An illustration of Sarah Ponsonby and Eleanor Butler

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Reading lists

How books are revealing a new queer history of the UK

Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day

Queer City

Peter Ackroyd looks at London in a whole new way – through the history and experiences of its gay population.

After his mammoth, shamanic aria London: the Biography, the remarkable writer Peter Ackroyd has produced a nimble, uproarious pocket history of sex in his beloved metropolis

Ackroyd has an encyclopaedic knowledge of London, and a poet's instinct for its strange, mesmerising drives and urges ... Queer City contains something to alarm or fascinate on every page

Droll, provocative and crammed to busting with startling facts

If there was a prize for the most evocative or salacious chapter headings, then Peter Ackroyd's new book, Queer City, would be the undisputed victor. They capture the rudery and naughtiness, although not the erudition of this entertaining history of the 'queer' experience in London

The kind of screed a queer person would be remiss if they did not pick up. This is a call to arms... Throughout the book it is made clear that for every halcyon day, there was a dystopia that preceded and followed. The one great progress Ackroyd highlights is that we have one thing in the 21st century that the other eras did not: an attempt a 'gay community' ... London relies on queerness as much as queers have relied on the labyrinth and the bacchanal of the Big Smoke. Now, it seems, we have a chance to change it in the open

Ackroyd's brisk little history of what he calls queer London is itself a collation of sweetmeats

Always entertaining ... much to be recommended

This gallop through the pink past [...] tells a torrid tale of persecution and pleasure, of blackmail and blue murder

By shining a light in dark places, Ackroyd has created a triumphantly queer picture of a city he loves – as city as queer as any other

A timely reminder that gay lives have always been tightly woven into London's rich social brocade

If you've never read anything by Peter Ackroyd, imagine settling down in a pub… There you are, ensconced in that pub… and you're stuck by the realization that your companion is so knowledgeable, so erudite, so simply brilliant that you don't care you've not got a word in edgeways since the first few foamy quaffs a couple of hours back. That's what reading Peter Ackroyd is like… Ackroyd possesses a lightness of touch which means the reader never feels overwhelmed by the accumulation of facts, figures, and salacious anecdotes they're presented with… Endlessly fascinating... This book teaches us the importance that queer life in London has, and always will have, to all of us

This is a very worthy book that charts queer experience onto the map of London from which it has been omitted for so many centuries

A rambunctious chronicle of “gay London from pre-Roman times to the present day”

Ackroyd delivers an excellent queer read about London, this time ‘our’ London…  Endless facts delight and amuse in this celebration and investigation of queer life from Celtic times to the present day… Validating, interesting and endlessly fascinating

Teeming with incredible stories, amazing characters and extraordinary detail, Queer City is the fascinating story of LGBT+ London from the Romans to the present day and reveals the incredibly rich history of London’s LGBT+ past

Peter Ackroyd is an award-winning historian, biographer, novelist, poet and broadcaster. He is the author of the acclaimed non-fiction bestsellers London: The Biography, Thames: Sacred River and London Under; biographies of figures including Charles Dickens, William Blake, Charlie Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock; and a multi-volume history of England. He has won the Whitbread Biography Award, the Royal Society of Literature's William Heinemann Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award and the South Bank Prize for Literature. He holds a CBE for services to literature.

‘Droll, provocative and crammed to busting with startling facts’ Simon Callow, Guardian 
 
In this powerful Sunday Times bestseller Peter Ackroyd looks at London in a whole new way – through the history and experiences of its gay population. 
 
In Roman Londinium the city was dotted with lupanaria (‘wolf dens’ or public pleasure houses), fornices (brothels) and thermiae (hot baths). Then came the Emperor Constantine, with his bishops, monks and missionaries. And so began an endless loop of alternating permissiveness and censure. 
 
Ackroyd takes us right into the hidden history of the city; from the notorious Normans to the frenzy of executions for sodomy in the early nineteenth century. He journeys through the coffee bars of sixties Soho to Gay Liberation, disco music and the horror of AIDS. 
 
Today, we live in an era of openness and tolerance and Queer London has become part of the new norm. Ackroyd tells us the hidden story of how it got there, celebrating its diversity, thrills and energy on the one hand; but reminding us of its very real terrors, dangers and risks on the other.

Alfred Hitchcock

Peter Ackroyd turns his gimlet eye to one of the twentieth century's most revered directors.

