Peter Ackroyd

Peter Ackroyd CBE, FRSL (born 5 October 1949) is an English biographer, novelist, critic, poet, and historian with a specialist interest in the history and culture of London. He grew up in a working-class environment in London, influenced by his Roman Catholic upbringing, and studied at Clare College, Cambridge, and Yale University. Ackroyd has won awards including the Somerset Maugham Award, two Whitbread Awards, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for works like biographies of T.S. Eliot, Charles Dickens, and Thomas More, as well as London: The Biography.