Tom Sharpe

Sharpe was born in Holloway, London, and brought up in Croydon.{{cite web | url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10104406/Tom-Sharpe.html | title=Tom Sharpe | work = The Daily Telegraph|location=London| date=6 June 2013 | access-date=7 June 2013}} 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".Richard Griffiths, Patriotism Perverted, Constable, 1998, pp. 40-41, citing TNA HO 144/21379/277. Sharpe initially shared some of his father's views, but was horrified on seeing films of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.{{cite web | url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/tom-sharpe-comic-novelist-and-satirist-who-created-the-wilt-series-and-porterhouse-blue-8648313.html | title=Tom Sharpe: Comic novelist and satirist who created the Wilt series and Porterhouse Blue | work = The Independent | date=6 June 2013 | access-date=7 June 2013}}{{Cite web | url = http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Whats-on-leisure/Books/Interview-Archive/An-audience-with-Tom-Sharpe-17022012.htm | title = An audience with Tom Sharpe| work = Cambridge Evening News| access-date = 9 June 2013 | first = Paul | last = Kirkley}}

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.{{Cite web | url = https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jun/06/tom-sharpe-dies | title = Tom Sharpe obituary | work=The Guardian | access-date = 6 June 2013 | date = 6 June 2013}}

Sharpe moved to South Africa in 1951,{{cite book|last= Ray|first=Mohit K.|title=The Atlantic Companion to Literature in English|publisher=Atlantic Publishers & Distributors|date=September 2007|page=473|isbn=978-81-269-0832-5|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=A_YatfLrgnMC&q=Porterhouse++%22tom+sharpe%22+-Wikipedia&pg=PA473|access-date=2 February 2010}} where he worked as a social worker and a teacher.{{cite web|url=http://www.randomhouse.ca/author/results.pperl?authorid=27913|title= Tom Sharpe|work=Author Spotlight|publisher=Random House|access-date=2 February 2010}} He was friendly with the activist and artist Harold Strachan until they fell out over a woman.{{cite web |url=http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/5075/full |title=We Owe Tom Sharpe a Thousand Laughs |last=Johnson |first=R.W. |author-link=R. W. Johnson |date=2013 |work=Standpoint |access-date=4 November 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171107025415/http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/5075/full |archive-date=7 November 2017 |url-status=dead}} Sharpe's time in South Africa inspired his novels Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure, in which he mocked the apartheid regime. 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.{{cite news|title=South Africa Ousting Author|date=9 November 1961|work=The New York Times|page=28}}

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.{{Citation needed|date=May 2023}} From 1995 onward he and his American wife, Nancy, divided their time between Cambridge and their home in Llafranc, Spain,{{deadlink|date=January 2025}} where he wrote Wilt in Nowhere.{{cite news|url=http://www.expatica.com/es/lifestyle_leisure/lifestyle/why-tom-sharpe-left-cambridge-for-catalonia-12807.html?ppager=0|title=Why Tom Sharpe left Cambridge for Catalonia|date=October 2004|work=Expatica|access-date=2 February 2010}} The couple had three daughters.{{cite web | url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22794761 | title=Obituary: Tom Sharpe | publisher=BBC | date=6 June 2013 | access-date=6 June 2013}} 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."