Superb, insightful short life... Deft and moving

[A] nutritious, compact and superb critical biography

Shelves of serious biographies have been written on Alfred Hitchcock, but perhaps none as pleasurable as Peter Ackroyd’s

This is an elegantly spare and hugely readable book – which sends you straight back to the films

An accessible and efficient primer to [Hitchcock’s] life and work

Ackroyd…lucidly evokes the textures of Hitchcock’s eccentric life and blends these with a confident examination of the major films in Hitchcock’s remarkable output

An engaging introduction and intriguing invitation to revisit the films

Provides a fascinating insight into how this strange man was able to create so many enduring silver screen classics

An extremely readable and concise biography of Britain’s most famous film director

Shelves of serious biographies have been written on Alfred Hitchcock, but perhaps non as pleasurable as Peter Ackroyd’s with its flowing prose and insightful appreciation.

A well-written and eminently readable book.

Alfred Hitchcock was a strange child. Fat, lonely, burning with fear and ambition, his childhood was an isolated one, scented with fish from his father's shop. Afraid to leave his bedroom, he would plan great voyages, using railway timetables to plot an exact imaginary route across Europe. So how did this fearful figure become the one of the most respected film directors of the twentieth century? 
 
As an adult, Hitch rigorously controlled the press's portrait of himself, drawing certain carefully selected childhood anecdotes into full focus and blurring all others out. In this quick-witted portrait, Ackroyd reveals something more: a lugubriously jolly man fond of practical jokes, who smashes a once-used tea cup every morning to remind himself of the frailty of life. Iconic film stars make cameo appearances, just as Hitch did in his own films. Grace Kelly, Carey Grant and James Stewart despair of his detached directing style, and, perhaps most famously of all, Tippi Hedren endures cuts and bruises from a real-life fearsome flock of birds. 
 
Alfred Hitchcock wrests the director's chair back from the master of control and discovers what lurks just out of sight, in the corner of the shot.

Charlie Chaplin

A fresh look at Chaplin from the masterful Peter Ackroyd

Chaplin's rise makes an enthralling story, and it's one perfectly suited to Peter Ackroyd's prodigious and idiosyncratic talents... Ackroyd acknowledges Chaplin's many human failings, while at the same time giving us a vivid sense of what made the man a genius

A beautifully judged book, driven by a powerful sense of life’s sadness

[A] fine biography… The luxury of a short book about a vast life cannot be overestimated

Ackroyd has turned in the best account of Chaplin's formation beneath the teetering chimney stacks of Victorian London, fragrant with the odours of dung, smoke and beer... Ackroyd is just the man to puncture the whoppers with which Chaplin embroidered his past, without being too much of a scold

Ackroyd brings a novelist's as well as a biographer's eye to the story of a man who "seemed to epitomise the human condition itself, flawed and frail and funny"

Ackroyd digs deeply at the roots of a man who was a century ago the most famous person on the planet... bringing vividly to life the dark Victorian streets of south London

This biography is like the wedge the Little Tramp liberates from beneath a docked ocean liner in Modern Times: it starts a thing of unstoppable momentum

Writing at an energetic lick, Peter Ackroyd examines this glittering but tragic life with the cool detachment of a psychiatrist or judge. In his powers of insight, and agility in making his connections, he's second to none

Illuminating and timely... Ackroyd has written a model biography, as crisp and succinct as a Chaplin two-reeler

[Ackroyd] brings his usual colour to a black and white world

Ackroyd deserves uncompromising praise... Unputdownable

An engaging biography that will enrich your subsequent viewings of Charlie Chaplin's films… Will satisfy fans old and new

A beautifully written synthesis of the most important elements of Chaplin’s long career and his significance as an international figure… Hopefully this book will bring Charlie Chaplin the wider love and acclaim that he richly deserves

Ackroyd's analysis of the Tramp... is brilliant and unsparing... Wonderful stuff

Compelling account of how Chaplin rose from poverty to be one of the most influential figures of the 20th century

Ackroyd brings a sense of Chaplin as a man

Ackroyd paints a moving portrait of Chaplin’s final years… But it’s those early scenes of poverty and squalor in Victorian London that linger in the reader’s mind, as they did in Chaplin’s own

He was the very first icon of the silver screen, and is one of the most recognisable faces in Hollywood, even a hundred years on from his first film. But what of the man behind the moustache? The director holding the camera as well as acting in front of it? 
 
Peter Ackroyd's new biography turns the spotlight on Chaplin's life as well as his work, from his humble theatrical beginnings in music halls to winning an honorary Academy Award. Everything is here, from the glamour of his golden age to the murky scandals of the 1940s and eventual exile to Switzerland. This masterful brief life offers fresh revelations about one of the most familiar faces of the last century and brings the Little Tramp into vivid colour.

