Peter Ackroyd

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Peter Ackroyd

Born:	October 5, 1949 (age 57) London, England
Occupation:	Author
Nationality:	British

Peter Ackroyd (born October 5 1949, London) is an English author.

Ackroyd's mother worked in the personnel department of an engineering firm and his father had left home when Ackroyd was a baby. He was reading newspapers at the age of 5 and wrote a play about Guy Fawkes when he was 9. He also first realised he was gay at the age of 7.^[1]

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 of Literature 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 his most scholarly work yet, Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination, being 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^[2]) is an extensive narrative of key periods in world history.

Contents 1 Works 1.1 Fiction 1.2 Adult Non-fiction 1.3 Children's non-fiction (Voyages Through Time series) 1.4 Plays 2 Television / documentary 3 External links 3.1 Author information 3.2 Excerpts 3.3 Audio 3.4 Articles 3.5 Reviews 3.6 Ackroyd's reviews of other writers' work 3.7 Other 4 See also 5 References

[edit] Works

[edit] 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

[edit] 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

[edit] 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

[edit] Plays

• The Mystery of Charles Dickens – 2000

[edit] Television / documentary

BBC unless otherwise noted

• 2004, London (television)
• 2006 The Romantics
• 2007 London Visions, (documentary series) Artsworld. See a review here.

[edit] External links

[edit] Author information

• Peter Ackroyd at the Internet Book List
• Peter Ackroyd at the Internet Book Database of Fiction
• Peter Ackroyd at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• A more in-depth biography
• Guardian Books "Author Page", with profile and links to further articles.

[edit] Excerpts

• Excerpt from London: The Biography
• Another excerpt from London: The Biography
• Excerpt: Shakespeare on CBC Words at Large

[edit] Audio

• 1991 Audio Interview with Peter Ackroyd Discussing the Life of Charles Dickens - RealAudio (29 min 6 s)

[edit] Articles

• "The man who invented Arthur" - The Times - August 13, 2005
  • Article about Thomas Malory.
• "Undercover in mother Russia" - The Sunday Times - November 26, 2006
  • Travel writing about Moscow.

[edit] Reviews

• Shakespeare, Review by Peter Carey - The Times, September 18, 2005
• Newton, Review by Nigel Hawkes - The Times, April 22, 2006
• The Clerkenwell Tales. Review - The Telegraph, August 4, 2003

[edit] Ackroyd's reviews of other writers' work

• The Nativity: History and Legend by Geza Vermes - The Times - December 23, 2006
• London: City of Disappearances edited by Iain Sinclair - The Times - October 7, 2006
• The Friendship: Wordsworth and Coleridge by Adam Sisman - The Times - November 11, 2006
• The Devil's Doctor: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science by Philip Ball - The Times - January 21, 2006
• Paris: The Secret History by Andrew Hussey - The Times
• Further book reviews at The Times available via this Google search.

[edit] Other

• Called to the Bard - The Times - August 20, 2005
  • Interview with Ackroyd, discussing Shakespeare.

[edit] See also

• Children's Non-Fiction / Nonfiction Authors

[edit] References

1. ^ Guardian Unlimited story on Peter Ackroyd, Retrieved January 2006
2. ^ The Sunday Times September 28, 2003