Geoffrey Chaucer, who died in 1400, lived a surprisingly eventful life. He served with the Duke of Clarence and with Edward III, and in 1359 was taken prisoner in France and ransomed. Through his wif
A gripping short biography of the extraordinary Alfred Hitchock, the master of suspense. Alfred Hitchcock was a strange child. Fat, lonely, burning with fear and ambition, his childhood was an isolate
Peter Ackroyd's life of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) opens with his end, his final days. No one knows what happened between the moment when friends saw him off on the steamboat to Baltimore and his disc
When Newton was not yet twenty-five years old, he formulated calculus, hit upon the idea of gravity, and discovered that white light was made up of all the colors of the spectrum. By 1678, Newton desi
Frankenstein embarks on his anatomy experiments in a barn in the secluded village of Headington, just outside Oxford. But the cadavers supplied by the local coroner are frequently damaged or decaying
In this sumptuous vision of Venice, Peter Ackroyd turns his unparalleled skill for evoking a sense of place from London and the River Thames to Venice, the city of myth, mystery, and beauty.Ackroyd's
