SOURCE: “Tradition and the National Talent,” in The New Republic, January 18, 1993, pp. 29-32.

In the following review, Levenson traces the development of Ackroyd's literary preoccupations and criticizes his conservative nostalgia for English history and cultural identity as presented in English Music.

“She walked between the leafless poplars and, when a woman crossed her path, instinctively Evangeline looked away. She looked down at the ground. So I have no connection with the world, she thought.”

—Peter Ackroyd, First Light

“‘I never know where anything comes from, Walter.’

‘Comes from, sir?’

‘Where you come from, where I come from, where all this comes from.’ And he gestured at the offices and homes beneath him. He was about to say something else but he stopped, embarrassed; and in any case he was coming to the limits of his understanding.”

—Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor

Here is where Ackroyd began, and where he still...