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Biography.
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A
short biography of Aidan Chambers is available for |
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download
in Adobe Acrobat format. Please
click here |
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1934
- 1945 |
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Aidan
Chambers was born in the country just outside Chester-le-Street |
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seven
miles north of Durham City on 27 December 1934. He was an only |
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child,
his father was a skilled woodworker and a keen gardener, his |
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mother
stayed at home, endlessly doing housework. His other male |
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relatives
were coal miners, his many aunts worked as maids in hotels and |
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as
shop assistants. There were five books in the home: a Bible, a
small |
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dictionary,
handbooks about health and house repairs, and a collection |
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of
Aesop's Fables with coloured illustrations. Aesop's were the first
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stories
Aidan heard read, while he looked at the pictures. Otherwise,
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reading,
apart from the daily paper, was not a family occupation. There |
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were
no other children nearby except a girl, Marion, six months older.
Up |
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to
the age of ten, when his family moved to another town, they were
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With
Marion, aged about 3,
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brother
and sister, friends and lovers. |
in
a car made for him by
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School
was a shock. He and Marion were separated for the first time -
a |
his
father
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traumatic
experience from which he thinks he never recovered. The |
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importance
of close friendship has been a theme in all his novels. He |
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liked
his infant school teacher because she read a story to the class
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every
morning and made them act it out in the afternoon, accompanied |
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by
music improvised on drums, triangles, and toy trumpets. Aidan's
best |
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moment
was as David slaying Goliath, who was played by the biggest |
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boy
and the bully in the class. Otherwise, he had a sorry time. All
his life |
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he
has disliked figures, so he was always bad at Maths, and he found
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learning
to read difficult. His teachers called him 'slow'. He couldn't
read |
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for
himself and fluently until he was nine. He vividly remembers the
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At
nine, the year he was
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evening
when at last he could do it. |
beaten once a week for
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not
getting his sums right.
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1945
- 1953
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Liked
leather jackets
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Because
of his bad start and the poor teaching in his old-fashioned war- |
then
as now.
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time
primary school, he failed the eleven-plus exam, which determined |
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whether
or not he went to an academic grammar school or to a non- |
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academic
'secondary modern'. Just after taking the exam, his family |
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moved
to Darlington, a town by the River Tees, on the border between
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Durham
and Yorkshire. There his father became funeral manager of the
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Co-operative
Society. Across the road from their house lived a boy, |
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Alan,
who befriended Aidan. Alan read a lot. He made Aidan join the
local |
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public
library and together they each borrowed two books every week so |
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that
they had four to read. Still, it wasn't reading Aidan liked best,
but |
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going
to the cinema, which he did twice a week, and the local theatre,
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which
was mostly music hall - comedians, magicians, jugglers, acrobats, |
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On
holiday with mother
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singers,
leggy girl dancers, novelty acts, which today we'd call a Variety |
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and
father the year
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Show.
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he
started grammar
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At
thirteen he was transferred from secondary modern to the local
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school.
Great shorts.
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Queen
Elizabeth I Grammar School along with fourteen other 'late |
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developers'.
It was there that he met the teacher who changed his life, |
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the
school's head of English, Jim Osborn. Jim was a brilliant, if
sometimes |
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scary
teacher. From him, Aidan learned both the pleasures and the |
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importance
of reading great literature. It was Jim who first took him to
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see
performances of Shakespeare's plays, an experience that gave him
a |
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life-long
love of Shakespeare and of 'serious' theatre. It was Jim who |
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encouraged
him to perform in school plays and to learn how to speak in |
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His
room by the
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public
by taking part in meetings of the Debating Society. And it was
Jim |
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time
he was 18 and
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who
persuaded him to buy a book every week and build his personal
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about
to leave
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library. |
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home.
Embryo of his
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That
was how Aidan came across D. H. Lawrence's novel Sons and |
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work-room
now.
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Lovers.
For the first time in his life, he read a book in which he found
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himself
and the kind of people he knew. Sons and Lovers is about
the |
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growth
from childhood to manhood of Paul Morel, whose father is a |
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miner,
and whose mother is determined, as Aidan's was, that her son |
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should
better himself by education and reading. Everything in the book
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was
like the life Aidan himself knew. It is still the greatest novel
ever |
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written
about the reality of mine workers' families and English working
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class
life from 1900 to about 1950. As he finished reading the last
page |
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for
the first time, aged fifteen, Aidan knew that what he would be
was a |
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writer
of books and plays. He began attempting to write a novel the next |
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day.
