Peter Ackroyd lives in London. He is the author of biographies of Dickens, Blake and Thomas More and of the bestselling London: The biography. A number of his lectures (such as The Englishness of English Literature) and of his novels (such as English Music) have explored the theme of What is Englishness? He has won the Whitbread Biography Award, the Royal Society of Literature's William Heinemann Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award and the South Bank Prize for Literature. His most recent book is The Collection, selected journalism, reviews, essays and lectures.
Ackroyd covers not only literature but art, architecture, music and almost everything else that has passed through the minds of the English...just one damn interesting thing after another. -- Sunday Times <br> Albion is an explosion, full of particles whizzing through air...crammed, digressive, learned, knotted. -- Daily Telegraph