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If you've never read his books, you should, I didn't really 'discover' him until the early '90's but after I did I read and laughed myself silly through most if not all of his books..
http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/obituaries/tom-sharpe.21273952
Tom Sharpe
Friday 7 June 2013
Writer and satirist;
Born: March 30, 1928; Died: June 6, 2013.
Tom Sharpe, who has died aged 85, was a best-selling novelist known for his bawdy and brash satires of British life. He wrote 16 novels in all – the most famous of which were Porterhouse Blue and Wilt – and all of them were full of garish caricatures of officials, petty bureaucrats and the kind of people who can make modern life difficult. Some called Sharpe the UK's greatest satirist; others called him the funniest British novelist that ever lived.
Born in Croydon, he had a difficult childhood under a Unitarian minister, George Coverdale Sharpe, who was sympathetic to Nazism and tried to bring his son up to believe the same. Sharpe thought that his father had, as he put it, philosophically flipped. "My upbringing, to say the least of it, was peculiar," he said, but eventually he pulled free of the influence of his father and saw Hitler and Nazism for what they really were. "I discovered that Hitler was not the man I was led to believe he was," he said.
He was educated at Bloxham School in Oxfordshire, and Lancing College in Sussex before going on to read history at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He then joined the Marines to do his national service, serving overseas in the 1940s, before moving to South Africa in his early twenties. He worked as a social worker and teacher, and also had his own photographic studio. He saw for himself how hard life was for black people in South Africa and wrote anti-apartheid plays.
When one of these plays, The South Africans, was staged in London in 1961, Sharpe was arrested, spending Christmas jail in 1960. Of his time in jail he once said: "My advice, if you do go to jail, is to pick a murderer as a cellmate. He's very clean and not the professional. Burglars tend to be rather dirty in my experience, and rapists are not particularly pleasant either."
Once released from jail, Sharpe was deported and returned to the UK where he began lecturing at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology, a period which helped to inspire his character Wilt, who featured in five novels.
Before the Wilt novels, there was Sharpe's first novel, Riotous Assembly, which was a parody of the South African police and their methods. It was dedicated, in an example of the kind of sarcastic wit he would become famous for, to "the South African police force whose lives are dedicated to the preservation of western civilisation in southern Africa". He wrote the book in three weeks flat, pouring his experiences of the country into the pages, but it was a late start for a novelist – he was already 43.
Four years after leaving the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology came the first Wilt novel. The hero was Henry Wilt, a lecturer desperately trying to enthuse his English students at a fictional college. It became a film in 1989 with Griff Rhys Jones and Mel Smith, although that failed to capture the atmosphere of the book.
Sharpe then entered his most fruitful period, producing a book pretty much every year until Wilt on High in 1984. Two of his most famous novels, Porterhouse Blue and Blott on the Landscape appeared in the mid 1970s and were both adapted for television.
Porterhouse Blue, which was published in 1974, was inspired by Sharpe's experiences at Cambridge and was based in the fictional Cambridge college of Porterhouse. The head porter was a more-than-my-jobs-worth by the name of Skullion and the head of the college was Sir Godber Evans. The book was adapted for television by Channel 4 in 1987 with David Jason as Skullion and Ian Richardson as Sir Godber.
The following year, there was Blott on the Landscape, whose plot revolved around plans for a motorway through a fictional English county. There was a BBC adaptation in the 1980s starring George Cole, Geraldine James and David Suchet.
The Wilt books were perhaps Sharpe's most popular success and there were five in all: the first Wilt, followed by The Wilt Alternative in 1979, Wilt on High in 1984, Wilt in Nowhere in 2004 and finally two years ago The Wilt Inheritance, which was Sharpe's final novel.
Ill health eventually slowed down Sharpe's prodigious output, although he continued working, producing a sequel to Porterhouse Blue, and he was writing until the last few months. He had completed half his autobiography – about 30,000 words.
He moved from Cambridge to Spain in the early 1990s, saying that he was disenchanted with the UK: "It is so depressing," he said. "I can't bear it. There is no such thing as the English gentleman any more. Money rules everything." He also said: "I love England but I don't like the English. I can't bear the Brit culture, the hooliganism."
In the two decades that followed his departure from the UK, he became a local celebrity in his adopted Spanish home town of Llafranc in Catalonia and his books are popular in the country, although he never learned the language and generally kept to his small circle of English-speaking friends. He died in Llafranc.
Susan Sandon, the managing director of his publishers Cornerstone, called Sharpe one of Britain's greatest satirists and a brilliant writer: witty, often outrageous, always acutely funny about the absurdities of life.
"The private Tom was warm, supportive and wholly engaging," she said. "I feel enormously privileged to have been his publisher."