But, though he wrote constantly, he told no one of his ambition
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except
his girlfriend, Margaret, who lived in a nearby town and with
whom |
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he
exchanged letters and weekly visits from the time they were fourteen |
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until
they were in their early twenties. |
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During
his teenage years, Aidan spent most of his |
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school
holidays working on the nearby farm of a |
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distant
cousin, and walking the moors around |
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Swaledale,
above Richmond in Yorkshire - an area he |
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used
as the setting for his novel BREAKTIME.
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1953
- 1960 |
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The
farmhouse
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By
the time Aidan was seventeen, Jim Osborn had decided he was to
be a |
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where
he spent
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teacher.
But first he had to serve two years compulsory military service
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many
of his
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in
the Royal Navy, where, by a nice irony, he was called a 'Writer'
- |
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holidays
from the
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meaning
a clerk - in the Supply and Secretariat division. He spent |
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age
of 10 to 18.
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eighteen
months working in a naval office in Portsmouth, where there was |
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so
little to do that for most of the time he read books bought from
a |
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second-hand
bookshop across the road from the office. |
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Then
came two years' teacher training at a college attached to London
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University,
where he wrote his first play to be performed and generally |
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enjoyed
himself. In 1957, after qualifying, he was appointed English |
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teacher
in charge of drama at Westcliff High School for Boys, a grammar |
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school
in Southend-on-sea, a weekend holiday resort for East End |
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Londoners,
a place full of raunchy fun and famous for having the longest
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pier
in the world. There he sailed his own dinghy, one day almost |
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His
boat 'Guru',
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drowning
when it capsized during a sudden storm, a scene he later |
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model
for 'Tumble' in
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recycled
in his novel DANCE ON MY GRAVE.
He read, went to the cinema, |
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Dance
on my Grave.
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attended
the London theatres as often as he could, and was so happy |
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and
hard-worked in his job that he wrote very little. It was there
he |
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learned
that teaching is not a profession for a would-be writer. It requires |
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the
same energy you need to write a novel, and is exhausting. |
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During
his three years at Westcliff, Aidan made friends with a group
of |
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young
fellow teachers who happened to be practising Christians. He had |
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always
been interested in religion, but as a non-believer. His new friends
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gradually
brought him round to their belief. He started attending a lively
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Anglo-Catholic
church, decided to be confirmed and to investigate the |
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monastic
life. For no reason he could explain, the monastic life had |
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always
interested him, and he had often thought that, if he were a |
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Christian,
he would want to be a monk. If you're going to do something, |
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do
it with total commitment and go as deeply in to it as you can.
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1960
- 1968
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Just
at this time, 1960, he heard of a new modern-style Anglican |
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community
that was being started by two brothers. The monks would do |
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ordinary
jobs such as teachers, social workers and factory hands, |
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anything
so long as their work had to do with children or young people. |
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They
would live as nearly as possible like the ordinary people around
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them.
And they would not try to convert anyone except by the example |
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of
their own lives. Aidan met the brothers, liked what they told
him, |
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resigned
from his teaching job and joined the order the week they set up |
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their
first monastery in a house in Stroud, Gloucestershire. He used
his |
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experience
as a monk in his novel NOW I KNOW. |
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For
a year he was a novice, learning the monastic ropes. Then he took
a |
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job
as English teacher in charge of the library and drama at Archway
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Secondary
Modern school, Stroud. It was during his seven years there |
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that
Aidan found his audience and published his first books. These
were |
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stories
and plays written for the pupils he taught. Two of the plays,
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JOHNNY
SALTER and THE CHICKEN RUN,
are still in print. He also began to |
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gain
a reputation as a teacher and school librarian. He was asked to
give |
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talks
at teachers' conferences and to write articles and reviews for
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educational
magazines. Soon he was so busy that his monastic life began |
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to
suffer. |
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Brother
Aidan in 1965.
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The
crunch came in 1967. By then he knew he was not a true-believing
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Christian.
What had attracted him was the glorious old language and |
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theatrical
ritual of the church. He also knew he would have to choose |
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between
life as a doubting monk or life as a dedicated writer. He could |
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not
be both. No contest really. Since the night he finished reading
Sons |
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and
Lovers he had known he was a writer at heart. So he left the
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monastery.
