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, which were both adapted for television.Born in 1928 in Croydon, Sharpe was an alumnus of Pembroke College, Cambridge, before moving to South Africa for a decade then being deported for sedition for speaking out against apartheid. He returned to England to lecture before spending time between the UK and Spain, writing a series of novels. He died in 2013 from complications of diabetes.
He used a collection of character archetypes in his stories: unworldly academics, eccentric and often nasty aristocrats, prejudiced/blinkered and often incompetent police/army officers, and buxom women who are either simple-minded or smart.
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His plot trademarks involve: manipulations that eventually go awry, outrageous and vulgar scenarios arising (often of a sexual or foul-mouthed nature), and a satirical comment from one/some of his characters on the follies and foibles of their world.
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Quote
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[about his prison sentence] In prison they told me, "Make friends with the murderers, everybody else is afraid of them so if you're with them the others leave you alone." That's what I did. Good tip.
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[about his first wife] She was a terrible snob. This girl had inherited seven houses - which was as good a reason for getting rid of her as any.
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[in 2010] I love England, but I don't like the English. There is no such thing as the English gentleman any more. Money rules everything. It is so depressing, I can't bear it. I can't bear the hooliganism.
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Wodehouse did 400 pages of notes on ideas. I just launch myself in - boing. And if it works, it works, if it doesn't, it doesn't. I've got no idea how my books are going to end.
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[on his time in South Africa] It was easy to write about because it was a mad society. I was living out there and I knew. It was just mind-blowing to any fair-minded person.
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[on staying in Spain] I don't want to learn the language. I don't want to know what the price of meat is.
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Fact
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He taught at the Arts and Technology college, but was able to give up his lecturer job because his publisher, Secker and Warburg (now Harvill Secker), agreed to pay him £3,000 a year for three years to be a full-time writer.
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Much in demand for interviews and often besieged by fans, he developed two public personas. One was a blustering ex-colonial type, the other a genial old buffer. Sharpe said he admired old military men, but thought of himself as the buffer.
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The inspiration for his first novel "Riotous Assembly", which was a satire of the South African police in the apartheid era, came from an old-fashioned English colonial aunt of a friend of his, who lived near a police station and complained that the screams of tortured prisoners disturbed her afternoon naps.
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His father, the Unitarian minister Reverend George Coverdale Sharpe, was a fascist, a follower of Oswald Mosley and a great believer in Adolf Hitler. Shape initially shared his father's beliefs (as a child he wore a German army belt), but upon seeing newsreels of the Nazi concentration camps was horrified at Nazism and renounced it.
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When he started producing bestsellers he moved to a large house in Dorset, a former school building, and became a keen gardener. He said he liked digging best out of the gardening.
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He stayed in South Africa for ten years (1951-61), where he worked as a teacher, social worker and photographer. He wrote many plays in South Africa, and one of them, which criticized the apartheid policy in place at that time, got him in serious trouble: he was hounded by the secret police, spent the Christmas of 1960 in jail, and was deported back to Britain in 1961.
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He was pleased to hear that P.G. Wodehouse, who inspired him, was a fan of his works.
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His interest in satire began in his school years, when he was given Evelyn Waugh's novel "Divide and Fall" by a friendly teacher.
As a social worker in South Africa, his job entailed collecting black tuberculosis patients from hospitals and bringing them home to the townships to die. "It wasn't necessary for them to die. It was because only white people were being given the drugs.".
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One of Britain's most acclaimed satirist writers.
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He had a heart attack live on Spanish television in the 1980s, and in later years would offer to show visitors the tape recorded.
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He had three daughters with his wife, Nancy.
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He moved to South Africa in 1951, and became a social worker, teacher, and photographer. He wrote anti-apartheid plays for which he was deported to Britain in 1961.
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He served in the Royal Marines during the 1940s.
Writer
Title
Year
Status
Character
Sexes faibles!
1992
novel
The Misadventures of Mr. Wilt
1990
novel
Porterhouse Blue
1987
TV Mini-Series novel "Porterhouse Blue" - 4 episodes
Blott on the Landscape
TV Mini-Series novel "Blott On The Landscape" - 6 episodes, 1985 by - 2 episodes, 1985
BBC2 Play of the Week
1978
TV Series writer - 1 episode
Thanks
Title
Year
Status
Character
Els últims dies de Tom Sharpe a la Costa Brava
2013
TV Movie documentary in memory of - as Thomas Ridley Sharpe
$850,000