Sharpe – who once said that he would die at his typewriter – is survived by his wife Nancy and three children. His ashes are to be scattered in Llafranc, Cambridge and a church in Thockrington, Northumberland, where he spent summers as a child.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/obituaries/tom-sharpe.21273952
Tom Sharpe
Friday 7 June 2013
Writer and satirist;
Born: March 30, 1928; Died: June 6, 2013.
Tom Sharpe, who has died aged 85, was a best-selling novelist known for his bawdy and brash satires of British life. He wrote 16 novels in all – the most famous of which were Porterhouse Blue and Wilt – and all of them were full of garish caricatures of officials, petty bureaucrats and the kind of people who can make modern life difficult. Some called Sharpe the UK's greatest satirist; others called him the funniest British novelist that ever lived.
Born in Croydon, he had a difficult childhood under a Unitarian minister, George Coverdale Sharpe, who was sympathetic to Nazism and tried to bring his son up to believe the same. Sharpe thought that his father had, as he put it, philosophically flipped. "My upbringing, to say the least of it, was peculiar," he said, but eventually he pulled free of the influence of his father and saw Hitler and Nazism for what they really were. "I discovered that Hitler was not the man I was led to believe he was," he said.
He was educated at Bloxham School in Oxfordshire, and Lancing College in Sussex before going on to read history at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He then joined the Marines to do his national service, serving overseas in the 1940s, before moving to South Africa in his early twenties. He worked as a social worker and teacher, and also had his own photographic studio. He saw for himself how hard life was for black people in South Africa and wrote anti-apartheid plays.
When one of these plays, The South Africans, was staged in London in 1961, Sharpe was arrested, spending Christmas jail in 1960. Of his time in jail he once said: "My advice, if you do go to jail, is to pick a murderer as a cellmate. He's very clean and not the professional. Burglars tend to be rather dirty in my experience, and rapists are not particularly pleasant either."
Once released from jail, Sharpe was deported and returned to the UK where he began lecturing at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology, a period which helped to inspire his character Wilt, who featured in five novels.
Before the Wilt novels, there was Sharpe's first novel, Riotous Assembly, which was a parody of the South African police and their methods. It was dedicated, in an example of the kind of sarcastic wit he would become famous for, to "the South African police force whose lives are dedicated to the preservation of western civilisation in southern Africa". He wrote the book in three weeks flat, pouring his experiences of the country into the pages, but it was a late start for a novelist – he was already 43.
Four years after leaving the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology came the first Wilt novel. The hero was Henry Wilt, a lecturer desperately trying to enthuse his English students at a fictional college. It became a film in 1989 with Griff Rhys Jones and Mel Smith, although that failed to capture the atmosphere of the book.
Sharpe then entered his most fruitful period, producing a book pretty much every year until Wilt on High in 1984. Two of his most famous novels, Porterhouse Blue and Blott on the Landscape appeared in the mid 1970s and were both adapted for television.
Porterhouse Blue, which was published in 1974, was inspired by Sharpe's experiences at Cambridge and was based in the fictional Cambridge college of Porterhouse. The head porter was a more-than-my-jobs-worth by the name of Skullion and the head of the college was Sir Godber Evans. The book was adapted for television by Channel 4 in 1987 with David Jason as Skullion and Ian Richardson as Sir Godber.
The following year, there was Blott on the Landscape, whose plot revolved around plans for a motorway through a fictional English county. There was a BBC adaptation in the 1980s starring George Cole, Geraldine James and David Suchet.
The Wilt books were perhaps Sharpe's most popular success and there were five in all: the first Wilt, followed by The Wilt Alternative in 1979, Wilt on High in 1984, Wilt in Nowhere in 2004 and finally two years ago The Wilt Inheritance, which was Sharpe's final novel.
Ill health eventually slowed down Sharpe's prodigious output, although he continued working, producing a sequel to Porterhouse Blue, and he was writing until the last few months. He had completed half his autobiography – about 30,000 words.
He moved from Cambridge to Spain in the early 1990s, saying that he was disenchanted with the UK: "It is so depressing," he said. "I can't bear it. There is no such thing as the English gentleman any more. Money rules everything." He also said: "I love England but I don't like the English. I can't bear the Brit culture, the hooliganism."
In the two decades that followed his departure from the UK, he became a local celebrity in his adopted Spanish home town of Llafranc in Catalonia and his books are popular in the country, although he never learned the language and generally kept to his small circle of English-speaking friends. He died in Llafranc.
Susan Sandon, the managing director of his publishers Cornerstone, called Sharpe one of Britain's greatest satirists and a brilliant writer: witty, often outrageous, always acutely funny about the absurdities of life.
"The private Tom was warm, supportive and wholly engaging," she said. "I feel enormously privileged to have been his publisher."
Sharpe – who once said that he would die at his typewriter – is survived by his wife Nancy and three children. His ashes are to be scattered in Llafranc, Cambridge and a church in Thockrington, Northumberland, where he spent summers as a child.
