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. The Great Fire of London, Hawksmoor, The House of Doctor Dee). In his novels he often contrasts historical settings with present-day segments (e.g. 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. I enjoy it, I suppose, but I never thought I'd be a novelist. In an interview with Patrick McGrath in 1989, Ackroyd said: However, this transition to being a novelist was unexpected. 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'.

In 1982 he published The Great Fire of London, his first novel, which is a reworking of Charles Dickens' novel Little Dorrit. His literary career began with poetry his work in that field includes such works as London Lickpenny (1973) and The Diversions of Purley (1987). Since 1984 he has been a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He worked as chief book reviewer for The Times and was a frequent broadcaster on radio. He worked at The Spectator magazine between 19 as literary editor and became joint managing editor in 1978, a position he held until 1982. 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. The result of his Yale fellowship was Notes for a New Culture, written when Ackroyd was only 22 and eventually published in 1976. In 1972, he was a Mellon fellow at Yale University. Benedict's, Ealing, and at Clare College, Cambridge, from which he graduated with a double first in English literature. He first knew that he was gay when he was seven. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984 and appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2003.Īckroyd was born in London and raised on a council estate in East Acton, in what he has described as a 'strict' Roman Catholic household by his mother and grandmother, after his father disappeared from the family home. 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. Eliot, Charlie Chaplin and Sir Thomas More, he won the Somerset Maugham Award and two Whitbread Awards. For his novels about English history and culture and his biographies of, among others, William Blake, Charles Dickens, T. Peter Ackroyd CBE, FRSL (born 5 October 1949) is an English biographer, novelist and critic with a specialist interest in the history and culture of London. From the BBC programme Desert Island Discs.

Dickens by peter ackroyd