“His head was boiled, impaled upon a pole and raised above London Bridge. So ended the life of Thomas More, one of the few Londoners upon whom sainthood has been conferred and the first English layman to be beatified as a martyr.”

English novelist, biographer and critic

Peter Ackroyd is an English novelist, biographer and critic, known for his work on the history and culture of London. He has built a large body of work and is widely noted for technically inventive fiction. His writing ranges across different styles, and he is praised for the way he can take on varied voices while drawing on deep research. That combination has made him a distinctive presence in contemporary English letters, with work that moves between invention, biography and literary criticism.