D. M. Thomas

Thomas was born to plasterer Harold Thomas and his wife Amy on 25 January 1935, in Carnkie, Redruth, Cornwall. He was a descendant of miners and carpenters. His father spent time living in California during the 1920s and was fond of the United States.

Thomas attended Trewirgie Primary School between 1940 and 1945, then Redruth Grammar School from 1946 until 1949.[https://www.bbc.co.uk/cornwall/theatre/stories/hellfire.shtml BBC website – Donald Michael Thomas] In 1949, he and his family moved to the Australian city of Melbourne. Thomas spent the years between 1949 and 1951 at University High School there. In 1951, he returned to Carnkie and to Redruth Grammar School.

His National Service was from 1953 until 1955, most of which he spent learning Russian. He retained a lifelong interest in Russian culture and literature. This culminated in a series of well-received translations of Russian poetry from the 1980s onwards, particularly from Anna Akhmatova and Alexander Pushkin, as well as from Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Thomas graduated with First Class Honours in English from New College, Oxford, having studied there between 1955 and 1958. Between 1959 and 1963 he was an English teacher at Teignmouth Grammar School. From 1963 he was an English lecturer at Hereford College of Education until he was made redundant upon its closure in 1978.

Thomas's first published work was a short story in The Isis Magazine in 1959. He published poetry and some prose in the British science fiction magazine New Worlds (from 1968). Much of what he published until he was 40 years of age was poetry. Two Voices, his first book, was published in 1968; it consisted of poetry. Its title poem relates to science fiction/fantasy.

The title poem of Logan Stone (1971) refers to a balancing rock in Cornwall. Love and Other Deaths (1975) features elegiac poems relating to family. The Honeymoon Voyage (1978) was written around the time of his mother's death. His mother died in 1975.

The Flute-Player, the second novel Thomas wrote, was also published in 1978. Inspired by Russian poetry (especially Anna Akhmatova), it was his first novel to be published and does not contain much dialogue; he had earlier written Birthstone. Birthstone was published in 1980; it is the only one of Thomas's novels to feature his native Cornwall and to deploy instances of Cornish speech. There is also sex, suspenders and psychoanalysis; the London Review of Books described it as "Fantasy as Freud envisaged it, powerful enough to counter reality, working like free association and allowing the unconscious to take over". Dreaming in Bronze, Thomas's 1981 poetry collection, secured for him a Cholmondeley Award.

However, the work that made him famous was not poetry; it was his erotic and somewhat fantastical novel The White Hotel (1981), the story of a woman undergoing psychoanalysis, which proved very popular in continental Europe and the United States.{{cite news|url=https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-white-hotel-by-dm-thomas-a-funny-disgusting-essential-work-1.4229640|title=The White Hotel by DM Thomas: A funny, disgusting, essential work|newspaper=The Irish Times|first=Lucy|last=Sweeney Byrne|date=25 April 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221107025739/https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-white-hotel-by-dm-thomas-a-funny-disgusting-essential-work-1.4229640|archive-date=7 November 2022}} It was shortlisted for the 1981 Booker Prize,{{cite web|url=http://www.themanbookerprize.com/prize/archive/15|title=Prize archive: 1981|access-date=21 January 2011|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101202223517/http://themanbookerprize.com/prize/archive/15|archive-date=2 December 2010}} coming a close second, according to one of the judges,{{cite news|url=http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article4991293.ece|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110616084604/http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article4991293.ece|url-status=dead|archive-date=16 June 2011|title=The Times & The Sunday Times|website=The Times|access-date=29 November 2016}} to the winner, Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children.{{cite web|url=http://www.themanbookerprize.com/prize/books/20|title=Booker Prize|access-date=21 January 2011|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101202184356/http://themanbookerprize.com/prize/books/20|archive-date=2 December 2010}} Thomas stated in an interview on BBC Radio Cornwall in 2015 that the Booker judges wanted to split the prize between himself and Rushdie, but that the Board informed them that the rules would not permit this,{{cite tweet|author=The Cornovia Press|user=CornoviaPress|number=1283088793097166853|title=DM Thomas – BBC Radio Cornwall – 23 January 2015|date=14 July 2020|archive-date=7 November 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221107014508/https://twitter.com/CornoviaPress/status/1283088793097166853|url-status=live}} Interview begins at 5:38. although the rules were indeed changed in this respect the following year. It has also elicited considerable controversy, as some of its passages are taken from Anatoly Kuznetsov's Babi Yar, a novel about the Holocaust. In general, however, Thomas's use of such "composite material" (material taken from other sources and imitations of other writers) is seen as more postmodern than plagiarist.Felder, L., D M Thomas – The Plagiarism Controversy in Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook, 1982. Graham Greene selected The White Hotel for his "Books of the Year". William Golding also selected The White Hotel as his Book of the Year for 1981. Thomas wrote the book during a sabbatical at New College, Oxford in 1978–79. He wrote some of it in Hereford, where he was living and used two typewriters, one in each city.{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/film/2004/aug/28/books.featuresreviews|title=Celluloid dreams|work=The Guardian|date=28 August 2004}} It was translated into 30 languages.