Hawksmoor

'There is no Light without Darknesse 
and no Substance without Shaddowe' 
 
So proclaims Nicholas Dyer, assistant to Sir Christopher Wren and the man with a commission to build seven London churches to stand as beacons of the enlightenment. But Dyer plans to conceal a dark secret at the heart of each church - to create a forbidding architecture that will survive for eternity. Two hundred and fifty years later, London detective Nicholas Hawksmoor is investigating a series of gruesome murders on the sites of certain eighteenth-century churches - crimes that make no sense to the modern mind . . . 
 
'Chillingly brilliant . . . sinister and stunningly well executed' Independent on Sunday 
 
Peter Ackroyd was born in London in 1949. A novelist, biographer and historian, he has been the literary editor of The Spectator and chief book reviewer for the The Times, as well as writing several highly acclaimed books including a biography of Dickens and London: The Biography. He lives in London.

Chillingly brilliant . . . sinister and stunningly well executed

Extraordinary, amazing, vivid, convincing.  [Ackroyd's] view of life questions the role not just of the novel but of art and history, memory, time and much else

A novel remarkable for [its] power, ingenuity and subtlety

Novelist, biographer and poet Peter Ackroyd was born in London in 1949. From a working-class family in west London, he got a scholarship to Cambridge and went on to Yale. He was literary editor of the Spectator and then chief book reviewer for the Sunday Times for many years. He has written over a dozen novels as well as acclaimed biographies of Eliot and Dickens, and a history of London.

Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor was first published in 1985. Alternating between the eighteenth century, when Nicholas Dyer, assistant to Christopher Wren, builds seven London churches that house a terrible secret, and the 1980s, when London detective Nicholas Hawksmoor is investigating a series of gruesome murders on the sight of certain old churches, Hawksmoor is a brilliant tale of darkness and shadow.

Three Brothers

Rapier-sharp, witty, intriguing and mysterious: a new novel from Peter Ackroyd, set in 1960s London

A camp clever tour de force… an alternative autobiography, a ghost story and a murder mystery all in one slim volume. Brilliant… the quintessence of Ackroyd

A book full of rich and sudden moments of delight

Harking back to Dickens... London is a major character in the novel. In Ackroyd's accomplished hands the city becomes a mystical place, where visions abound. Highly recommended.

Ackroyd is that timeless figure, a man of letters, dipped in ink, apparently versatile in a breathtaking variety of genres

London is the backdrop and the connecting fabric of these three lives, from bustling, cut-throat Fleet Street to hallowed London publishing houses, from the wealth and corruption of Chelsea to the smoky shadows of Limehouse and Hackney, this is an exploration of the city, peering down its streets, riding on its underground, and drinking in its pubs and clubs

Suffused with Ackroyd’s intelligence and learning

Ackroyd’s pen portraits of the intersecting worlds of academia, literary London and Fleet Street are written with relish

An amalgam of social satire and noirish thriller...vintage Ackroyd

Superb... [Ackroyd] makes the familiar deliciously mysterious

In a slender novel, London's great fictional mapper Peter Ackroyd has woven together a rich spread of tales of the city

Ackroyd writes about the capital, from Camden to Chelsea, like no-one else and he captures the sense of the sixties perfectly, with high-society and low-life London so dangerously close to each other. Full of twists and turns, this is Ackroyd's most exciting novel to date

A classic Ackroyd tale that will not fail to please

Three Brothers follows the fortunes of Harry, Daniel and Sam Hanway, born on a post-war council estate in Camden Town. Marked out from the start by curious coincidence, each boy is forced to make his own way in the world – a world of dodgy deals and big business, of criminal gangs and crooked landlords, of newspaper magnates, back-biters and petty thieves. 
 
London is the backdrop and the connecting fabric of these three lives, reinforcing Ackroyd’s grand theme that place and history create, surround and engulf us. From bustling, cut-throat Fleet Street to hallowed London publishing houses, from the wealth and corruption of Chelsea to the smoky shadows of Limehouse and Hackney, this is an exploration of the city, peering down its streets, riding on its underground, and drinking in its pubs and clubs. Everything is possible – not only in the new freedom of the 1960s but also in London’s timeless past.

Wilkie Collins

Ackroyd at his best - a gripping short life of the extraordinary Wilkie Collins, author of The Moonstone and The Woman in White.

With deft strokes, Peter Ackroyd’s biography portrays his character and sets him in context, weaving critical appraisals seamlessly into the story of his life. The bravura of this biography lies in its brilliantly judged brevity.

Concise but wide-ranging… A fitting tribute to [Collins’] legacy

Short and oddly built, with a head too big for his body, extremely short-sighted, unable to stay still, dressed in colourful clothes, Wilkie Collins looked distinctly strange. But he was none the less a charmer, befriended by the great, loved by children, irresistibly attractive to women – and avidly read by generations of readers. 
 
