbread company, th ...

and the

Guardian Fiction Prize The Guardian Fiction Prize was a literary award sponsored by ''The Guardian'' newspaper. Founded in 1965, it recognized one fiction book per year written by a British or Commonwealth writer and published in the United Kingdom. The award ran for 33 ...

, was inspired by Iain Sinclair's poem "Lud Heat" (1975), which speculated on a mystical power from the positioning of the six churches Nicholas Hawksmoor built. The novel gives Hawksmoor a Satanical motive for the siting of his buildings, and creates a modern namesake, a policeman investigating a series of murders. ''Chatterton'' (1987), a similarly layered novel explores plagiarism and forgery and was shortlisted for the

Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. ...

. '' 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 ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the ...

'', in which he remarked:

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?

In the sequence ''London: The Biography'' (2000), ''Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination'' (2002), and ''Thames: Sacred River'' (2007), Ackroyd has produced works of what he considers historical

sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...

. These books trace themes in London and English culture from the ancient past to the present, drawing again on his favoured notion of almost spiritual lines of connection rooted in place and stretching across time. His fascination with London literary and artistic figures is also displayed in the sequence of biographies he has produced of

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...

(1980), T. S. Eliot (1984),

(1990),

(1995),

Thomas More Sir Thomas More (7 February 1478 – 6 July 1535), venerated in the Catholic Church as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, judge, social philosopher, author, statesman, and noted Renaissance humanist. He also served Henry VIII as Lord ...

(1998),

Geoffrey Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for '' The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...

(2004),

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

(2005), and

J. M. W. Turner Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 177519 December 1851), known in his time as William Turner, was an English Romantic painter, printmaker and watercolourist. He is known for his expressive colouring, imaginative landscapes and turbul ...

. The city itself stands astride all these works, as it does in the fiction. Ackroyd was forced to think of new methods of biography writing in ''T. S. Eliot'' when he was told he couldn't quote extensively from Eliot's poetry and unpublished letters. From 2003 to 2005, Ackroyd wrote a six-book non-fiction series (''Voyages Through Time''), intended for readers as young as eight, his first work for children. The critically acclaimed series—described as "Not just sound-bite snacks for short attention spans, but unfolding feasts that leave you with a sense of wonder" by ''

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...

'' is an extensive narrative of key periods in world history. In a 2012 interview with Matthew Stadlen of the BBC, when asked the question, "Who do you think is the person who has made the biggest impact upon the life of this country ever?", Ackroyd said, "I think William Blake is the most powerful and most significant philosopher or thinker in the course of English history." In the same interview, when asked what fascinates him about London, he said he admired "its power, its majesty, its darkness, its shadows." When asked what he did outside of writing, he said, "I drink, that's about it."

Personal life

Ackroyd had a long-term relationship with Brian Kuhn, an American dancer he met while at Yale. After a nervous breakdown in the late 1980s, Ackroyd moved to

Devon Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devo ...

with Kuhn. However, Kuhn was then diagnosed with

AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual ma ...

and died in 1994, after which Ackroyd moved back to London. In 1999, he suffered a heart attack and was placed in a medically induced coma for a week. In a 2004 interview, Ackroyd said that he had not been in a relationship since Kuhn's death and was "very happy being

celibate Celibacy (from Latin ''caelibatus'') is the state of voluntarily being unmarried, sexually abstinent, or both, usually for religious reasons. It is often in association with the role of a religious official or devotee. In its narrow sense, th ...

List of works

Poetry

*1971 ''Ouch!'' *1973 ''London Lickpenny'' *1978 ''Country Life'' *1987 ''The Diversions of Purley and Other Poems''

Fiction

*1982 ''

The Great Fire of London The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through central London from Sunday 2 September to Thursday 6 September 1666, gutting the medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall, while also extending past the ...

'' *1983 '' The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde'' *1985 ''

Hawksmoor Nicholas Hawksmoor (probably 1661 – 25 March 1736) was an English architect. He was a leading figure of the English Baroque style of architecture in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. Hawksmoor worked alongside the principa ...

'' *1987 ''Chatterton'' *1989 ''First Light'' *1992 '' English Music'' *1993 '' The House of Doctor Dee'' *1994 ''

Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem ''Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem'' (published in the United States as ''The Trial of Elizabeth Cree'') is a 1994 novel by the English author Peter Ackroyd. It is a murder mystery framed within a story featuring real historical characters, and ...

'' (also published as ''The Trial of Elizabeth Cree'') *1996 ''Milton in America'' *1999 ''The Plato Papers'' *2000 ''The Mystery of Charles Dickens'' *2003 '' The Clerkenwell Tales'' *2004 ''The Lambs of London'' *2006 ''The Fall of Troy'' *2008 ''The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein'' *2009 ''

The Canterbury Tales ''The Canterbury Tales'' ( enm, Tales of Caunterbury) is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's '' magnum opus ...

