'The Spirit of Place'

 

“It may seem unfashionable to say so, but historians should seize the imagination as well as the intellect. History is, in a sense, a story, a narrative of adventure and of vision, of character and of incident. It is also a portrait of the great general drama of the human spirit.” – Peter Ackroyd

 

Born in England on Oct. 5, 1949 Ackroyd is a novelist, critic and biographer of award-winning books on William Blake, Charles Dickens and T.S. Eliot.  His historical novels also have earned him great acclaim, including the Somerset Maugham Award and two Whitbread Awards, for Hawksmoor and The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde.  He is noted for the depth of his research and volume of his work – some 20 novels, several books of poetry and more than 40 nonfiction books, the latest being The English Soul: Faith of a Nation.

 

His novel The Great Fire of London, a reworking of Dickens’ Little Dorrit (a terrific example, by the way, of the “serial” writing style that first made Dickens popular), first put Ackroyd on the writing map.   That book set the stage for his many novels dealing with the complex interaction of time and space and what Ackroyd calls "the spirit of place.” 

  

“To be a writer was always my greatest aim,”Ackroyd said.  “I remember writing a play about Guy Fawkes when I was 10. I suppose it's significant, at least to me, that my first work should be about a historical figure.”