File:William Golding 1983.jpg in 1983; ten years later, D.{{nbsp}}M. Thomas visited Golding's house on the night of his death.]]

Follow-up novel Ararat, published in 1983, was the first of a series concerning the Soviet Union, referred to as the Russian Nights Quintet; it was inspired by Thomas's reading of Pushkin and a review of an Armenian poetry anthology which The Times Literary Supplement asked him to write. It was followed by Swallow (1984), Sphinx (1986) Summit (1987) and Lying Together (1990). Summit was inspired by a meeting between Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan in Switzerland, while Lying Together predicted the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the return of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to Russia.

Thomas's 1992 novel Flying in to Love concerns the assassination of John F. Kennedy (the "Love" in the title refers to Dallas Love Field airport, where Kennedy had landed that morning), as well as the death of his own father in 1960. His 1993 novel Pictures at an Exhibition allowed Thomas to mix his interests in Freud, Nazism and the Holocaust. Its writing was set off by Thomas's attendance at a feminist exhibition, specifically its treatment of the Edvard Munch composition Madonna; writing in the Sunday Independent, critic and journalist Clare Boylan described Pictures at an Exhibition as "a compulsive page-turner". Thomas's 1994 novel Eating Pavlova is set in London in September 1940 and concerns Freud as he dies; The New York Times described it as "the most devious and tragically generous Freud ever envisioned".

His 1998 biography Alexander Solzhenitsyn: a Century in His Life was awarded an Orwell Prize in 1999.{{cite web|url=https://www.orwellfoundation.com/book-title/alexander-solzhenitsyn-a-century-in-his-life/|title=1999 Book prize winner|publisher=Orwell Prize}}

Thomas's 2004 poetry collection Dear Shadows is inspired by photography and its title is a reference to Yeats. His 2006 poetry collection Not Saying Everything is a tribute to his second wife, Denise (whom Thomas described as his Muse), following her death from cancer in 1998. Unknown Shores, a collection released in 2009, consists of all of Thomas's poetry relating to science fiction.

Reluctant for many years to reread his own novels, he eventually did so in October 2010 and concluded that his "strongest" novels are: The White Hotel (1981), Ararat (1983), Flying in to Love (1992), Pictures at an Exhibition (1993), Eating Pavlova (1994) and The Flute-Player (1979).