Peter Ackroyd follows his hero, ‘the sweetest-tempered of all the Victorian novelists’, from his childhood as the son of a well-known artist to his struggling beginnings as a writer, his years of fame and his life-long friendship with the other great London chronicler, Charles Dickens. As well as his enduring masterpieces, The Moonstone – often called the first true detective novel – and the sensational The Woman in White, he produced an intriguing array of lesser-known works. 
 
Told with Ackroyd’s inimitable verve, this is a ravishingly entertaining life of a great storyteller, full of surprises, rich in humour and sympathetic understanding.

The Concise Biography

London

An abridged edition of Peter Ackroyd's magisterial biography of the city of London.

Peter Ackroyd is the greatest living chronicler of London

Peter Ackroyd was born to write the biography of London...a brilliant book

It would be no exaggeration to say that Peter Ackroyd's 'biography' of our captial is the book about London

You will not find a better, more visionary book about a place we take for granted

[London] may be several years old but it remains one of the leading narratives as he cleverly weaves through centuries of history to reveal to us the hundreds of different cities within a city.

In this outstanding biography of the capital Peter Ackroyd brings the streets alive with tales young and old.

The definitive history of London... a must read for anyone interested in the subject.

It's this decade's finest work of non-fiction.

An abridged edition of Peter Ackroyd's magisterial biography of the city of London. 
 
Prize-winning historian, novelist and broadcaster, Peter Ackroyd takes us on a journey - historical, geographical and imaginative - through the city of London. Moving back and forth through time, Ackroyd is an effortless, exuberant guide to times of plague and pestilence, fire and floods, crime and punishment, and sex and theatre. He brings the ever changing streets alive for the reader and shows us what lies beneath our feet and above our heads. His biography is as rich in detail and fizzing with vitality as the city itself.

London Under

From the author of the bestselling London: The Biography, a poetic and powerful urban history of life and legend beneath London.

Ackroyd is a knowledgeable and evocative guide to London’s different archaeological levels

As ever his research is meticulous, his scope expansive, his writing definitive. Every sentence is delivered with judicial gravity and command...Once again, Ackroyd shares his vision of a mythical city most do not see

While many authors have shone a flashlight on London's catacombs and tunnels, Ackroyd's vision is infra-red...skilled at connecting the past, present and future...For those looking for a highly readable introduction, plumb and depth to get a copy

This book is not a straightforward history of London's relationship with the clay on which it stands but a poetic invoking of what Ackroyd perceives as the diabolic terror of the earth

Other worlds lurk below London, and Ackroyd revels in them. The book is both an absorbing history of those parts of the capital that lie beneath our feet and a meditation on the meaning we give them

A literary, cultural and topographical sat-nav for going underground in London... With quick, deft stitches he sews the fantastical and the familiar into a macabre sampler of the city that exists beneath the feet of its citizens

London Under is written with Ackroyd's characteristic panache

[A] fascinating history of the capital beneath the surface... Irresistible

There is much here that will delight Ackroyd's many admirers

Ackroyd takes us through the layers of the city, lifting the covers to peer downwards

In a short but intriguing book, Ackroyd explores the idea that, beneath the surface, there has existed another world with rules and conventions of its own

Anyone intrigued by this tumultuous city will devour London Under in a few transporting hours... packed with revelations... Ackroyd's stylistic brilliance explains why the book remains a rattling good read

Fascinating study of everything under London, from rats and eels to monsters and ghosts.

As London's anatomist-in-chief, Peter Ackroyd turns his focus on what lies beneath the capital's surface. Peppered with erudite and literary references, Ackroyd's fluent style makes for entertaining reading

Packed with anecdotes and fascinating trivia...Ackroyd never misses an opportunity to link this hidden realm with the underworlds of mythology

Reveals the London beneath your feet in all its fascinating – and  sometimes horrifying – glory. Historian and novelist Ackroyd invests his  tales of buried rivers and catacombs with enormous energy

London Under is an atmospheric, imaginative introduction to everything that goes on under London, from original springs and streams and Roman amphitheatres to Victorian sewers, gang hideouts and modern Underground stations. This book tunnels down through the geological layers, meeting the creatures, both real and fictional, that dwell in the darkness - rats and eels, monsters and ghosts. 
 
From the Anglo-Saxon graves under St Paul's, to the hydraulic device in Kensal Green cemetery which lowered bodies into the catacombs below, to the fossils uncovered when the Victoria Line was built and the gold bars within the Bank of England's vaults, London Under takes you into a hidden world, beneath our feet.