Sharpe died on 6 June 2013 in Llafranc from complications of diabetes at the age of 85.{{Cite web | url = http://news.sky.com/story/1100144/wilt-author-tom-sharpe-dies-in-spain-aged-85| title = Wilt Author Tom Sharpe Dies in Spain Aged 85 | publisher = Sky News | access-date = 9 June 2013 |date = 6 June 2013}} He was reported to have been working on an autobiography. It was also said that he had suffered a stroke a few weeks earlier.{{Cite web | url = https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jun/06/tom-sharpe-writer | work = The Guardian | date = 6 June 2013 | access-date = 9 June 2013 | title = Tom Sharpe: a relentless writer | first= Peter | last = Preston|author-link=Peter Preston}} Paying tribute, the author Robert McCrum wrote "The Tom Sharpe I knew was generous, acerbic, engaging, and full of wicked fun."{{cite web | url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/jun/06/tom-sharpe-remembered-robert-mccrumb | title=Tom Sharpe remembered | work=The Guardian | date=6 June 2013 | access-date=6 June 2013 | last=McCrum|first= Robert}} Susan Sandon, Sharpe's editor at Random House, remarked that he was "witty, often outrageous, always acutely funny about the absurdities of life".{{Cite web | url = http://www.express.co.uk/news/showbiz/405660/Tom-Sharpe-author-of-Blott-On-The-Landscape-dies-at-85 | work = Daily Express | date = 7 June 2013 | title = Tom Sharpe, author of Blott on the Landscape, dies at 85 | first = Elisa | last = Roche | access-date = 9 June 2013}} His ashes were interred in the graveyard at the remote church in Thockrington, Northumberland, where his father had been a preacher.[http://www.thejournal.co.uk/news/north-east-news/writer-tom-sharpes-ashes-buried-7210749"Ashes of writer Tom Sharpe buried at ceremony in remote Northumberland church yard";The Journal 3 June 2014]{{deadlink|date=January 2025}}

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.{{Cite web | url = http://www.malcolmbradbury.com/tv_blott_on_the_landscape.html | publisher = MalcolmBradbury.com | title = Adapting Blott on the Landscape – exceprt from lecture/discussion | access-date = 9 June 2013 | first = Chris | last = Bigbsy}}

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.{{Cite web | url = http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/porterhouse_blue/ | work = Rotten Tomatoes | title = Porterhouse Blue| access-date = 9 June 2013}}

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.{{Citation|last=Tuchner|first=Michael|title=The Misadventures of Mr. Wilt|date=1990-01-12|url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097891/combined|access-date=2016-08-28}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_misadventures_of_mr_wilt|title=Wilt (The Misadventures of Mr. Wilt) (1989)|work=Rotten Tomatoes|access-date=28 August 2016}}

Michael Dirda said in an interview: "Tom Sharpe is very funny – but exceptionally vulgar, crude and offensive. Many view him as Britain's funniest living novelist. Most people feel that his first two novels, set in a fictionalized South Africa, are his best: Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure."{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/liveonline/books/dirda/dirda1215.htm|title=Dirda on Books |last=Dirda|first=Michael |date= 15 December 1999 |newspaper=The Washington Post|access-date=2 February 2010}} Leonard R. N. Ashley wrote in the Encyclopedia of British Humorists that "Sharpe's humorous techniques naturally derive from his fundamental approach, which is that of the furious farceur who compounds anger and amusement."{{cite book|last=Ashley |first=Leonard R. N.|title=Encyclopedia of British Humorists|editor=Steven H. Gale|publisher=Routledge|date=March 1996|page=954|isbn=0-8240-5990-5|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5cSkSB13ZQcC&q=Porterhouse++%22tom+sharpe%22+-Wikipedia&pg=PA957|access-date=2 February 2010}} and "His dialogue is deft and more restrained than his characterization, which sometimes is mere caricature ..." Ashley also quotes reviews and comments by many critics, and cites 21 published reviews or critical comments on Sharpe's work, with brief summaries or quotations from each.{{cite book|last=Ashley |first=Leonard R. N.|title=Encyclopedia of British Humorists|editor=Steven H. Gale|publisher=Routledge|date=March 1996|pages=954–957|isbn=0-8240-5990-5|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5cSkSB13ZQcC&q=Porterhouse++%22tom+sharpe%22+-Wikipedia&pg=PA957|access-date=2 February 2010}}