His fourteenth novel (and his first in fourteen years), Hunters in the Snow appeared in 2014 and takes Vienna ahead of the First World War as its setting.{{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/index.html|title=D M Thomas|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220415134352/https://www.dmthomasonline.net/index.html|archive-date=15 April 2022}}

Thomas wrote reviews for The Times Literary Supplement.{{cite news|url=https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/stone-poem-of-the-week/|title='Stone'|work=The Times Literary Supplement|first=Andrew|last=McCulloch|quote=In 1978, the poet, translator and novelist D. M. Thomas drew a useful distinction between twentieth-century English and Russian poetry in a TLS review of a collection of poems by Osip Mandelstam.}} He was one of the last people to see William Golding, the Nobel laureate, alive. Thomas visited Golding's house in Perranarworthal as a guest one evening in June 1993; he was the last person unrelated to Golding to leave, doing so around half an hour before Golding collapsed and died whilst preparing to go to bed.{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/4029828/Bleak-Hotel-by-DM-Thomas-review.html|title=Bleak Hotel by DM Thomas – review|work=The Daily Telegraph|first=Patrick|last=Skene Catling|date=5 January 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180215044000/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/4029828/Bleak-Hotel-by-DM-Thomas-review.html|archive-date=15 February 2018|quote='The movie-making business is like sex', according to DM Thomas, the Cornish novelist... He thinks a late night of his drinking and singing may have caused William Golding to die the next day.}}{{cite news|url=http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,,1793967,00.html|title=Last words|work=The Guardian|date=10 June 2006|quote=I didn't take the hint; I was enjoying myself too much. I started to sing, as I often do when I'm drunk and at ease... There were uneasy smiles, and I realised it was time to leave. One o'clock. I staggered out to my car, and saw them standing outside waving as I drove erratically away, seeing double... Golding had died at about 1.30am, while getting ready for bed, of a massive heart attack. I thought, My God, I've killed him! Keeping him up too late and causing him to drink too much... I wrote to his daughter expressing those fears... It was an enviable departure. I feel privileged to have had a share in it; and I still treasure the last writing of William Golding – his phone number.}} Saturday 10 June 2006 (Review Section). Thomas blamed himself for Golding's death and wondered if it would have happened if he had left earlier, with the other guests.

• {{c.}} 1979: Gollancz/Guardian Fantasy Prize, for The Flute-Player
• {{c.}} 1981: Cholmondeley Award, for Dreaming in Bronze
• 1981: Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, for The White Hotel{{cite web|url=https://www.awardsarchive.com/1981-los-angeles-times-book-prize-fiction-winner-and-nominees/|title=1981 Los Angeles Times Book Prize – Fiction Winner and Nominees|website=Awards Archive|language=en-US|date=25 March 2020|access-date=10 March 2022}}
• 1981: Cheltenham Prize for Literature, for The White Hotel
• P.E.N. Prize, for The White Hotel
• 1981: Booker Prize shortlist, for The White Hotel
• 1999: Orwell Prize, for Alexander Solzhenitsyn: a Century in His Life

{{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section364144.html|title=Poetry}}