Abridged

Dickens

The abridged edition of Peter Ackroyd's classic biography of Dickens, reissued with a stunning new cover look to celebrate Dickens' bicentenary

I can do no more than praise, recommend, insist that you buy and read this book.It supersedes all other Dickens biographies

A truly magnificent biography.This is the complete, the nonesuch, the definitive Dickens

Landmark biography… fascinating and colourful detail… first rate

Can't imagine a better introduction to the life and work of the quintessential English novelist than Peter Ackroyd's superb biography

Dickens was a landmark biography when first published in 1990. This specially edited shorter edition takes the reader into the life of one of the world's greatest writers. 
 
Here, Ackroyd attempts to peel away the mask of a man whose life was outwardly a picture of Victorian rectitude, but whose love life was as complicated (and unconventional) as any modern writer's. Dickens had everything - fame, success and riches - but he died harbouring a deep sadness he had experienced all his life. He was a man of mercurial character, had enormous vitality and humour, but he also had a sense of loss and longing that would constantly appear in his work. Like many eminent Victorians, he led a double life: although he insisted that nothing in the newspapers he edited should upset his middle-class readers, he regularly indulged in dubious night-time escapades with fellow author Wilkie Collins, and, for the last 13 years of his life, kept a secret mistress.

Spectres Through Time

The English Ghost

An enormously enjoyable spooky collection of ghost-sightings over the centuries, full of the spirit of place, in true Ackroyd style.

Ackroyd's book has its fair share of terrified hauntees and, unless you're a sceptic, there are plenty of scenes that will make the hairs on the back of your neck bristle

A rich and compelling assembly of stories for winter nights

This is a wonderful little book. It's properly old-fashioned and unorthodox, a scrapbook of clues, tittle-tattle, hints and mortal byways

Ackroyd's collection glides seamlessly from terror to humour to downright peculiarity: it is the ideal read as the nights darken and Halloween approaches

A fascinating anthology of sightings of ghosts in England over the centuries

He has found some sterling stories. It's for life, not just for Hallowe'en

Everybody loves a good ghost story and this selection of spooky sightings, both scary and comical, will certainly satisfy an appetite for eerie reading

The stories have a pleasing strangeness, even, or perhaps especially if one does not believe in ghosts

The story of the phantom hitchhiker did give me the creeps

The English see more ghosts than any other nation. From medieval times to the present day, stories have been told about ghosts who avenge injustice, souls who long for peace and spooks who just want to have fun. 
 
The English Ghost is a treasure trove of such sightings; comical and scary, like all the best ghost stories, these accounts, packed with eerie detail, range from the moaning child that terrified Wordworth's nephew at Cambridge to modern day hitchhikers on Blue Bell Hill.

The Immortal Legend

The Death of King Arthur

A gripping retelling of the timeless epic of romance, enchantment and adventure, Peter Ackroyd's The Death of King Arthur recasts Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur in clear, compelling modern English prose, published in Penguin Classics. 
 
'In the old wild days of the world there was a King of England known as Uther Pendragon; he was a dragon in wrath as well as in power ...' 
 
Born with the help of Merlin's magic, blessed with the sword of Excalibur, Arthur becomes King of a troubled England, beginning a golden age of chivalry at the court of Camelot. But his reign is soon to be torn apart by violence, revenge and tragedy ... 
Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur made the legend of King Arthur immortal. Now Peter Ackroyd's retelling brings his timeless story of love, heroism and betrayal to new life for our times. 
 
Sir Thomas Malory (c.1405-1471) was a knight and estate owner in the mid 15th century, who spent many years in prison for political crimes as well as robbery. He wrote Le Morte d'Arthur, the first great English prose epic, while imprisoned in Newgate. 
 
Peter Ackroyd (b. 1949) is an award-winning writer and historian. Formerly literary editor of The Spectator and chief book reviewer for the The Times, he is the author of novels such as Hawksmoor (1985) and The House of Doctor Dee (1993), as well as non-fiction including Dickens: Public Life and Private Passion (2002), London: The Biography (2000), and Thames: Sacred River (2007). 
 
If you enjoyed The Death of King Arthur, you might like Ackroyd's The Canterbury Tales, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. 
 
