Peter Ackroyd

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 To comply with Wikipedia's lead section guidelines, the introduction of this article may need to be rewritten.
Please discuss this issue on the talk page and read the layout guide to make sure the section will be inclusive of all essential details.
Peter Ackroyd

Born 5 October 1949 (1949-10-05) (age 58)
East Acton, London, England
Occupation Author
Nationality British

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:

"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 [1]

Contents

[edit] 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.[2]

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 has 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[3]) is an extensive narrative of key periods in world history.

[edit] Works

[edit] Fiction

[edit] Adult Non-fiction

[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

[edit] External links

[edit] Author information

[edit] Excerpts

[edit] Articles

[edit] Reviews

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

[edit] Other

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ 'Cultists' Go Round in Circles', Barry Hugill, The Observer Sunday 28 August 1994
  2. ^ Guardian Unlimited story on Peter Ackroyd, Retrieved January 2006
  3. ^ [1] The Sunday Times September 28, 2003


Persondata
NAME Ackroyd, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION English author
DATE OF BIRTH October 5, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH London, England
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH