Peter Ackroyd

Programme one begins with Peter Ackroyd speaking the words- 'I have lived in this city all my life. I was brought up on a council house estate in west London.' It goes on to show him describing Turnmill Street (for centuries, associated with pornography); Cannon Street (haunted), Park Lane (the exact road dates from Anglo-Saxon times). There is no corner of London that he does not know. He has written biographers of the people whom he calls 'cockney visionaries' (Dickens, Blake, Thomas More) and many of his novels are set in London, including the most recent, The Clerkenwell Tales, a delightful 'take' on Chaucer. His TV series on Dickens was a world-wide success.