SOURCE: “The Living Dead,” in History Today, Vol. 38, No. 1, January, 1988, pp. 53-4.

In the following review of Chatterton, Neve commends Ackroyd's commitment to “the limitless power of the imagination,” though he finds fault in the novel's historical skepticism.

The novels of Peter Ackroyd pose interesting questions for readers of history, and for those trying to write works of historical imagination: in asking the question ‘what is history?’, Ackroyd answers in what might be called the modern way; it is the resurrection of the dead. That is to say, in thinking about Oscar Wilde, or Nicholas Hawksmoor, or Thomas Chatterton, Ackroyd as novelist unashamedly commits himself to bringing these figures to life, or at least to bring them back to die at his own hands. The most influential authority here—one whose life Ackroyd represented to considerable critical acclaim—is (or was) T. S. Eliot. Ever since writing about...