Peter Ackroyd 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.
12 Facts About Peter Ackroyd
2.
Peter Ackroyd was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984 and appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2003.
3.
Peter Ackroyd first knew that he was gay when he was seven.
4.
Peter Ackroyd was educated at St Benedict's, Ealing, and at Clare College, Cambridge, from which he graduated with a double first in English literature.
5.
The result of his Yale fellowship was Notes for a New Culture, written when Peter Ackroyd was only 22 and eventually published in 1976.
6.
Peter Ackroyd worked at The Spectator magazine between 1973 and 1977 as literary editor and became joint managing editor in 1978, a position he held until 1982.
7.
Peter Ackroyd worked as chief book reviewer for The Times and was a frequent broadcaster on radio.
8.
The novel set the stage for the long sequence of novels Peter Ackroyd has produced since, all of which deal in some way with the complex interaction of time and space and what Peter Ackroyd calls "the spirit of place".
9.
Many of Peter Ackroyd's novels are set in London and deal with the ever-changing, but at the same time stubbornly consistent nature of the city.
10.
From 2003 to 2005, Peter Ackroyd wrote a six-book non-fiction series, intended for readers as young as eight, his first work for children.
11.
Peter Ackroyd had a long-term relationship with Brian Kuhn, an American dancer he met while at Yale.
12.
However, Kuhn was then diagnosed with AIDS and died in 1994, after which Peter Ackroyd moved back to London.