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Peter Ackroyd: The Collection: Journalism, Reviews, Essays, Short Stories, Lectures
During the 1970s and the early 1980s Peter Ackroyd wrote countless book reviews and articles for the Spectator , on literature, film and a number of social and cultural issues. The collection offers a selection of these incisive and entertaining pieces, which established Ackroyd's reputation as a writer. It also includes a selection of his reviews as chief book reviewer for the Times , as well as three of his short stories.
448 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2001
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About the author
Peter Ackroyd
184 books1,491 followersPeter Ackroyd CBE is an English novelist and biographer with a particular interest in the history and culture of London.
Peter Ackroyd's mother worked in the personnel department of an engineering firm, his father having left the family home when Ackroyd was a baby. He was reading newspapers by the age of 5 and, at 9, wrote a play about Guy Fawkes. Reputedly, he first realized he was gay at the age of 7.
Ackroyd was educated at St. Benedict's, Ealing and at Clare College, Cambridge, from which he graduated with a double first in English. In 1972, he was a Mellon Fellow at Yale University in the United States. The result of this fellowship was Ackroyd's Notes for a New Culture, written when he was only 22 and eventually published in 1976. The title, a playful echo of T. S. Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), was an early indication of Ackroyd's penchant for creatively exploring and reexamining the works of other London-based writers.
Ackroyd's literary career began with poetry, including such works as London Lickpenny (1973) and The Diversions of Purley (1987). He later moved into fiction and has become an acclaimed author, winning the 1998 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the biography Thomas More and being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987.
Ackroyd worked at The Spectator magazine between 1973 and 1977 and became joint managing editor in 1978. In 1982 he published The Great Fire of London, his first novel. This novel deals with one of Ackroyd's great heroes, Charles Dickens, and is a reworking of Little Dorrit. The novel set the stage for the long sequence of novels Ackroyd has produced since, all of which deal in some way with the complex interaction of time and space, and what Ackroyd calls "the spirit of place". It is also the first in a sequence of novels of London, through which he traces the changing, but curiously consistent nature of the city. Often this theme is explored through the city's artists, and especially its writers.
Ackroyd has always shown a great interest in the city of London, and one of his best known works, London: The Biography, is an extensive and thorough discussion of London through the ages.
His fascination with London literary and artistic figures is also displayed in the sequence of biographies he has produced of Ezra Pound (1980), T. S. Eliot (1984), Charles Dickens (1990), William Blake (1995), Thomas More (1998), Chaucer (2004), William Shakespeare (2005), and J. M. W. Turner. The city itself stands astride all these works, as it does in the fiction.
From 2003 to 2005, Ackroyd wrote a six-book non-fiction series (Voyages Through Time), intended for readers as young as eight. This was his first work for children. The critically acclaimed series is an extensive narrative of key periods in world history.
Early in his career, Ackroyd was nominated a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984 and, as well as producing fiction, biography and other literary works, is also a regular radio and television broadcaster and book critic.
In the New Year's honours list of 2003, Ackroyd was awarded the CBE.
Peter Ackroyd's mother worked in the personnel department of an engineering firm, his father having left the family home when Ackroyd was a baby. He was reading newspapers by the age of 5 and, at 9, wrote a play about Guy Fawkes. Reputedly, he first realized he was gay at the age of 7.
Ackroyd was educated at St. Benedict's, Ealing and at Clare College, Cambridge, from which he graduated with a double first in English. In 1972, he was a Mellon Fellow at Yale University in the United States. The result of this fellowship was Ackroyd's Notes for a New Culture, written when he was only 22 and eventually published in 1976. The title, a playful echo of T. S. Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), was an early indication of Ackroyd's penchant for creatively exploring and reexamining the works of other London-based writers.
Ackroyd's literary career began with poetry, including such works as London Lickpenny (1973) and The Diversions of Purley (1987). He later moved into fiction and has become an acclaimed author, winning the 1998 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the biography Thomas More and being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987.
Ackroyd worked at The Spectator magazine between 1973 and 1977 and became joint managing editor in 1978. In 1982 he published The Great Fire of London, his first novel. This novel deals with one of Ackroyd's great heroes, Charles Dickens, and is a reworking of Little Dorrit. The novel set the stage for the long sequence of novels Ackroyd has produced since, all of which deal in some way with the complex interaction of time and space, and what Ackroyd calls "the spirit of place". It is also the first in a sequence of novels of London, through which he traces the changing, but curiously consistent nature of the city. Often this theme is explored through the city's artists, and especially its writers.
Ackroyd has always shown a great interest in the city of London, and one of his best known works, London: The Biography, is an extensive and thorough discussion of London through the ages.
His fascination with London literary and artistic figures is also displayed in the sequence of biographies he has produced of Ezra Pound (1980), T. S. Eliot (1984), Charles Dickens (1990), William Blake (1995), Thomas More (1998), Chaucer (2004), William Shakespeare (2005), and J. M. W. Turner. The city itself stands astride all these works, as it does in the fiction.
From 2003 to 2005, Ackroyd wrote a six-book non-fiction series (Voyages Through Time), intended for readers as young as eight. This was his first work for children. The critically acclaimed series is an extensive narrative of key periods in world history.
