"Novelist and historian Ackroyd’s beautifully written volume shines in its appreciation for Auden’s technical ingenuity as a poet and is reasonably sympathetic to his shortcomings and inconsistencies, especially with regard to his lifelong partner, Chester Kallman. Ackroyd is skilled at describing Auden’s evolution as a writer: his strict work habits, his successes as a schoolteacher, his pleasure in collaborations with musicians such as Igor Stravinsky, and the ways in which the works of Thomas Hardy, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Jung influenced him. . . . Ackroyd is an astute and appreciative observer of this great poet’s life."

Library Journal

“Late in life, while living in Berlin, sozzled poet WH Auden was reported to the police for driving erratically. When he appeared in court, he was asked if he took alcohol and replied: ’I have been drinking every night of my adult life.’ The German authorities acquitted him and, according to Ackroyd, in his first-class new biography Auden, Auden’s typically Auden comment to his friend Peter Hayworth was ’the judge was rather a dish, my dear, didn’t you think?’"

The Independent

“This is a terrific life of an intriguing poet by one of our great biographers. Ackroyd sensitively explores W H Auden’s development as a poet, his family, religion (Anglo-Catholic) and relationships. By fleshing out Auden the man, we better understand his verse. One fine writer on another.”

London Standard, "New Year, New Reads: Mind-Expanding, Life-Affirming Titles to Read in 2026"

“Traditional cradle-to-crematorium biography is not dead yet. Ackroyd, whose lives of Blake, Dickens and Turner were so memorable, will publish his Auden, an account of WH Auden and his circle.”

New Statesman, "Culture Preview 2026: The Best Non-Fiction to Read This Year"

"This critical biography of poet W.H. Auden analyzes his work in the context of his intellectual promiscuity and experiences as a gay man living in the repressive early twentieth century."

Publishers Weekly, "Spring 2026 Fiction & Nonfiction Preview: Memoirs & Biographies"

"Ackroyd, the celebrated biographer of T. S. Eliot, has now turned his attention to Eliot’s great successor as an Anglo-American poet. Auden is an eminently readable and well-paced account, rich in anecdote, sympathetically following the man all the way from prodigious youth to senior man of letters."

Seamus Perry, fellow of Balliol College and professor of English literature, University of Oxford