Peter Ackroyd

Charlie Chaplin is one of the most familiar faces of the last century. This biography tells of his humble theatrical beginnings in music halls to winning an honorary Academy Award. It includes fresh revelations about the glamour of his golden age to the murky scandals of the 1940s and his eventual exile to Switzerland.

Geoffrey Chaucer is often regarded as the greatest poet of the English language, but he was so much more than a poet. In his work in the service of the king he encountered the most powerful in the country, and held many lucrative offices. This is a glimpse into his life and times.

The English see more ghosts than any other nation. From medieval times to the present day, stories have been told about ghosts who avenge injustice, souls who long for peace and spooks who just want to have fun. This is a treasure trove of such sightings.

Nicholas Dyer, assistant to Sir Christopher Wren and the man with a commission to build seven London churches, plans to conceal a dark secret at the heart of each one. 250 years later, detective Nicholas Hawksmoor is investigating a series of gruesome murders on the sites of certain 18th century churches.

When Matthew Palmer inherits an old house in Clerkenwell, he feels that he has become part of its past. He learns of the famous 16th-century alchemist and astrologer John Dee who was reputedly a black magician, who was imprisoned by Queen Mary for allegedly attempting to kill her through sorcery.

With an ailing father and distrustful mother Mary Lamb has a restricted life, but takes solace from her brother Charles' life. Mary falls in love with William Ireland, a bookseller, from whom Charles buys a book. They later realise that this is no ordinary book and William Ireland is no ordinary young man.

A fascinating portrait of the Lord Chancellor who dominated the court of Henry VIII, but lost his life because of his Roman Catholic faith.

Volume 3; THE NATURAL HISTORY OF LONDON: Peter Ackroyd's work is his definitive account of the city of London. For him it is an organism with its own laws of growth and change, so this book is a biography rather than a history.

Volume 1; THE CITY AS A BODY: Peter Ackroyd's work is his definitive account of the city of London. For him it is an organism with its own laws of growth and change, so this book is a biography rather than a history.

Volume 2; PESTLENCE AND FLAME: Peter Ackroyd's work is his definitive account of the city of London. For him it is an organism with its own laws of growth and change, so this book is a biography rather than a history.

Volume 4; LONDON'S OUTCASTS: Peter Ackroyd's work is his definitive account of the city of London. For him it is an organism with its own laws of growth and change, so this book is a biography rather than a history.

Two apparently harmless women reside in cottages one building apart in the idyllic English village of Little Camborne. Miss Finch and Miss Swallow, cousins, have put their pasts behind them and settled into conventional country life. But when a mysterious foreigner, Theodore Cadmus - from Caldera, a Mediterranean island nobody has heard of - moves into the middle cottage, the safe monotony of their lives is shattered.

The fates of the two cousins and Mr Cadmus, and those of Little Camborne and Caldera, become inextricably enmeshed. Long-hidden secrets and long-held grudges threaten to surface, drawing all into a vortex of subterfuge, theft, violence, mayhem . . . and murder.

Edgar Allan Poe served as a soldier and began his literary career composing verses modelled on Byron. Peter Ackroyd's biography of Poe opens with his final days. No one knows what happened between the time when friends saw him off on the steam-boat to Baltimore and his discovery six days later dying in a tavern.

In this powerful Sunday Times bestseller Peter Ackroyd looks at London in a whole new way - through the history and experiences of its gay population.

In Roman Londinium the city was dotted with lupanaria ('wolf dens' or public pleasure houses), fornices (brothels) and thermiae (hot baths). Then came the Emperor Constantine, with his bishops, monks and missionaries. And so began an endless loop of alternating permissiveness and censure.

Ackroyd takes us right into the hidden history of the city; from the notorious Normans to the frenzy of executions for sodomy in the early nineteenth century. He journeys through the coffee bars of sixties Soho to Gay Liberation, disco music and the horror of AIDS.

Today, we live in an era of openness and tolerance and Queer London has become part of the new norm. Ackroyd tells us the hidden story of how it got there, celebrating its diversity, thrills and energy on the one hand; but reminding us of its very real terrors, dangers and risks on the other.