Richard Stanley Francis was a British crime writer. His novels centre on horse racing in England. After wartime Francis became a full-time jump-jockey, winning over 350 races and becoming champion jockey of the British National Hunt. Francis wrote more than 40 international best-sellers. His first book was his autobiography The Sport of Queens, for which he was offered the aid of a ghostwriter,... Read More
Dick Francis "has simply never failed. Every one of his opening sentences pulls the reader in and doesn't let go until the last, perfect word," according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Dick Francis wrote more than 40 international best-sellers. His first book was his autobiography The Sport of Queens, for which he was offered the aid of a ghostwriter, which he spurned. The book's success led to... Read More
Richard Stanley Francis was a British crime writer, and former steeplechase jockey, whose novels centre on horse racing in England. Dick Francis left school at 15 without any qualifications, intending to become a jockey; by the time he was 18, in 1938, he also was training horses. Francis became a highly successful jockey, reaching celebrity status in the world of British National Hunt racing.... Read More
Dick Francis, once Champion Jockey himself, is famous for his many bestselling thrillers set in the world of horse-racing. After wartime Francis became a full-time jump-jockey, winning over 350 races and becoming champion jockey of the British National Hunt. His first book was his autobiography The Sport of Queens, for which he was offered the aid of a ghostwriter, which he spurned. The book's... Read More
Richard Stanley Francis was a British crime writer. His novels centre on horse racing in England. During the Second World War, Francis volunteered, hoping to join the cavalry. Instead, he served in the Royal Air Force, working as ground crew and later piloting fighter and bomber aircraft. His first book was his autobiography The Sport of Queens, for which he was offered the aid of a ghostwriter... Read More
Graham Bruce Hancock is a British writer and journalist who specialises in pseudoscientific theories involving ancient civilisations, stone monuments or megaliths, altered states of consciousness, ancient myths, and astronomical or astrological data from the past. His books include Lords of Poverty, The Sign and the Seal, Fingerprints of the Gods, Keeper of Genesis, The Mars Mystery, Heaven's M... Read More
Graham Bruce Hancock is a British writer and journalist born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Hancock spent his formative years in India, where his father worked as a surgeon. Having returned to the UK, he graduated from Durham University in 1973, receiving a First Class Honours degree in sociology. As a journalist, Hancock worked for many British papers, such as The Times, The Sunday Times, The Indepen... Read More
British writer and journalist Graham Bruce Hancock describes himself as an "unconventional thinker who raises controversial questions about humanity's past". Prior to 1990, his works dealt mainly with problems of economic and social development. Since 1990 his works have focused mainly on speculative connections he makes between various archaeological, historical, and cross-cultural phenomena.... Read More
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books. He is recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the 20th century. Evelyn Waugh’s most famous works include the early satires Decline and Fall and A Handful of Dust, the novel Brideshead Revisited, and the Second World War trilogy Sword of Honour. Waugh’s novels, although t... Read More
John Edmund Gardner was an English spy and thriller novelist, best known for his James Bond continuation novels, but also for his series of Boysie Oakes books and three continuation novels containing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional villain, Professor Moriarty. Gardner went on to write over fifty works of fiction, including fourteen original James Bond novels, and the novel versions of two Bo... Read More
Tom Sharpe was an English satirical novelist, best known for his Wilt series, as well as Porterhouse Blue and Blott on the Landscape. He was born in 1928 and educated at Lancing College and Pembroke College, Cambridge and did his National Service in the Marines before going to South Africa in 1951, where he did social work before teaching in Natal. His childhood was influenced by Nazi ideology,... Read More
“The man who said the pen was mightier than the sword ought to have tried reading The Mill on the Floss to Motor Mechanics.” Tom Sharpe was writing what are very possibly the funniest novels in English today. He 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 1930... Read More
Thomas Ridley Sharpe was an English satirical novelist. His father, the Reverend George Coverdale Sharpe, 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... Read More
Tom Sharpe was an English satirical author, born in London and educated at Lancing College and at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Wilt on High is the third outing for Henry Wilt, bilious lecturer and Head of Liberal Studies at the Fenland College of Arts and Technology. Same struggles, same problems… But the even tenor of his days is rudely interrupted when the shadow of drug dealing flickers acro... Read More
Tom Sharpe, who has died aged 85, did not start writing comic novels until 1971 when he was 43, but once he got going he gained a large readership. Wilt in Nowhere is the fourth in the series of novels about hapless polytechnic lecturer Henry Wilt, his wife Eva, and their incorrigible four little girls, now aged 14, at convent school and bubbling over with an unhealthy interest in all things se... Read More
Tom Sharpe was an English bestselling novelist whose savagely satirical black comedies attacked the injustice of apartheid and the absurdities of academic life. Sharpe was educated at Bloxham School. He then was accepted to Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he read history and social anthropology. In 1951, Tom Sharpe moved to South Africa, where he worked as a social worker and a teacher, befo... Read More
Best known for her 1962 novel The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing's life work spans more than a half century. She was born in Persia to British parents in 1919. Her family then moved to Southern Africa, where she spent her childhood on her father's farm in what was then Southern Rhodesia. When her second marriage ended in 1949, she moved to London, where her first novel, The Grass is Singing, wa... Read More
Doris May Lessing was a British-Zimbabwean novelist. She was born to British parents in Iran, where she lived until 1925. She is now widely regarded as one of the most important post-war writers in English. Her novels, short stories and essays have focused on a wide range of twentieth-century issues and concerns, from the politics of race - which she confronted in her early novels set in Africa... Read More
Doris May Lessing was a British writer, author of novels including The Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook. Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. In awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy described her as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny". Lessing was the oldest person e... Read More
Doris Lessing, in full Doris May Lessing, was a British writer whose novels and short stories are largely concerned with people involved in the social and political upheavals of the 20th century. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007. In 2001, Lessing was awarded the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in British literature. In 2008, The Times ranked her fifth on a l... Read More