Alexander Masters

{{Short description|English author and screenwriter}}

{{BLP sources|date=August 2011}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2020}}Alexander Wright MastersCambridge University List of Members Up to 31 July 1998, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 523 is an English author, screenwriter, and worker with the homeless. He lives in Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Masters is the son of authors Dexter Masters and Joan Brady.{{cite web

|url=http://www.joanbrady.co.uk/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=95

|title=My Life

|author=Joan Brady

|author-link=Joan Brady (American-British writer)

|year=2008

|url-status=dead

|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110504034530/http://www.joanbrady.co.uk/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=95

|archivedate=4 May 2011

}} He was educated at Bedales School, and took a first in physics from King's College London. He then went to St Edmund's College, Cambridge for a further degree in maths, and then the beginnings of a PhD in the philosophy of quantum mechanics. He was studying for an MSc degree in mathematics with the Open University, and working as an assistant at a hostel for the homeless in Cambridge, when he wrote his first book.

He is the writer and illustrator of Stuart: A Life Backwards ({{ISBN|0-00-720037-4}}), the biography of Stuart Shorter. It explores how a young boy, somewhat disabled from birth, became mentally unstable, criminal and violent, living homeless on the streets of Cambridge. As the title suggests, the book starts from Shorter's adult life, tracing it back in time through his troubled childhood, examining the effects his family, schooling and disability had on his eventual state. Masters wrote the book with Shorter's active and enthusiastic help.{{Citation needed|date=August 2011}}

Both Masters and Shorter helped campaign to secure the release of the Cambridge Two – Ruth Wyner and John Brock – who had been convicted in 1999 of failing to prevent heroin from being dealt at the Cambridge homeless shelter they were managing. Masters helped to organise protests and provided administrative help whilst Shorter undertook a three day occupation of the pavement in front of the Home Office in protest of the conviction. Wyner and Brock were released following a successful appeal in July 2000 and Wyner later praised Masters and Shorter's vigorous campaigning saying, "I owe them everything."{{Cite news |last=Masters |first=Alexander |date=2005-07-06 |title=In from the cold |url=https://www.theguardian.com/society/2005/jul/06/homelessness |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250222233648/https://www.theguardian.com/society/2005/jul/06/homelessness |archive-date=2025-02-22 |access-date=2025-02-22 |work=The Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}}{{Cite web |title='I was amazed how quickly I became a prisoner. It is brutalizing' – The Justice Gap |url=https://www.thejusticegap.com/i-was-amazed-how-quickly-i-became-a-prisoner-it-is-brutalizing/ |access-date=2025-02-23 |language=en-US}}{{Cite news |last=Edemariam |first=Aida |date=2005-12-09 |title=My friend Stuart |url=https://www.theguardian.com/society/2005/dec/09/homelessness.guardianfirstbookaward2005 |access-date=2025-02-23 |work=The Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}}

Alexander Masters won an Arts Council Writers' Award for Stuart and went on to win the Guardian First Book Award and the Hawthornden Prize.{{cite news| url=https://www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-office/2005/dec/09/press-releases | title=Alexander Masters wins the Guardian First Book Award 2005 |date=9 December 2005 |newspaper=The Guardian}} The book was also shortlisted (in the biography category) for the Whitbread Book-of-the-Year Award, the Samuel Johnson Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award in the United States. He also wrote a screenplay adaptation, filmed in 2006 for the BBC and HBO, and broadcast in September 2007. It won the Royal Television Society Award in the Single Drama category and the Reims International Television award for the Best TV Screenplay.

In 2007, he collaborated with photographer Adrian Clarke on the book Gary's Friends, chronicling the lives of drug and alcohol abusers in North East England.

Masters is also the author of The Genius in My Basement ({{ISBN|9780007243389}}), a biography of mathematician Simon P. Norton.{{cite news|author=Brown, Helen|date=12 September 2011|title=Review of The Genius in My Basement by Alexander Masters|newspaper=The Independent|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/8749917/The-Genius-in-My-Basement-by-Alexander-Masters-review.html}} In 2016, Masters published A Life Discarded: 148 Diaries Found in the Trash ({{ISBN|9780374178185}}){{cite news|last1=Harrison|first1=Melissa|title='A Life Discarded: 148 Diaries Found in a Skip', by Alexander Masters|url=https://www.ft.com/content/85f74404-16a0-11e6-b197-a4af20d5575e|website=Financial Times|date=13 May 2016 |accessdate=14 November 2016}}{{cite news|author=Cooke, Rachel|title=Review of A Life Discarded by Alexander Masters|newspaper=The Guardian|date=3 May 2016|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/may/03/a-life-discarded-18-diaries-found-in-a-skip-alexander-masters-review-fourth-4th-estate-dido-davies}}{{cite news|author=Toyne, Becky|title=Review of A Life Discarded by Alexander Masters|newspaper=National Post|date=13 July 2016|url=https://nationalpost.com/entertainment/books/book-reviews/alexander-masterss-book-based-on-discarded-journals-gives-throwing-your-life-away-a-new-meaning}}{{cite book|author=Masters, Alexander|year=2016|title=A Life Discarded: 148 Diaries Found in the Trash|publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux|location=New York|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HsDVCwAAQBAJ|isbn=978-0-374-17818-5|edition=1st American}}

Alexander Masters has been portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch in Stuart: A Life Backwards the 2007 BBC dramatization of his biography of Stuart Shorter.