257-] English Literature
Peter Ackroyd
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. For his
novels about English history and culture and his biographies of, among others,
William Blake, Charles Dickens, T. S. Eliot, Charlie Chaplin and Sir Thomas
More, he won the Somerset Maugham Award and two Whitbread Awards. 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 in 1984 and appointed a
Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2003.
Early
life and education
Ackroyd
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 first knew
that he was gay when he was seven. He was educated at St. Benedict's, Ealing,
and at Clare College, Cambridge, from which he graduated with a double first in
English literature. In 1972, he was a Mellon fellow at Yale University.
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 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 and was a frequent
broadcaster on radio. Since 1984 he has been a fellow of the Royal Society of
Literature.
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
Charles Dickens' 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.
The novel received generally positive reviews on its publication, although many
reviewers have subsequently reassessed it in the light of Hawksmoor three years
later, which had a similar focus albeit with a different historical
perspective. 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).[citation
needed] 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 in The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (1983), a fake
autobiography of Wilde; Nicholas Hawksmoor, Sir Christopher Wren and Sir John
Vanbrugh in Hawksmoor (1985); Thomas Chatterton and George Meredith in
Chatterton (1987); John Dee in The House of Dr Dee (1993); Dan Leno, Karl Marx,
George Gissing and Thomas De Quincey in Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem
(1994); John Milton in Milton in America (1996); Charles Lamb in The Lambs of
London.[citation needed]
Hawksmoor,
winner of both the Whitbread Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize, 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. 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, 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. 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.[citation needed]
His
fascination with London literary and artistic figures is also displayed in the
sequence of biographies he has produced of Ezra Pound (1980), T. S. Eliot
(1984), Charles Dickens (1990), William Blake (1995), Thomas More (1998),
Geoffrey Chaucer (2004), William Shakespeare (2005), and J. M. W. Turner. 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 could not 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 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."[10] 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
with Kuhn. However, Kuhn was then diagnosed with AIDS 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."
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 , 1983 The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde , 1985
Hawksmoor , 1987 Chatterton , 1989 First Light , 1992 English Music, 1993 The
House of Doctor Dee , 1994 Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (also published as
The Trial of Elizabeth Cree) , 1996 Milton in America
1999
The Plato Papers , 2003 The Clerkenwell Tales , 2004 The Lambs of London , 2006
The Fall of Troy, 2008 The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein
2009
The Canterbury Tales – 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 , 1990 Dickens , 1991 Introduction to Dickens
1995
Blake , 1998 The Life of Thomas More , 2000 London: The Biography
2000
The Mystery of Charles Dickens (biographical one-man show performed by Simon
Callow) , 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: Spectres Through Time ,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
2024
The English Soul: Faith of a Nation
Television
2002
Dickens (BBC),2004 London (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 Royal Society of Literature ,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
Guardian Fiction Prize for Hawksmoor ,1985 Whitbread Novel Award 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 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 ,2006 Honorary Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.) from Brunel University.
