SOURCE: “PW Interviews Peter Ackroyd,” in Publisher's Weekly, December 25, 1987, pp. 59-60.

In the following interview, Ackroyd discusses his literary career, his imaginative historical fiction, and the interrelationship between his work as a biographer and novelist.

At 38, Peter Ackroyd has stakes planted in several literary camps. Ackroyd came to prominence four years ago with his biography of T. S. Eliot. Since then, his novel Hawksmoor—a dark, violent tale that slips between past and present, rendered partly in 18th century prose—has become a cult phenomenon in his native England. His new novel Chatterton—based in part on the life of the literary hoaxer—was shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize.

Ackroyd talks to PW in his London flat—modern, spare, but discerningly decorated. For a man who writes chilling scenes of young lads having their throats slit by mad architects in churchyards, Ackroyd has a particularly jolly...