Chaucer

Like a bird of biographical prey, Ackroyd identifies his subject in an iconic image of Chaucer addressing the court of Richard II and swoops to investigate – Iain Finlayson * The Times *
Extensively researched and elegantly written – Sally Cousins * Sunday Telegraph *
Full, lively and eminently readable – Laurence Phelan * Independent on Sunday *
Ackroyd’s series of short lives bodes well: handy, attractive, well illustrated, useful – Anne Wroe * Sunday Times *
This elegantly written and nicely judged biography offers a welcome reintroduction to a much-underestimated figure, and gets Ackroyd’s new series of Brief Lives off to a promising start * Scotsman *

Peter Ackroyd is an award-winning historian, biographer, novelist, poet and broadcaster. He is the author of the acclaimed non-fiction bestsellers London- The Biography, Thames- Sacred River and London Under; biographies of figures including Charles Dickens, William Blake, Charlie Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock; and a multi-volume history of England. He has won the Whitbread Biography Award, the Royal Society of Literature’s William Heinemann Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award and the South Bank Prize for Literature. He holds a CBE for services to literature.