Питер Акройд

First Light begins with an ominous coincidence: the reappearance of the ancient night sky during the excavation of an astronomically aligned Neolithic grave in Dorset. Add to this a group of wonderful eccentrics—archaeologists, astronomers, a civil servant, a stand-up comic, local rustics—who converge on the site to disturb the quiet seclusion of Pilgrin Valley. Someone (or something) is trying...

Spenser Spender wants to make a film of Dickens' "Little Dorrit" using a contemporary London prison as a set. But he is not the only person interested in Dickens. Unwittingly he becomes the catalyst for bizarre meetings, coincidences and events, culminating in an apocalyptic conflagration.

I should like to express my obligation and gratitude to the editors of the Complete Works of St. Thomas More, as well as to the Yale University Press, which has published the fourteen volumes of that enterprise. Theirs is a magisterial work of scholarship, and although many of the writings are available elsewhere the Yale edition has become the indispensable companion to More studies. The other ma...

In this BBC Radio adaptation of Peter Ackroyd's spectacular one-man show, Simon Callow portrays both Charles Dickens and many of his best-loved characters, from Mr. Micawber and Bill Sikes to Oliver Twist and Nancy. Readings from his novels interweave with the author's own words and an incisive, compassionate narrative. Dickens' idyllic childhood in Chatham was swapped for his famil...

In the twentieth century, no Anglo-American poet or critic has matched the influence of Thomas Stearns Eliot. Despite his political and religious conservatism, Eliot was among the most innovative of the literary modernists, a figure to be reckoned with by admirers and critics alike. In his Whitbread Prize-winning biography, Peter Ackroyd delves into the work and mind of a man who redefined the ver...

In Queer City Peter Ackroyd looks at London in a whole new way – through the history and experiences of its gay population. In Roman Londinium the city was dotted with lupanaria (‘wolf dens’ or public pleasure houses), fornices (brothels) and thermiae (hot baths). Then came the Emperor Constantine, with his bishops, monks and missionaries. And so began an endless loop of alternating permissivenes...

In this vividly descriptive short study, Peter Ackroyd tunnels down through the geological layers of London, meeting the creatures that dwell in darkness and excavating the lore and mythology beneath the surface. There is a Bronze Age trackway below the Isle of Dogs, Anglo-Saxon graves rest under St. Pauls, and the monastery of Whitefriars lies beneath Fleet Street. To go under London is to p...

Роман известного английского писателя Питера Акройда повествует о таинственных и страшных убийствах, потрясших предместья британской столицы в конце XIX века. Детективный сюжет, построенный на сложной цепочке причин и следствий, дополнен точно воссозданной атмосферой «литературного» Лондона и множеством исторических подробностей жизни городских низов.