'I admire this version enormously ... This story has to move with both swiftness and dignity, and yoking those two qualities together is not an easy task; but Ackroyd does it with ease' 
Philip Pullman, author of His Dark Materials trilogy 
 
'Ackroyd's lightly trimmed and streamlined Le Morte d'Arthur makes it eminently readable' 
Sunday Times

I thought Peter Ackroyd's Morte d'Arthur was masterful. The quality I admired most was the absolute clarity of the storytelling. This story - or set of stories - has to move with both swiftness and dignity, and yoking those two qualities together is not an easy task; but Ackroyd does it with ease. I think he can probably do anything. I admire this version enormously

Peter Ackroyd's lightly trimmed and streamlined Le Morte d'Arthur makes it eminently readable

...the majesty of Malory's book survives too, not least in the final chapters telling of the internal conflicts that destroy the Round Table, the passion of Lancelot and Guinevere, and the destiny that Arthur has had coming to him for a long time: death in battle. This, as retold by Peter Ackroyd, remains a bizarre but thrilling piece of writing.

'In this ingenious decanting of an old wine into a new bottle, [Peter Ackroyd] he has taken a glorious part of our cultural heritage and made it more accessible to the readers of the 21st century. '

Sir Thomas Malory was a knight and estate owner in the mid 15th century, who spent many years in prison for political crimes as well as robbery. He wrote Le Morte d'Arthur, the first great English prose epic, while imprisoned in Newgate. Malory is believed to have died in 1471. 
 
Peter Ackroyd is a well known writer and historian. He has been the literary editor of The Spectator and chief book reviewer for the The Times, as well as writing several highly acclaimed books including a biography of Dickens and London: The Biography. He resides in London and his most recent highly acclaimed work is Thames: Sacred River.

An immortal story of chivalry, treachery and death told anew for our times 
 
The legend of King Arthur has retained its appeal and popularity through the ages: Mordred's treason, the knightly exploits of Tristan, Lancelot's fatally divided loyalties and his love for Guenevere, the quest for the Holy Grail. Now retold by Peter Ackroyd with his signature clarity, charm and relish for a good story, the result is not only one of the most readable accounts of the knights of the Round Table but also one of the most moving.

Venice

Peter Ackroyd at his most magical and magisterial - a glittering, evocative, fascinating, story-filled portrait of Venice: ultimate city.

Yet another wonderful biography of a city

He is brilliant on beginnings... Ackroyd covers an immense amount of ground with verve and elegance

Ackroyd tells the story well...where he excels is in his descriptions...he writes beguilingly

Ackroyd is hugely intelligent and formidably industrious; there can be few people, Venetian or foreign, who know Venice better than he... It is full of good things

Elegant... Interweaving psychogeographical investigation with history, picking out defining characteristics which were present from its earliest days

Peter Ackroyd has the gift of transmuting other men's sober research into the golden sentences that make his books on men and cities so irresistible, entrancing, occasionally weird but undeniably grand...Ackroyd...has turned their diligence into effulgent, mesmeric, satisfying prose

Combative, omnivorous and beady-eyed as ever, the author has no trouble in persuading us, nonetheless, that the 'pure city' is not quite ready to collapse into its primal mud

It is all here, in Ackroyd's dense and articulate prose. He writes in short, sharp sentences, firing out facts with machine-gun speed. He pulls the reader through the city's winding calli on a vivid, frenzied journey of discovery. It is an ever-shifting scenery of stern-faced Dogi, secretive statesman, canny merchants, thieve, whores, artists, geniuses: all jostling for favour in Ackroyd's city of intrigue.... Highly evocative...he writes beautifully and succinctly

Ackroyd takes an erudite and entertaining look at the city of doges, gondolas, carnival masks and canals

Ackroyd has managed... to give us a beautifully crafted, ruminative, well-illustrated, and utterly readable volume...vibrant and evocative

Ackroyd's view of Venice is not that of an infatuated lover... but more the magisterial distillation of much knowledge and reading, conveyed in prose that aspires to the glassy elegance of La Serenissima herself

Financial Times, Travel books of the year

Ackroyd does Venice, his sonorous, scene painting prose advancing in rhythmic columns until no quarter of the city has escaped assimilation.

Ackroyd's achievement is to bring the city back to life and help you to experience differently. Take it with you next time you visit.

His dark tapestry ... deserves a place in every visitor's luggage

Ackroyd writes about Venice as an idea, with stylish meditations on such topics as time, light, water, sexuality, politics and psychopathology...he writes so well that at times he'd drive you mad - "Venice represented an idea that was itself eternal" - but if you just climb into his gondola and go where he takes you, the rewards are great indeed

Many books have been written about Venice by authors like Mary McCarthy and Jan Morris. Ackroyd's advantage is his poetic eye

Ackroyd writes beguilingly as he weaves his way around the lagoon, supplying interesting details en route...

