Peter Ackroyd

Ackroyd attended Clare College, Cambridge as an undergraduate and was a Mellon Fellow[?] at Yale, 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 has always shown a great interest in the city of London and one of his most recent works (London: an autobiography) is an extensive and thorough discussion of London through the ages.

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 in 1984 and is currently a regular radio broadcaster and book critic.

Works

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 Trial of Elizabeth Cree – 1995

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
• Ezra Pound and his World – 1989
• Dickens – 1990
• An Introduction to Dickens – 1991
• Blake – 1996

External links

• A more in-depth biography (http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth148&state=)
• Excerpt from London: A Biography (http://books.guardian.co.uk/firstchapters/story/0,6761,544022,00)