Peter Ackroyd is an award-winning novelist, as well as a broadcaster, biographer, poet and historian. The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein has affinities with Hawksmoor, an equally creepy and brilliant historical novel, which won both the Guardian fiction prize and the Whitbread Novel of the Year, and with Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem, an East End novel which is imagined with equal power and ingenuity. His most recent novels are The Fall of Troy, The Lambs of London and the bestselling The Clerkenwell Tales. He is the author of the acclaimed non-fiction bestsellers, Thames: Sacred River and London: The Biography. He has a CBE for services to literature.

Mark Thwaite: What first gave you the idea for writing The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein? Did you enjoy the vertiginousness of writing a novel about a character from a novel!?

Peter Ackroyd: The idea just came to me as I was preparing myself to write for the BBC a series on the Romantic writers.

MT: Has Mary Shelly's Frankenstein long been a favourite? What qualities do you particularly admire in it?

PA: No, I had not read it for many years. I admire it because it is the first example of science fantasy in English literature.

MT: You are mostly associated with London and London writers -- was it nice to get out of the Smoke and set a book in Oxford?

PA: Much of the novel is in fact set in London, especially by the banks of the Thames. But I did enjoy writing the descriptions of Lake Geneva and its environs as well as of Marlow. They seemed to bring a breath of fresh air into the narrative.

MT: What was the most difficult aspect of writing your book? How did you overcome it?

PA: The most difficult problem was in recreating the language and tone of the original. I resolved this simply by doing it.

MT: How long did it take you to write The Casebook? Is this a usual timeframe for you?

PA: I believe it took about eighteen months, which is about the usual amount of time.

MT: How do you write? Longhand or directly onto a computer, straight off or with lots and lots of editing?   

PA: I write in long hand in notebooks, and then I transfer it to the computer. There is never much editing.

MT: Recently you've been most noted for your London: The Biography and your biography of Dickens -- was it a pleasure to get back into the novel-writing saddle? Do you prefer writing one genre over another? Do you find one easier than the other?

PA:I have no real preference for one genre over another. I find them to be related in most respects. The process of writing in both cases is approximately the same.

MT: You almost seem to channel London -- tell us about why the city fascinates you so, and please tell us a little about psychogeography too!

PA: I have always been interested in the spiritual wealth of London, and have written about it on numerous occasions. I do not like the term psychogeography. I prefer to call it the territorial imperative, whereby a certain patch of ground – or street, or house – actively influences the behaviour and the character of the people who inhabit it.

MT: Do you read the critics? Have you been pleased with the responses to your work over the years? Have you learned anything from them?

PA: I never read the reviews.

MT: What do you do when you are not writing?

PA: I live.

MT: Did you have an idea in your mind of your "ideal" reader? Did you write specifically for them?

PA: No.

MT: What are you working on now?

PA: A six volume history of England.

MT: Who is your favourite writer? What is/are your favourite book(s)?

PA: I don’t have one.

MT: Do you have any tips for the aspiring writer!?

PA: Just get on with it.