Tom Sharpe facts for kids

Thomas Ridley Sharpe (30 March 1928 – 6 June 2013) was an English satirical novelist, best known for his Wilt series, as well as Porterhouse Blue and Blott on the Landscape, all three of which were adapted for television.

Pembroke College, Cambridge University

Life

Sharpe was born in Holloway, London, and brought up in Croydon. Sharpe's father, the Reverend George Coverdale Sharpe, was a Unitarian minister who was active in far-right politics in the 1930s. He was chairman of the Acton and Ealing branch of The Link, and a member of the Nordic League. He declared that he hated Jews "in the sense that he hated all corruption". Sharpe initially shared some of his father's views, but was horrified on seeing films of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

University of Cambridge

Sharpe was educated at Bloxham School, on which he based Groxbourne in Vintage Stuff, followed by Lancing College. He then did national service in the Royal Marines before being admitted to Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he read history and social anthropology.

South Africa

Sharpe moved to South Africa in 1951, where he worked as a social worker and a teacher. He was friendly with the activist and artist Harold Strachan until they fell out over a woman. ..... He also wrote a play, The South African, which was critical of the regime. After it was performed in London, Sharpe was arrested for sedition in 1961 and deported from South Africa.

Teaching and later life

After returning to England, Sharpe took a position as a history lecturer at the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology, later Anglia Ruskin University. This experience inspired his Wilt series. From 1995 onward he and his American wife, Nancy, divided their time between Cambridge and their home in Llafranc, Spain, where he wrote Wilt in Nowhere. The couple had three daughters. Despite living in Catalonia, he did not learn either Spanish or Catalan. "I don't want to learn the language," he said, "I don't want to hear what the price of meat is."

Death

Sharpe died on 6 June 2013 in Llafranc from complications of diabetes at the age of 85. He was reported to have been working on an autobiography. It was also said that he had suffered a stroke a few weeks earlier. Paying tribute, the author Robert McCrum wrote "The Tom Sharpe I knew was generous, acerbic, engaging, and full of wicked fun." Susan Sandon, Sharpe's editor at Random House, remarked that he was "witty, often outrageous, always acutely funny about the absurdities of life". His ashes were interred in the graveyard at the remote church in Thockrington, Northumberland, where his father had been a preacher.

Adaptations

Blott on the Landscape was adapted by BBC TV in 1985 and broadcast in six episodes of 50 minutes each. It was scripted by Malcolm Bradbury and starred George Cole as Sir Giles Lynchwood, Geraldine James as Lady Maud and David Suchet as Blott.

In 1987 Porterhouse Blue was adapted for television, again by Bradbury, in four episodes for Channel 4. It starred David Jason as Skullion and Ian Richardson as Sir Godber Evans.

In 1989 Wilt was made into a film by LWT, featuring Griff Rhys Jones as Henry Wilt, Mel Smith as Inspector Flint and Alison Steadman as Eva Wilt.

Legacy

The Los Angeles Times wrote of The Great Pursuit: "No one, from author to critic, goes unscathed in this satire on the publishing business on both sides of the Atlantic. Agent Frensic comes across a deliciously filthy, but anonymous, manuscript that promises bestsellerdom. Frensic supplies a fake author and they are off down the primrose path. Much of this book is funny and devastatingly accurate until the plot disperses ..." More critically, Tom Payne wrote of Wilt in Nowhere: "Even half an hour after reading Tom Sharpe's 14th novel, it's difficult to remember what happened in it. ... Wilt is a victim of our times, and Sharpe doesn't seem to like them much. ... Sharpe might be happier in another age – the 18th century, perhaps – but even then he'd find plenty to rail against. It's tempting to see him as a contemporary Smollett: his plots are guided by whatever vices he feels like including, or whatever images are in his head. ... Wilt in Nowhere isn't Sharpe's finest work. ..... The present novel is simply a hapless tour of bits of England and Florida, in which colourful things happen and puzzle the police."

..... He worked on an adaptation of Yates' thriller She Fell Among Thieves for the BBC in 1977, which contained similar elements of parody.

See also

In Spanish: Tom Sharpe para niños