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Peter Ackroyd
Peter Ackroyd CBE FRSL (Clare 1968), born 5 October 1949, is a prolific novelist and biographer with a particular interest in the history and culture of London.
His literary career began with poetry, including such works as
London Lickpenny (1973) and
The Diversions of Purley (1987). He later moved into fiction and has become an acclaimed author, winning the Whitbread Award twice, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Someset Maugham Prize, the Heinemann Award amd the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, as well as being shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
He worked at
The Spectator magazine between 1973 and 1977 and became joint managing editor in 1978. In 1982 he published
The Great Fire of London, his first novel, which deals with Charles Dickens and is a reworking of Little Dorrit. Subsequent works have explored the complex interaction of time and space, often with London as a central theme. They include
Albion: The Origins on the English Imagination,
London: The Biography,
Thames: Sacred River,
The Clerkenwell Tales,
and Venice: Pure City. His biographies include
Blake,
Chaucer, Dickens,
Turner,
Newton and
Shakespeare: The Biography.
He was made a CBE in the 2003 New Year’s Honours List for services to literature, and was elected to an Honorary Fellowship of Clare College in 2006.