Ackroyd, Peter (1949– )

English novelist, biographer, reviewer, and poet. His award-winning books include the fictitious autobiography The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (1983; Somerset Maugham Award), the biography T S Eliot (1984; Whitbread prize for biography), and the novel Hawksmoor (1985; Whitbread novel award).

Ackroyd's first novel, The Great Fire of London (1982), is an adaptation of Charles Dickens's Little Dorrit. Ackroyd's other books include the novels Chatterton (1987), The House of Doctor Dee (1993), Milton in America (1996), and The Clerkenwell Tales (2003), and biographies of Ezra Pound (1987), Charles Dickens (1990), William Blake (1995), and Thomas More (1998). His work often blurs the distinction between biography and fiction.

Ackroyd was born in London, England, which he describes as the ‘landscape for my imagination’ in most of his work, and which serves as the subject of his history books London: The Biography (2000) and Thames: Secret River (2007). He was educated at Clare College, Cambridge, and Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. In 1973 he joined the staff of the Spectator magazine, becoming the principal book reviewer for The Times newspaper in 1986. He published three volumes of verse as well as collections of essays, lectures, and literary criticism.