Peter Ackroyd
Peter Ackroyd
Peter Ackroyd, CBE, FRSLis an English biographer, novelist and critic with a particular 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 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...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth5 October 1949
I detest self-regard. If my work has taught me anything, it is that self-aggrandisement is completely unhistorical.
People are much more interesting than people realise.
I strike up conversations all the time and it is very interesting, finding out about things I know nothing about.
In 'The Plato Papers' I wanted to get another perspective on the present moment by extrapolating into the distant future. So in that sense, there's a definite similarity of purpose between a book set in the future and a book set in the past.
Thomas More rarely discussed his siblings, and two of them are never mentioned by him. It is likely that they were part of that infant mortality which had provoked such concern for early baptism.