Tom Sharpe was born in 1928 and educated at Lancing College and Pembroke College, Cambridge. He did his national service in the Marines before moving to South Africa in 1951, where he did social work before teaching in Natal. He had a photographic studio in Pietermaritzburg from 1957 until 1961, and from 1963 to 1972 he was a lecturer in History at the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. He is the author of sixteen bestselling novels, including Porterhouse Blue and Blott on the Landscape, which were serialised on television, and Wilt, which was made into a film. In 1986 he was awarded the XXIIIeme Grand Prix de l'Humour Noir Xavier Forneret, and in 2010 he was awarded the inaugural BBK La Risa de Bilbao Prize. He is married and divides his time between Cambridge, England, and northern Spain.
Tom Sharpe is the funniest novelist writing today -- Philip Howard * The Times * Individual blend of robust farce and deeply cutting satire * The Listener * Mr Sharpe constructs his plot with immense care. He also, more to the point, has a nice line in lewd jokes. I understand that this sort of thing isn't to everybody's taste, but I laughed out loud -- Guy Bellamy * Punch * Tom Sharpe has now turned his weapons of comic destructiveness onto that sitting target or lame duck: the literary world * Observer *