A year later, in 1968, he resigned from his teaching job, and
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since
then has lived as a free- lance writer, who happens also because
of |
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his
interest in education to give talks and lectures and workshops
for |
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teachers
and librarians. |
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1968
- 2005 |
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The
next turning point came in 1975. Having written for young readers
for |
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ten
years, Aidan finally began the books he had always felt he should |
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write
but could never quite get down on paper. The first of these, |
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BREAKTIME,
bubbled out like water from a spring. The second became his |
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best-known
novel, DANCE ON MY GRAVE. By the
time he finished it he |
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knew
there would be a sequence of six - novels which are related, like
a |
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family,
but each one individual and different from the others. Like the
first |
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two,
NOW I KNOW, THE
TOLL BRIDGE, and POSTCARDS FROM
NO MAN'S |
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LAND
each took at least five years to write. He completed the sixth
novel, |
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THIS
IS ALL- THE PILLOW BOOK OF CORDELIA KENN in 2005 and it was
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published
in the same year. |
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When
he left the monastery, Aidan decided to go on living in |
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Gloucestershire.
But his work often took him to London. It was there that |
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he
met an American magazine editor, Nancy Lockwood. From the first
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time
they met they began a conversation which is still continuing.
They |
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were
married in 1968. In 1969 they started a small publishing company,
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Thimble
Press, in order to produce a magazine edited by Nancy, SIGNAL, |
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1970.
With Nancy
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which
is about children's and youth literature. It soon became |
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outside
their rented
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internationally
known and highly regarded by professionals in the field. |
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cottage
in the Cotswolds
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Thimble
Press has also published over thirty books |
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on
the same subject. For their services to children's |
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books,
Aidan and Nancy were honoured with the |
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Eleanor
Farjeon Award for 1982. |
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Receiving
the Eleanor Farjeon
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Besides
his books, Aidan has edited many books by other writers, has |
Award
in 1982.
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written
for stage, radio and television, and for many newspapers and |
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magazines
in both Britain and elsewhere. He is frequently invited to other |
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countries
as author and speaker, especially in recent years to Sweden |
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and
the Netherlands. He has kept in touch with the teaching of literature.
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His
books THE READING ENVIRONMENT
and TELL ME: CHILDREN, READING |
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&
TALK resulted from his work with teachers and librarians. |
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But
at the centre of everything he does is the writing of his |
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novels
and plays and the reading of other people's books. |
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He
says he writes because he has to, and reads because |
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he
wants to. |
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Of
the awards he has received for his work, the one that pleases
him the |
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Caught
in the act,
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most
is the 1999 Carnegie Medal for POSTCARDS
FROM NO MAN'S LAND. |
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working
on Breaktime.
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The
Medal is given after a great deal of discussion among British
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children's
and youth librarians. Not only have the public librarians always |
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been
a great support to him as a teacher and writer, he knows that |
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without
access to every book in the language provided by a free public |
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library
service he could never have become the writer and reader that
he |
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is.
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Aidan
was the recipient of the 2002 Hans Andersen Award. Given every |
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other
year in recognition of an author's body of work by the International
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Board
on Books for Young People, this international award, sometimes
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called
'the little Nobel', was first given in 1956 to the British writer |
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Eleanor
Farjeon. Aidan is only the second British author to have been |
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honoured.
His acceptance speech can be found in JOURNALISM. |
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For
information about IBBY and the award log on to www.ibby.org. |
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In
2003 Aidan received an honorary doctorate from the University
of |
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Umeå,
Sweden. |
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2005
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The
sixth and last of the novels in the DANCE
SEQUENCE, This Is All: The Pillow |
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Book
of Cordelia Kenn, was published in 2005. It brought Aidan
the most |
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passionate
responses from readers of any of his books so far. |
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After
finishing it, he decided to renovate the house where he and his
wife, |
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Nancy,
have lived since 1975. The job took six months, until August 2005,
and |
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ended
with Aidan suffering a violent attack of sciatica that put him
out of action |
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until
early in 2006. He worked at new projects for six months then came
down |
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with
an attack of shingles, which kept him off work for another four
months. |
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It
was mid-2008 before he felt fully well again and could return
to solid work. |
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But
the hiatus was useful. It gave him time and reason to review his
life so far. |
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And
out of that time in the wilderness came three projects: an antenovel
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centred
on the insurgent life of an old man, a critical memoir on the
Poetics of |
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Youth
Literature, and a collection of short stories, 'of defiance and
moments of |
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truth',
about young people. He has also written the beginning of a youth
novella. |
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He
was awarded an Honorary Degree of Letters by the University of
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Gloucestershire
in 2008 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of |
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Literature
in 2009. And he is still frequently invited to lecture in other
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countries,
especially Sweden, The Netherlands, Belgium and Italy. |
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In
2010 The National Association for the Teaching of English (NATE)
presented |
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Aidan
with their Lifetime Achievement Award for Services to English
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Education.
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In
2011 Oxford Brookes University conferred on him an Honorary Doctorate
of |
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Literature. |
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