'Masterly' Observer
'Brilliant' Independent on Sunday
'Sparks of life' Daily Mail
Thomas More is one of the great figures in English history. Pre-eminent as a courtier and as a humanist, a friend to Henry VIII and the author of Utopia, More's life and career epitomise the great transformation of England in the space of 35 years.
In this illuminating book, Peter Ackroyd investigates the paradox of this 'man for all seasons': the man of the world who travelled across Europe to negotiate on behalf of his king, and the unworldly man who's careful silence on the matter of Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn would lead to his disgrace and execution.
A magnificent achievement, The Life of Thomas More gives us a rich portrait of the man and the social and cultural world in which he lived.
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.
Title: The Life of Thomas More
Author: Peter Ackroyd
ISBN: 9780749386405
Binding:
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
Publication Date: 1999-03-04
Number of Pages: 448
Weight: 0.3403 kg
Full of brilliant insight, and one stands in awe of Ackroyd's learning, confident that this is the life of Thomas More for our times * Independent on Sunday *
Thanks to Ackroyd's skill, scrupulous research and inspired interpretation of historical texts, vital sparks of life have been breathed into the austere icon * Daily Mail *
Marvellously vivid... He has an excellent visual sense and a sharp eye for hte particularities of daily existence... His is a reliable, colourful and deeply enjoyable life of an extraordinary man * Guardian *
Ackroyd tells More's story with imaginative sympathy and impeccable scholarship...masterly * Observer *
Comprehensive and subtle... Ackroyd imbues his book with a pregnant richness of colour which makes one almost smell and hear 16th-century London... It has been said that Ackroyd is today's best writer about London, and this biography adds to that reputation * Mail on Sunday *