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49 quotes by Peter Ackroyd

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...
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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... →

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I don't know if I have a voice of my own. I don't see me being an important person with something to say. I haven't. I've got nothing... →

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It sometimes seems to me that the whole course of English history was one of accident, confusion, chance and unintended consequences - there's no... →

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All cities are impressive in their way, because they represent the aspiration of men to lead a common life; those people who wish to live agreeable... →

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I have always believed that the material world is governed by nonmaterial sources, so that in that sense 'English Music' is an exercise in... →

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I just wanted to be an ordinary, middle-class person. When I was at Cambridge, I made great efforts to lose the last remnants of my Cockney accent.

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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... →

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Oh, I just tend to believe in things when I'm writing them. For instance, when I was writing 'Doctor Dee,' I believed in magic. And when... →

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Thomas More's birth was noted by his father upon a blank page at the back of a copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth's 'Historia Regum... →

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His head was boiled, impaled upon a pole and raised above London Bridge. So ended the life of Thomas More, one of the few Londoners upon whom... →

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I enjoyed reading and learning at school, and at university I enjoyed extending my reading and learning. Once I left Cambridge, I went to Yale as a... →

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Thomas More rarely discussed his siblings, and two of them are never mentioned by him. It is likely that they were part of that infant mortality... →

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Every book for me is a chapter in the long book which will finally be closed on the day of my death.

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