In this magnificent vision of Venice, Peter Ackroyd turns his unparalleled skill at evoking place from London and the River Thames, to Italy and the city of myth, mystery and beauty. He leads us through the history of the city, from the first refugees arriving in the mists of the lagoon in the fourth century to the rise of a great mercantile state and a trading empire, the wars against Napoleon and the tourist invasions of today. There are wars and sieges, scandals and seductions, fountains playing in deserted squares and crowds thronging the markets. And there is a dark undertone too, of shadowy corners and dead ends, prisons and punishment. 
 
We could have no better guide to this most exceptional of cities - reading Ackroyd's Venice is, in itself, a glorious journey and the perfect holiday.

The Canterbury Tales: A retelling by Peter Ackroyd

Making a major part of England's literary heritage accessible to a new audience, Peter Ackroyd's The Canterbury Tales: A Retelling renders Geoffrey Chaucer's timeless tales in lucid, compelling modern English prose, with illustrations by Nick Bantock in Penguin Classics. 
 
On a pilgrimage to Canterbury, a group of travellers agree to a storytelling competition. As they make their way on the road, they drink, laugh, flirt, argue and try to outdo each other with their tales. From the exuberant Wife of Bath's Arthurian legend to the Miller's worldly, ribald farce, these tales can be taken as a mirror of fourteenth-century London. Incorporating every style of medieval narrative - bawdy anecdote, allegorical fable and courtly romance - the tales encompass a blend of universal human themes, retold here for our times by bestselling author Peter Ackroyd. 
 
The edition also includes an introduction by Ackroyd, detailing some of the historical background to Chaucer and the Tales, and why he has been inspired to translate them for a new generation of readers. 
 
Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343-1400) was an English author, poet, philosopher, courtier and diplomat, best known as the author of The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer is credited as being the first author to demonstrate the artistic legitimacy of the vernacular English language. The first poet to have been buried in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey, his other works include The House of Fame, Troilus and Criseyde and The Book of the Duchess. 
 
Peter Ackroyd (b. 1949) is an award-winning writer and historian. Formerly literary editor of The Spectator and chief book reviewer for the The Times, he is the author of novels such as Hawksmoor (1985) and The House of Doctor Dee (1993), as well as non-fiction including Dickens: Public Life and Private Passion (2002), London: The Biography (2000), and Thames: Sacred River (2007). 
 
'Ackroyd's retelling is compulsive, bold and rare ... as fresh as new paint' 
Observer 
 
'The only version to read' 
Time Out

Ackroyd's 'retelling' is compulsive, bold and rare and will surely become a vital crib for generations of students to come.

Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343-1400) was an English author, poet, philosopher, courtier and diplomat. Chaucer is credited by some scholars as being the first author to demonstrate the artistic legitimacy of the vernacular English language, rather than French or Latin. 
 
Peter Ackroyd is a well known writer and historian. He has been the literary editor of The Spectator and chief book reviewer for the The Times, as well as writing several highly acclaimed books including a biography of Dickens and London: The Biography. He resides in London and his most recent highly acclaimed work is Thames: Sacred River.

The Canterbury Tales is a major part of England's literary heritage. From the exuberant Wife of Bath's Arthurian legend to the Miller's worldly, ribald farce, these tales can be taken as a mirror of fourteenth-century London. Incorporating every style of medieval narrative - bawdy anecdote, allegorical fable and courtly romance - the tales encompass a blend of universal human themes. Ackroyd's retelling is a highly readable, prose version in modern English, using expletive and avoiding euphemism, making the Tales much more accessible to a new generation of readers. The edition also includes an introduction by Ackroyd, detailing some of the historical background to Chaucer and the Tales, and why he has been inspired to translate them for a new generation of readers.

The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

Another dazzling example of the power of Peter Ackroyd's imagination - a brilliant novel written in the voice of Victor Frankenstein himself featuring Shelley and Mary Shelley as characters in the story.

A thrilling concoction ... Ackroyd's telling of the tale is a worthy revival - I found his book so creepy I kept the bedroom light on all night

A brilliant jeu d'esprit. Above all, it stands as a tribute to the power of the human imagination

Ackroyd takes Mary Shelley's hint of a doppelganger and plays with it fascinatingly in a fast-paced thriller which also nods towards the notion of split personality enshrined in Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde... The novel leaps to its climax nimbly as a pursuing fiend, adn ends suitably in fiery revelation

Distinguished Frankensteinian fantasia...Ackroyd loves taking what we, the general reading public, think we know about great writers, only to twist that knowledge into new fictional shapes....Ackroyd is the great pretzel-baker of contemporary fiction. And this is one of his tastiest, and twistiest, products so far

