British Author Tom Sharpe Dead At 85
British author Tom Sharpe has died at 85. The Portherhouse Blue author passed away after a combination of complications resulting from his diabetes and a recently suffered stroke.
According to Sharpe’s wife:
“He lost the use of his legs and he could not accept that he couldn’t walk. He was very physically strong but his breathing became weaker and weaker.”
Sharpe was born in London in 1928 and passed away in the coastal town of Llafranc in north-eastern Spain. The famed author passed away on Thursday.
During his life the well-respect author published 16 novels including Blott on the Landscape. That 1975 novel was eventually turned into a six-part BBC television series.
The Porterhouse Blue was also turned into a TV project when it was converted into a TV series for Channel 4 in 1987. Porterhouse Blue was published in 1974.
The authors last book, The Wilt Inheritance, was penned in 2010.
Susan Sandon, Sharpe’s editor at Random House, tells the BBC:
“Tom Sharpe was one of our greatest satirists and a brilliant writer: witty, often outrageous, always acutely funny about the absurdities of life. The private Tom was warm, supportive and wholly engaging.”
Sharpe’s ashes will be scattered in Llafranc, Cambridge, and a church in Thockrington, Northumberland.
Tom Sharpe was the son of a Unitarian minister who was also a Nazi supporter in the 1930s. After completing college at Lancing and Cambridge, Sharpe went on to spend time with the Royal Marines in the 1940s.
During an interview in 1984, the British author admitted that he was influenced by his father’s ideas as a child but ultimately accepted “that Hitler was not the man I was led to believe he was.” Sharpe added “My mind was blown by the horror of what had been happening.”
During his life Tom Sharpe worked as a social worker, teacher, and photographer, and writing anti-apartheid plays in Africa during the 1950s. Before his death, Sharpe spent the last two decades living in Spain.
Tom Sharpe leaves behind his wife and three children.
