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Peter Ackroyd Biography

Peter Ackroyd, CBE, FRSL (born 5 October 1949) is 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 depth of his research.

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Peter Ackroyd Quotes

Why should a novelist not also be a historian? To force unnatural divisions within the English language is to work against its capacious and accommodating nature. To expect a writer to produce only novels, or only histories, is equivalent to demanding from a composer that he or she write only string quartets or piano sonatas.

Composer, Novelists, Novels, Piano, Quartets, Writing

I don't believe necessarily the past is in the past. It's eternal, it's all around us.

Believe, Don'T Believe, Eternal, Past

Under the force of the imagination, nature itself is changed.

Changed, Force, Imagination, Nature, Under

I never read in bed, only in my study.

Bed, Read, Study

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.

Become, Home, Irish, Land, People, Romance

A triptych in which the presiding deities are Mother, England and Me.

Deities, England, Mother, Presiding

I had to paraphrase the paraphrase.

Paraphrase

The 16th-century theatre witnessed the particularly English manifestation of 'the history play. ' There can be no doubt that Shakespeare's presentations of 'Henry V' and 'Richard III' have been incalculably more influential than any more sober historical study.

Doubt, Historical, Particularly, Play, Richard

One can forgive Shakespeare anything, except one's own bad lines.

Bad, Except, Forgiving, Lines, Shakespeare

Health, money. That's what people worried about in the 14th century as much as today. I find it so much more interesting than the supposed activities of kings, queens, generals.

14Th, Generals, Kings, People, Queens, Worried

Yet, like the sea and the gallows, London refuses nobody.

Gallows, London, Sea

London' is a gallery of sensation of impressions. It is a history of London in a thematic rather than a chronological sense with chapters of the history of smells, the history of silence, and the history of light. I have described the book as a labyrinth, and in that sense in complements my description of London itself.

Book, Light, London, Sensation, Silence, Smell

So do we discover, in the world, that our worst fears are unfulfilled; yet we must fear, in order that we may feel delight.

Delight, Discover, Fear, Fears, Order

I don't find myself interesting as a person and the details I find boring, quite frankly. You could sum it up in a few words or sentences really: came from nothing. Self-educated. Luck. Energy. Curiosity. Ambition. That's it. Nothing at all can illuminate the work as far as I can tell.

Ambition, Energy, Interesting, Person, Self, Work

It's only recently that we've discovered that the artist's inner self is somehow more important than the public world. I'm happier to create exterior pieces for the world rather than to express something I deeply feel or wish to say.

Artist, Deeply, Public, Self, Wish

I have always believed that the material world is governed by nonmaterial sources, so that in that sense 'English Music' is an exercise in the spiritual as well as the material. I have always been attracted to the Gothic and spiritual imagination, and I've always been interested in visionaries.

English, Exercise, Imagination, Music, Sources, Spiritual

I believe that the gods themselves are frightened of the world which they have fashioned.

Believe, Fashioned, Frightened, Gods, I Believe, World

There is a word in Old English which belongs wholly to that civilization - "dustsceawung," meaning contemplation of dust. It is a true image of the Anglo-Saxon mind, or at least an echo of that consciousness which considered transcience and loss to be part of the human estate; it was a world in which life was uncertain and the principal diety was fate or destiny or "wyrd. "

Destiny, Echo, Estate, Fate, Loss, Part

There are so many characters whizzing around inside my head, it's like Looney Tunes. But as soon as I've finished writing about them, I completely forget who they are.

Character, Characters, Forget, Like, Tunes, Writing

The embrace of present and past time, in which English antiquarianism becomes a form of alchemy, engenders a strange timelessness. It is as if the little bird which flew through the Anglo-Saxon banqueting hall, in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, gained the outer air and became the lark ascending in Vaughan Williams's orchestral setting. The unbroken chain is that of English music itself.

Air, Ascending, Bird, Engenders, Gentis, Past

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