• Two Voices (Cape Goliard, 1968){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section364144_123643.html|title=Two Voices}}
• Logan Stone (Cape Goliard, 1971){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section364144_123644.html|title=Logan Stone}}
• The Shaft (Arc, 1973), a long poem{{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section365351_124064.html|title=The Shaft}}
• Love and Other Deaths (Elek Books, 1975){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section364144_123806.html|title=Love and Other Deaths}}
• The Honeymoon Voyage (Secker & Warburg, 1978){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section364144_123645.html|title=The Honeymoon Voyage}}
• Orpheus in Hell (Sceptre, 1977){{cite web|url=https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2371297/Cite|title=Orpheus in Hell|publisher=National Library of Australia|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221107011300/https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2371297/Cite|archive-date=7 November 2022}}
• Protest (Hereford, 1980), after a poem by the medieval Armenian poet Frik; with an engraving by Reg Boulton{{cite web|url=https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/book/protest|title=Protest / a poem by D. M. Thomas; after a medieval Armenian poem by Frik; designed and engraved by Reg. Boulton|publisher=Royal Academy of Arts|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221107011747/https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/book/protest|archive-date=7 November 2022}}
• Dreaming in Bronze (Secker & Warburg, 1981){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section364144_123646.html|title=Dreaming in Bronze}}
• Selected Poems (Penguin Books, 1983), released in the United States following The White Hotel{{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section364144_123647.html|title=Selected Poems}}
• The Puberty Tree (Bloodaxe Books, 1992), the British "selected" edition of Thomas's poetry{{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section364144_123648.html|title=The Puberty Tree|quote=I love the cover, a magnificent painting called 'Picture' by Munch --my second favourite painter after Vermeer.}}
• Dear Shadows (Fal Publications, 2004){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section364144_123649.html|title=Dear Shadows}}
• Not Saying Everything (Bluechrome, 2006){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section364144_123650.html|title=Not Saying Everything}}
• Unknown Shores (Bluechrome, 2009){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section364144_123651.html|title=Unknown Shores}}
• Flight and Smoke (Francis Boutle, 2010, with signed limited editions available from 2009){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section364144_123652.html|title=Flight and Smoke}}
• Two Countries (Francis Boutle, 2011){{cite book|url=https://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/stock/two-countries-poems-d.m.-thomas|title=Two Countries|date=1 June 2011|isbn=9781903427651 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210928232613/https://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/stock/two-countries-poems-d.m.-thomas|archive-date=28 September 2021 |last1=Thomas |first1=D. M. |publisher=Francis Boutle Publishers }}
• Vintage Ghosts (Francis Boutle, 2012), a verse novel, with six linocut illustrations by Tim Roberts{{cite web|url=https://francisboutle.co.uk/products/vintage-ghosts/|title=Vintage Ghosts|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220523201757/https://francisboutle.co.uk/products/vintage-ghosts/|archive-date=23 May 2022}}
• Mrs English & other women (Francis Boutle, 2014){{cite web|url=https://francisboutle.co.uk/products/mrs-english/|title=Mrs English & other women|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220523212312/https://francisboutle.co.uk/products/mrs-english/|archive-date=23 May 2022}}
• Corona Man: A Fictional Verse Journal in the Plague Year (The Cornovia Press, 2020) {{ISBN|1-908878-18-5}}
• The Last Waltz: Poems (The Cornovia Press, 2021) {{ISBN|1-908878-22-3}}
• A Child of Love and War: Verse Memoir (The Cornovia Press, 2021) {{ISBN|1-908878-23-1}}

{{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/articles.html|title=Novels}}

Thomas had 14 novels published between 1979 and 2014. The following books form a series known as the Russian Nights Quintet: Ararat (1983), Swallow (1984), Sphinx (1986) Summit (1987) and Lying Together (1990).

• The Flute-Player (Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1979){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/articles_122937.html|title=The Flute-Player}}
• Birthstone (Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1980){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/articles_122938.html|title=Birthstone}}
• The White Hotel (Viking Press, 1981){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/articles_123041.html|title=The White Hotel}}
• Ararat (Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1983){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/articles_123042.html|title=Ararat}}
• Swallow (Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1984){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/articles_123043.html|title=Swallow}}
• Sphinx (Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1986){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/articles_123044.html|title=Sphinx}}
• Summit (Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1987){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/articles_123045.html|title=Summit}}
• Lying Together (Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1990){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/articles_123046.html|title=Lying Together}}
• Flying in to Love (Scribner, 1992){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/articles_123047.html|title=Flying in to Love}}
• Pictures at an Exhibition (Bloomsbury, 1993){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/articles_123048.html|title=Pictures at an Exhibition}}
• Eating Pavlova (Carroll & Graf, 1994){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/articles_123049.html|title=Eating Pavlova}}
• Lady with a Laptop (Carroll & Graf, 1996){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/articles_123641.html|title=Lady with a Laptop}}
• Charlotte (Duck, 2000){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/articles_123642.html|title=Charlotte}}
• Hunters in the Snow (The Cornovia Press, 2014) {{ISBN|1-908878-12-6}} {{ISBN|1-908878-19-3}}

{{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section364780.html|title=Memoirs}}

• Memories and Hallucinations (Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1989){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section364780_123891.html|title=Memories and Hallucinations}}
• Bleak Hotel: The Hollywood Saga of the White Hotel (Quartet Books, 2008){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section364780_123893.html|title=Bleak Hotel}}

