Renowned author, Patrick Gale, joins us for our first event as part of our new ‘Off The Page’ strand of programming. Patrick’s new book, ‘Mother’s Boy’ is available to pre-order when you buy a ticket for this event (pre-order details appear at the checkout). Books will be ready to collect from a Books On The Hill stall on the night and Patrick Gale will be staying for a book signing session post-talk.
One of the country’s best-loved novelists, Patrick Gale has returned to historical fiction for the first time since his bestselling A Place Called Winter. In Mother’s Boy, his seventeenth novel, he explores the early life of the great Cornish poet, Charles Causley to lay bare the intimate links between the traumas he suffered serving in the navy in WW2, his deeply repressed sexuality and what would become some of the 20th century’s most cherished poetry. The novel also explores the enigmatic character of his mother Laura, a laundress who raised him single-handedly during the privations of the Depression and two world wars. Patrick will be talking about Charles and Laura ’s stories, reading from both the novel and Charles’s poetry and taking questions from the audience before signing copies.
Patrick is a keen cellist, gardener, beekeeper and artistic director of the North Cornwall Book Festival which he founded eleven years ago. He lives with his husband, the farmer and sculptor, Aidan Hicks, on their farm at the far west of Cornwall. In addition to his latest, Mother’s Boy, his seventeen novels include Take Nothing With You (2018), which was his fourth Sunday Times bestseller and celebrates Western Super Mare, Rough Music (2000), Notes From an Exhibition (2007), A Perfectly Good Man (2012) and A Place Called Winter (2015). In 2017 his two part drama Man in an Orange Shirt was screened by BBC2 as part of the Gay Britannia season. Continuing to be broadcast regularly around the world, this won the International Emmy for best miniseries and is now a musical in search of producers. He is currently working on stage versions of Rough Music and Take Nothing With You and Love Lane, a sequel to A Place Called Winter set against the 1950s coronation preparations. He’s a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Find out more: www.galewarning.org