Martin Levin, in a review of Porterhouse Blue, wrote that "Sharpe is one of England's funniest writers. He's in the tradition of the 19th-century satirist Thomas Love Peacock, who wrote novels of ideas laced with physical, slapstick farce."{{cite news|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=1iQcAAAAIBAJ&pg=4777,3080824&dq=author+porterhouse+tom-sharpe+-wikipedia&hl=en|title=Paperback Guide|last=Levin |first=Martin |date= 14 May 1989|work=The Victoria Advocate|page=10|access-date=2 February 2010}} Adrian Mourby wrote that "Tom Sharpe's Porterhouse Blue and Vintage Stuff are books that hark back to a golden age of academic dottiness, of the kind that has all but disappeared since the 1940s when Sharpe himself was a student."{{cite news|url=http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=101999§ioncode=26|title=Death of the Dons Quixote|last=Mourby|first=Adrian |date=21 February 1997|work=Times higher Education|publisher=TSL Education Ltd.|access-date=2 February 2010|location=London}} Caroline Moorehead writes (in a review of Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and its Discontents): "When I was a fellow of Peterhouse, back in the Eighties, I was asked with tedious regularity whether the experience resembled Porterhouse Blue, Tom Sharpe’s grotesquely overblown satire. But even as I (truthfully) denied it, a few vignettes would slide past my mind’s eye – such as my very first Governing Body meeting, when, sombrely robed, the fellows debated, hotly and with manifest ill will, whether the vomit by the chapel was beer- or claret-based."{{cite news|url=https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/campaigning-on-the-campus/|title=Campaigning on the campus|last=Moorehead|first=Caroline |work=The Spectator|date=10 September 2005|access-date=2 February 2010|location=London}}

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 ..."{{cite news|url=https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/659572422.html?dids=659572422:659572422&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&type=historic&date=Oct+08%2C+1978&author=&pub=Los+Angeles+Times&desc=notable&pqatl=google|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121025082153/http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/659572422.html?dids=659572422:659572422&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&type=historic&date=Oct+08,+1978&author=&pub=Los+Angeles+Times&desc=notable&pqatl=google|url-status=dead|archive-date=25 October 2012|title=The Great Pursuit by Tom Sharpe|date=8 October 1978|work=Los Angeles Times Book Review|page=M22|access-date=2 February 2010}} 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. His best tales put the reader firmly in a world: we can cherish the memories of the atavistic dons in Porterhouse Blue, or rail at the South African police in Indecent Exposure (1973). The present novel is simply a hapless tour of bits of England and Florida, in which colourful things happen and puzzle the police."{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3622642/Music-to-scare-bears-by.html|title=Music to scare bears by|last=Payne|first=Tom |date=22 August 2004|work=The Telegraph|access-date=2 February 2010|location=London}}

Sharpe sent up the class-conscious English writer Dornford Yates in Indecent Exposure. He worked on an adaptation of Yates' thriller She Fell Among Thieves for the BBC in 1977, which contained similar elements of parody.

• Riotous Assembly (1971) {{ISBN|9780871131430}}
• Indecent Exposure (1973) {{ISBN|9780871131423}}

• Porterhouse Blue (1974) {{ISBN|9780871132796}}
• Grantchester Grind (1995) {{ISBN|9780099466543}}

• Wilt (1976) {{ISBN|9780879517342}}
• The Wilt Alternative (1979) {{ISBN|9780394726212}}
• Wilt on High (1984) {{ISBN|9780099466482}}
• Wilt in Triplicate (omnibus) (1996) {{ISBN|9780436204159}}
• Wilt in Nowhere (2004) {{ISBN|9780099481737}}
• The Wilt Inheritance (2010) {{ISBN|9780091796969}}

• Blott on the Landscape (1975) {{ISBN|9780879519278}}
• The Great Pursuit (1977) {{ISBN|9780879517335}}
• The Throwback (1978) {{ISBN|9780330260121}}
• Ancestral Vices (1980) {{ISBN|9780330266352}}
• Vintage Stuff (1982) {{ISBN|9780099435549}}
• The Midden (1996) {{ISBN|9780879519285}}
• The Gropes (2009) {{ISBN|9780091930905}}

{{Reflist}}

• [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22795507 BBC News: Tom Sharpe, Porterhouse Blue novelist, dies aged 85 6 June 2013]
• [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/p009mh17 Desert Island Discs appearance 3 November 1984]
• [http://www.thejournal.co.uk/news/north-east-news/twist-author-tom-sharpes-northumberland-7219595 A twist in author Tom Sharpe's Northumberland burial plot]
• [http://www.udg.edu/projectesbiblioteca/FonsEspecialsBiblioteca/TomSharpe/tabid/23622/language/en-US/Default.aspx Tom Sharpe Collection (University of Girona Library)]

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Category:1928 births

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