– A Retelling'' *2010 '' The Death of King Arthur: The Immortal Legend – A Retelling'' *2013 ''Three Brothers'' *2020 ''Mr Cadmus''

Non-fiction

*1976 ''Notes for a New Culture: An Essay on Modernism'' *1979 ''Dressing Up: Transvestism and Drag, the History of an Obsession'' *1980 ''Ezra Pound and His World'' *1984 ''T. S. Eliot'' *1987 ''Dickens' London: An Imaginative Vision'' *1989 ''Ezra Pound and his World'' (1989) *1990 ''Dickens'' *1991 ''Introduction to Dickens'' *1995 ''Blake'' *1998 ''The Life of Thomas More'' *2000 '' London: The Biography'' *2001 ''The Collection: Journalism, Reviews, Essays, Short Stories, Lectures'' *2002 ''Dickens: Public Life and Private Passion'' *2002 ''Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination'' *2003 ''The Beginning'' *2003 ''Illustrated London'' *2004 ''Escape From Earth'' *2004 ''Ancient Egypt'' *2004 ''Chaucer'' (Nan A. Talese, Doubleday: Ackroyd's Brief Lives) *2005 ''Shakespeare: The Biography'' *2005 ''Ancient Greece'' *2005 ''Ancient Rome'' *2006 ''J.M.W. Turner'' (Nan A. Talese, Doubleday: Ackroyd's Brief Lives) *2007 ''Thames: Sacred River'' *2008 ''Coffee with Dickens'' (with Paul Schlicke) *2008 ''Newton'' (Nan A. Talese, Doubleday: Ackroyd's Brief Lives) *2008 ''Poe: A Life Cut Short'' (Nan A. Talese, Doubleday: Ackroyd's Brief Lives) *2009 ''Venice: Pure City'' *2010 ''The English Ghost'' *2011 ''London Under'' *2011 ''The History of England, v.1 Foundation'' *2012 ''Wilkie Collins'' (Nan A. Talese, Doubleday: Ackroyd's Brief Lives) *2012 ''The History of England, v.2 Tudors'' *2014 ''The History of England, v.3 Civil War'' (also available as ''Rebellion: The History of England from James I to the Glorious Revolution'') *2014 ''Charlie Chaplin'' *2015 ''Alfred Hitchcock'' *2016 ''The History of England, v.4 Revolution'' *2017 '' Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day'' *2018 ''The History of England, v.5 Dominion'' *2021 ''The History of England, v.6 Innovation'' *2021 ''Introducing Swedenborg'' *2022 ''The Colours of London'' *2023 ''The English Actor: From Medieval to Modern''

Television

*2002 '' Dickens'' ( BBC) *2004 ''

'' ( BBC) *2006 ''The Romantics'' ( BBC) *2007 ''London Visions'' ( BBC) *2008 ''Peter Ackroyd's Thames'' ( ITV) *2009 ''Peter Ackroyd's Venice'' ( BBC)

Honours and awards

*1984 Fellow of the

*1984 Heinemann Award (joint winner) for ''T. S. Eliot'' *1984 Somerset Maugham Award for ''The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde'' *1984 Whitbread Biography Award for ''T. S. Eliot'' *1985

for ''Hawksmoor'' *1985

for ''Hawksmoor'' *1988 Booker Prize for Fiction – nomination (shortlist) for ''Chatterton'' *1998 James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for biography) for ''The Life of Thomas More'' *2001

South Bank Show Annual Award for Literature South is one of the cardinal directions or compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Proto-Germanic ''*sun� ...

for ''London: The Biography'' *2003 British Book Awards Illustrated Book of the Year (''Illustrated London'' shortlisted) *2003 Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) *2006 Foreign Honorary Member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

*2006 Honorary Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.) from

Brunel University Brunel University London is a public research university located in the Uxbridge area of London, England. It was founded in 1966 and named after the Victorian engineer and pioneer of the Industrial Revolution, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. In Jun ...

References

Citations

Sources

External links

* * * * * * * Peter Ackroyd Papers. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. {{DEFAULTSORT:Ackroyd, Peter 1949 births Alumni of Clare College, Cambridge Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature English biographers English children's writers English historians English historical novelists Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Living people People educated at St Benedict's School, Ealing People from Acton, London Psychogeographers Chaucer scholars Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Postmodern writers English gay writers Costa Book Award winners James Tait Black Memorial Prize recipients William Blake scholars 20th-century English novelists 21st-century British novelists People from the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham English LGBT poets English LGBT novelists 20th-century biographers 21st-century biographers Historians of London