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.
There's almost no one funnier * Observer * An immense gift for social satire ... the action is unflagging * Daily Telegraph * A novelist who has broken out of the pack, established a wholly distinctive style ... such a keen eye for the ridiculous and marvellous ability to puncture it * Scotsman * Tom Sharpe is in top form ... outrageously funny ... Left-wing academics, right-wing capitalists, true-blue country gentry, workers, peasants, police and lawyers - all take custard pies full in the face in this boisterous knockabout farce * The Listener * They make me cry with laughter ... I think he's one of the great geniuses * Daily Mail *