Terrifying and fascinating in equal measure

Tremendous fun: it glows with intellectual enthusiasm and love for London

Ackroyd deftly brings to life the atheist rebellion and Enlightenment values of the time while giving full vent to his imagination...What amazes is how effortless it feels...a consummate and blood-freezing piece of writing

Ackroyd once again proves himself to be a master literary vetriloquist ... eerily convincing and highly atmospheric

One thing is for certain - Ackroyd has brought Frankenstein back to life ... Ackroyd's spin on this classic is entertaining to ignore

Ackroyd's new novel works on so many levels it's difficult to know where to begin. As a pacy thriller, it delivers assured edge of the seat action. As historical fiction, it abounds in authentic detail...as homage to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein it brings both invention and wit...a worthy shadow to Mary Shelley's creation, roaming with impish disruption between the pages of history, biography and literature

Ackroyd is in his element as he depicts the activities of those involved in supplying anatomists, or researchers like Victor, with recent corpses, the fresher the better...Peter Ackroyd is a fine biographer as well as a successful novelist...He has written an instructive as well as entertaining work

wonderfully inventive...a remarkable oeuvre, hovering between history and imagination

Intelligent, beautiful and utterly chilling

Victor Frankenstein begins his anatomy experiments in a barn in the secluded village of Headington, near Oxford. The coroner's office provides the corpses he needs - but they have often died by violent means and are damaged and putrifying. Victor moves his coils and jars and electrical fluids to a deserted pottery manufactury in Limehouse. And, from Limehouse, makes contact with the Doomesday Men - the resurrectionists. 
 
Victor pays better than any hospital for the bodies of the very recently dead. Even so, perfect specimens are hard to come by... until that Thames-side dawn when Victor, waiting, wrapped in his greatcoat, on his wooden jetty, hears the splashing of oars and sees in the half-light that slung into the stern of the approaching boat is the corpse of a handsome young man, one hand trailing in the water....

A Life Cut Short

Edgar Allan Poe's life (1809-1849) was gothic, mysterious, theatrical, fatally flawed, original, dark, dazzling, satirical, inventive - in short, an ideal subject for Peter Ackroyd. Concise, dramatic and immensely readable, this is an essential and idiosyncratic addition to Ackroyd's canon of brilliant biographies.

Poe is an ideal biographical subject for Peter Ackroyd... Admirably captures the heady mix of the esoteric, grotesque and thoroughly modern in Poe

With an adept ventriloquism, Ackroyd weaves together contemporary testimony and his own crisp narrative... His own elegant, even terse, prose mirrors his subject's best, whilst it is also shot through with Poe's anguish

Ackroyd is clearly fascinated by his subject. He makes the reader want to re-read Poe, and indeed to read more of Ackroyd on Poe

Ackroyd is more like a literary spiritualist who summons up the voices of the dead and encourages them to possess his writing... It is as short and sharp as a flick-knife

Poe's brilliant, erratic, abbreviated career stands to gain rather than lose from the form of brief life patented by Ackroyd. A short biography is not a long one shrunk. Instead of patiently accumulated details, emotional complexity and architectural shaping, it operates by lightening strikes, atmospheric colouring, impressionistic techniques of concision and suggestion

200 pages of beautifully concentrated and cadenced prose

Ackroyd tells his story straight, without moralising

Mr Ackroyd's biography of a writer who dies at the age of 40 after an alcoholic bender is almost as vivid and flawed as Poe himself ... Mr Ackroyd is especially good at conveying Poe's precarious state

With an adept ventriloquism Ackroyd weaves together contemporary testimony with his own crisp narrative...a vivid recreation of the life and sensibility that lay behind the work

Such a Hammer horror biography - a veritable car-crash of a life - is tailor-made for a writer such as Ackroyd. He sustains its intensity in these 160 pages

Heralded as a genius, the forerunner of modern fantasy and credited with the invention of the psychological drama, science fiction and the detective story , Edgar Allan Poe had a life as dramatic and tragic as his art. 
 
Poe's life was dominated by dying women; his mother died of consumption when he was only two, his stepmother when he was twenty, and his wife, Virginia, died of the same disease and at the same age as his mother. As Ackroyd brilliantly shows, it was these deaths, together with his miserable childhood, that led to such dark and dazzling tales as 'The Fall of the House of Usher' and 'Berenice', although it was wiht the publication of 'The Raven' that the writer finally ahcieved the recognition of which he dreamed. Success couldn't save him from himself, however, and he was dead by the age of forty, his final days as mysterious as much of his writing. 
 
Poe was an extraordinary writer and in Peter Ackroyd, he has found his perfect biographer.

Peter Ackroyd

Books by Peter Ackroyd

Articles featuring Peter Ackroyd

How books are revealing a new queer history of the UK

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