• Alexander Solzhenitsyn: A Century in His Life (St Martins, 1998){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section362680.html|title=Biography}}

• Hell Fire Corner (2004){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section365351_124071.html|title=Hell Fire Corner}}

• The Granite Kingdom (Bradford Barton Ltd, Truro, 1970), an anthology of poems about Cornwall, edited by D. M. Thomas
• Songs from the Earth (Lodenek Press), an anthology of poems by John Harris, edited by D. M. Thomas
• Poetry in Crosslight (Longman, 1975){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section364144_123807.html|title=Poetry in Crosslight}}

{{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section364779.html|title=Russian Translations}}

• Anna Akhmatova, Requiem and Poem without a Hero, (Elek Books, 1976){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section364779_124058.html|title=Requiem and Poem without a Hero}}
• Anna Akhmatova, Way of All the Earth (Secker & Warburg, 1979){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section364779_123885.html|title=Way of All the Earth}}
• Alexander Pushkin, The Bronze Horseman: Selected Poems of Alexander Pushkin (Viking Press, 1982){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section364779_123889.html|title=The Bronze Horseman}}
• Yevgeny Yevtushenko, A Dove in Santiago: A novella in verse (Secker & Warburg, 1982){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section364779_124060.html|title=A Dove in Santiago}}
• Alexander Pushkin, Boris Godunov (Sixth Chamber Press, 1985){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section364779_123910.html|title=Boris Godunov}}
• Anna Akhmatova, You Will Hear Thunder (Oxford University Press, 1985){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section364779_123883.html|title=You Will Hear Thunder}}
• Anna Akhmatova, Selected Poems (Penguin Books, 1988){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section364779_124059.html|title=Selected Poems: Anna Akhmatova}}
• Anna Akhmatova, Everyman's Library Pocket Poets (Alfred A. Knopf, 2006){{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/section364779_123888.html|title=Everyman's Library Pocket Poets: Anna Akhmatova}}
• Alexander Pushkin, Onegin (Francis Boutle, 2010)
• Alexander Pushkin, Ruslan and Ludmila (Simon & Schuster, 2019)

Thomas married on four occasions and fathered three children from the first two of those marriages.{{cite web|url=https://www.dmthomasonline.net/info.html|title=Personal History|quote=I'm Cornish, and very proud of it. It's where I live now.}} He married his first wife, Maureen Skewes, in 1958. He had a daughter (born 1960) and a son, Sean (born 1963), with her. He married Denise Aldred in 1976 and their son was born the following year; she would die (of cancer) in 1998, with the three of them having moved to Truro in 1987. He married Victoria Field in 1998 and Angela Embree in 2005.

As well as the Russians Pushkin and Akhmatova, Thomas listed his favourite poets as Robert Frost, William Shakespeare, W. B. Yeats, Charles Causley and Emily Dickinson. His musical interests included Jean Sibelius, Sergei Rachmaninoff and Elgar; his favourite painter was Johannes Vermeer, his second favourite, Edvard Munch.

Thomas died at his home in Truro on 26 March 2023, at the age of 88.{{cite news |title=DM Thomas obituary |url=https://www.thetimes.com/article/dm-thomas-obituary-6fl32bk86 |access-date=28 March 2023 |work=The Times |date=28 March 2023|url-access = subscription}}{{cite news|url = https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/29/books/dm-thomas-dead.html|title = D.M. Thomas, 88, Dies; His 'White Hotel' Was a Surprise Best Seller|newspaper = The New York Times|date = 29 March 2023|access-date = 29 March 2023|last = Grimes|first = William|url-access = limited}}

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{{Reflist}}

• [http://www.dmthomasonline.net Official website]
• [https://poetryarchive.org/poet/d-m-thomas/ D. M. Thomas recordings] at the Poetry Archive
• [http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4370 D. M. Thomas biography] at The Literary Encyclopedia
• {{IMDb name|id=0858664|name=D. M. Thomas}}

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