Peter Ackroyd is an award-winning novelist, as well as a broadcaster, biographer, poet and historian. He is the author of the acclaimed non-fiction bestsellers Thames: Sacred River and London: The Biography. He holds a CBE for services to literature and lives in London.
A masterful assessment of a period that saw change in every area of life * History Revealed * It is Ackroyd's depiction of an anxious society in the grip of rapid change - industrialisation, fast urbanisation, the impact of the railway and the electric telegraph - that is the most riveting ... fascinating * The Times * Ackroyd makes history accessible to the layman -- Ian Thomson * Independent * Ackroyd is a fascinating mix of a nineteenth-century narrative historian and modern social analyst -- Gerard de Groot * The Times * Ackroyd's trademark insight and wit, and the glorious interconnectedness of all things, permeate each page * Observer * Ackroyd writes with such lightly worn erudition and deceptive ease that he never fails to engage * Daily Telegraph *