Peter Ackroyd

Author

• Born: October 5, 1949
• Place of Birth: London, England

Biography

Peter Ackroyd was born in London, England, on October 5, 1949, the son of Graham Ackroyd and Audrey Whiteside Ackroyd. When Peter was six months old, his father left. Peter grew up in East Acton, a working-class housing project near Wormwood Scrubs prison. Both his mother and his grandmother worked in order to provide for him; they even sent him to the continent for vacations. His Roman Catholic mother saw to it that he was reared in her faith; his grandmother, that he learned to love London as she did. Peter was a precocious child who loved poetry and began writing it at an early age.

Ackroyd attended Saint Benedict’s School in Ealing on a scholarship. In 1968, he entered Clare College, Cambridge, again on a scholarship. After graduating with double first class honors, in 1971 he went to Yale University as a Mellon Fellow. It was at Yale that Ackroyd met Brian Kuhn, who became his companion and also an invaluable research assistant. Kuhn saw Ackroyd through a nervous breakdown in 1988; three years later, when Kuhn contracted AIDS, Ackroyd became his nurse. After Kuhn died in 1994, Ackroyd sold their house in Devon and moved to Islington in north London. Ackroyd’s biography of Blake was dedicated to Kuhn.

When Ackroyd returned to England after two years at Yale, he was only twenty-four. However, he was offered a prestigious position as literary editor and film critic for the Spectator, a conservative weekly magazine. He immediately became known as a writer of devastating reviews. Yet Ackroyd had little interest in prose; he kept writing and publishing poems. In 1978, he became joint managing editor of the Spectator, but three years later, he resigned in order to devote all his time to writing.

Ackroyd then began alternating between writing novels in which historical characters appeared, often crossing time barriers, and biographies into which he unashamedly introduced fictional incidents. Always he emphasized the presence of the past. Almost all of his novels showed London as a magical place, where the England of earlier times was still alive. His works also reflected his belief that only returning to the Roman Catholicism of its past can England become spiritually whole. His biographies and other nonfiction also often hinged on deep connections to England, and especially London, and the complexities of culture and history.

Early on, Ackroyd established a reputation as a tireless worker. Every day, he spent hours at his writing. By 1984 he was named a Royal Society of Literature fellow. In addition, in 1986, he became chief book reviewer for the London Times, and in the late 1990s, he became involved in the publishing business, serving briefly as CEO of Tuttle Publishing and then of Element Books.

Ackroyd received the Somerset Maugham award for The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde; the Whitbread Award and The Guardian Fiction Prize for Hawksmoor; another Whitbread award and the Heinemann Award for nonfiction, Royal Society of Literature, for his biography of T. S. Eliot; and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Best Biography, 1998, for The Life of Thomas More. His book London: The Biography (2000), which merged themes of history and sociology, won the South Bank Show Annual Award for Literature. That same year, Ackroyd published his first play, The Mystery of Charles Dickens. In 2003, he was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

In 2003 Ackroyd also began a series of nonfiction historical works for children, further proving his ability to write in many different voices for a variety of audiences. Known for his prodigious output and intense devotion to writing, he continued to release a steady stream of adult fiction and nonfiction. His works of the 2010s included The English Ghost (2010); The Death of King Arthur (2010); Foundation: The History of England Volume I (2011); Wilkie Collins (2012); Foundation: The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors (2012); Tudors: The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I (2013) and Rebellion: The History of England from James I to the Glorious Revolution (2014).

Critics agree on the high quality of Ackroyd’s work, but although some see the influence of high modernism in his writings, it is evident that neither the author nor his works can be neatly categorized. In any case, Ackroyd’s integrity and his originality gained him an international reputation, and the breadth of his vision established him as one of his country’s great men of letters.

Ackroyd continued writing nonfiction throughout the late 2010s and early 2020s. Some of his most notable works from this period include several additional volumes that continue his The History of England Series, as well as The Colours of London (2022) and The English Soul: Faith of a Nation (2024).

While Ackroyd is best known for his nonfiction, he is also a novelist. In 2013, he published Three Brothers, a story of three brothers who were born an hour apart on the same day. The brothers are haunted by their past, which includes their mother abandoning them. Ackroyd published Mr. Cadmus in 2020, a satirical tale about two women who flee their past to settle into a quiet country life in an English town.

Bibliography

Ackroyd, Peter. "Peter Ackroyd." Interview by Patrick McGrath. Bomb 26 (1989). Bomb Magazine. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.

Lewis, Peter. "Peter Ackroyd Biography." Brief Biographies. Net Industries, 2016. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.

"Peter Ackroyd." British Council: Literature. British Council, 2016. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.

"Peter Ackroyd." Gresham College. Gresham College, 2016. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.

"Peter Ackroyd." Susijn Agency. Susijn Agency, n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.

Wilson, A.N. "Peter Ackroyd's Tour of English Religious History." The Spectator, 9 May 2024, thespectator.com/book-and-art/peter-ackroyd-genius-tour-english-religious-history/. Accessed 16 Oct. 2024.