Five Minutes With: Peter Ackroyd

I love Peter Ackroyd! I have read a great many of his books, including Shakespeare, Dickens, Blake, London the Biography, London Under, and Thames: Sacred River. I just finished reading The Tudors. I love English history and as an actor, I have always loved Shakespeare. I have an entire library of books by and about Shakespeare.

I also enjoy the little literature games he plays that he sneaks into the narrative. For instance, in The Tudors in the chapter entitled "The Revels Now Are Ended", he incorporates phrases like "The pageants were suddenly ended, leaving not a rack behind," both references, of course, to Shakespeare's Tempest. Things like that.

Ackroyd knows so much and writes so fluidly and covers events so comprehensively, I can well believe he has time for nothing else. But what a fascinating writer's life!