Early in his career, Ackroyd was nominated a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984 and, as well as producing fiction, biography and other literary works, is also a regular radio and television broadcaster and book critic.
In the New Year's honours list of 2003, Ackroyd was awarded the CBE.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 3, 2011
Recently there were some really wonderful reviews written as Literary Celebrity Deathmatches. They are really quite funny, extremely creative, and showcase the vast knowledge and talent that the readers who use this site have.
I have to say, however, they have nothing on Peter Ackroyd.
Take for instance:
On Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon - "I have sat and slept though this novel for five days and words would fail me if logorhoea were not so catching." and "It [Rocket] may have been of such heavy symbolic intent that it went under my head"
On The Decay of the Angel - "This is not writing, this is Barbara Cartland - and Barbara Cartland at least has the courage not to commit hara-kiri over it"
On Look at the Harlequins! by Vladimir Nabokov - "This is the novel to end all of Nabokov's novels - or at least one hopes so"
On The Autumn of the Patriarch - "The book is the equivalent of a bad film stunningly photographed."
On Ted Hughes - Every time I open Ted Hughes's latest book, there is something about testicles, bone tissue or vomit. It's like watching General Hospital . . . "
Or "Apcolypse Now, in other words, would have been more entertaining as a silent film"
Or, on Faye Dunaway (whom he likes) in Mommie Dearest - "She is Lady Macbeth who cannot find a missing button, Clylemmenstra who has mislaid her bus past",
On Shelley Duvall in The Shining (he likes the actress and the movie - . . . she looks like Bugs Bunny carved out margarine"
On Octopussy - "Roger Moore has grown old in our service (perhaps the film should have been called the Octogenarian"
On Robert Frost "A man who paosed as an American sage while possessing the familial virtures of Caliguila"
Not that Ackroyd is all negative. When he loves, he loves. His review of Victim of the Aurora made me want to pick up that book then and there. His comments on both The Shinning and The Company of Wolves are not only thought provoking and right, but those "yes, that's it" type. Ackroyd is at his best, though, when writing about London, and there are a few beautiful essays about the city in this collection as well as thoughts on some of Ackroyd's own books.
For the American reader, the weakest part has to be the section of television reviews, simply because those shows, with the exception of Eastenders were not shown, at least widely if at all, on American telelvision. Though his comment on a show about homosexual and the sing Tom Robinson - "who has 'come out' so many times on television that he might pull off a major feat of public relations by going back inside again" - were not only funny but raised legitmate points about the media and causes.
I have to say, however, they have nothing on Peter Ackroyd.
Take for instance:
On Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon - "I have sat and slept though this novel for five days and words would fail me if logorhoea were not so catching." and "It [Rocket] may have been of such heavy symbolic intent that it went under my head"
On The Decay of the Angel - "This is not writing, this is Barbara Cartland - and Barbara Cartland at least has the courage not to commit hara-kiri over it"
On Look at the Harlequins! by Vladimir Nabokov - "This is the novel to end all of Nabokov's novels - or at least one hopes so"
On The Autumn of the Patriarch - "The book is the equivalent of a bad film stunningly photographed."
On Ted Hughes - Every time I open Ted Hughes's latest book, there is something about testicles, bone tissue or vomit. It's like watching General Hospital . . . "
Or "Apcolypse Now, in other words, would have been more entertaining as a silent film"
Or, on Faye Dunaway (whom he likes) in Mommie Dearest - "She is Lady Macbeth who cannot find a missing button, Clylemmenstra who has mislaid her bus past",
On Shelley Duvall in The Shining (he likes the actress and the movie - . . . she looks like Bugs Bunny carved out margarine"
On Octopussy - "Roger Moore has grown old in our service (perhaps the film should have been called the Octogenarian"
On Robert Frost "A man who paosed as an American sage while possessing the familial virtures of Caliguila"
Not that Ackroyd is all negative. When he loves, he loves. His review of Victim of the Aurora made me want to pick up that book then and there. His comments on both The Shinning and The Company of Wolves are not only thought provoking and right, but those "yes, that's it" type. Ackroyd is at his best, though, when writing about London, and there are a few beautiful essays about the city in this collection as well as thoughts on some of Ackroyd's own books.
For the American reader, the weakest part has to be the section of television reviews, simply because those shows, with the exception of Eastenders were not shown, at least widely if at all, on American telelvision. Though his comment on a show about homosexual and the sing Tom Robinson - "who has 'come out' so many times on television that he might pull off a major feat of public relations by going back inside again" - were not only funny but raised legitmate points about the media and causes.
November 21, 2017
Brilliant,especially as some were written when he was so young.Usually far above my head but still kind of enjoyable as he was so lucid and fluent.A broad range too from high to low culture I.e. poetry to movies.
February 14, 2012
Very interesting, and for the most part an enjoyable read although some pieces were a bit too "high brow" for me - I found the pieces on poetry particularly challenging, having very, very little knowledge of the subject myself - it made me feel highly uneducated! I have a tremendous respect for Ackroyd's work, and his absolute dedication to championing style and language (hear, hear!!). The biting and sarcastic tone of his reviews never fails to amuse and enlighten.
September 11, 2009
The range of Ackroyd's writing from his early criticism to later fiction is the development of a writer. He views on some writer's: Nabokov, Mishima is funny.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews