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
As a Londoner I was able to see how the world of power and money cast its shadow on those who failed.
Yet, like the sea and the gallows, London refuses nobody.
I am in the Pitte, but I have gone so deep that I can see the brightness of the Starres at Noon.
What captivity has been to the Jews, exile has been to the Irish. For us, the romance of our native land begins only after we have left home; it is really only with other people that we become Irishmen.
No poet is ever completely lost. He has the secret of his childhood safe with him, like some secret cave in which he can kneel. And, when we read his poetry, we can join him there.
The world is a sea in which we all must surely drown.
I have liv'd long enough for others, like the Dog in the Wheel, and it is now the Season to begin for myself: I cannot change that Thing call'd Time, but I can alter its Posture and, as Boys do turn a looking-glass against the Sunne, so I will dazzle you all.
The endless chatter of this journey had wearied me.
I just wanted to be an ordinary, middle-class person. When I was at Cambridge, I made great efforts to lose the last remnants of my Cockney accent.
I never read in bed, only in my study.
There are certain people who seem doomed to buy certain houses. The house expects them. It waits for them.
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.