The Collection - Tapa dura

During the 1970s and the early 1980s Peter Ackroyd wrote countless book reviews and articles for the Spectator, on literature, film and a number of social and cultural issues. The Collection offers a selection of these incisive and entertaining pieces which established Ackroyd's reputation as a writer.Since 1986 Ackroyd has been chief book reviewer for The Times, and in this capacity he has reviewed some of the most important biographies and novels published over the last fifteen years. A selection of his Times reviews are included here. These reviews, and his articles for the Sunday Times, display his characteristic attitudes to literature and art. They also throw interesting lights on his own work as a prize-winning novelist and biographer. The Collection also contains a number of Ackroyd's interesting and provocative lectures on 'The Englishness of English literature', 'London Luminaries and Cockney Visionaries', 'William Blake' and 'The Nature of Time'. In addition, several essays on subjects such as the art of biography, contemporary painters such as Frank Auerbach and Ackroyd's own writing have been included. Finally, three of Ackroyd's short stories have been reproduced, one of which was his first published work of fiction.

ITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THOMAS WRIGHT

A fascinating anthology of journalism, lectures, short stories and miscellaneous writing by the author of London: The Biography.

During the 1970s and early 1980s Peter Ackroyd wrote countless book reviews and articles for the Spectator on
literature, film and a number of social issues. The Collection offers a selection of these incisive and witty pieces. In them, Ackroyd first explored the ideas that he would later develop in his novels and biographies. The articles from various publications in the 1980s and 1990s also throw interesting light on Ackroyd’s books and reveal his attitudes to literature and art. Included here are long pieces on Walter Pater and William Morris, as well as lectures on the Englishness of English literature, Blake and radicalism, and the nature of time. The Collection also contains articles on the work of contemporary painters and much previously unpublished mate