Tom Sharpe

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BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR


Title: Wilt In Nowhere: Description:
Henry Wilt is back!

Title: Grantchester Grind: A Porterhouse Chronicle: Description:
Though as cunning as ever, the formidable Skullion - previously head porter, now elevated to Master - is showing signs of physical frailty after his stroke. So the tricky business of appointing a new Master must start all over again. Meanwhile the College's monstrous debts refuse to go away, and a sinister American media mogul seems determined to make a television documentary on the premises, destroying part of the chapel in the process. Moreover, the widow of the previous Master is convinced that her husband was murdered, so she plants an agent in the Senior Common Room to dig up an unpleasant truth that everyone else would prefer kept under the carpet. Faced with such continuing crises, the instinct of the true Porterhouse man is to reach for the bottle- or to fall back on the subtle and traditional Cambridge skills of blackmail and kidnap. But will those be enough?

Title: Blott On The Landscape: Description:
The landscape is flawless, the trees majestic, the flora and the fauna are right and proper, the whole is picturesquely typical of rural England at its best. Sir Giles, an MP of few principles and curius tastes, plots to destroy all this by building a motorway smack through it, to line his own pocket and at the same time to dispose of his wife, the capacious Lady Maude. Sir Giles recruits to his side Hoskins, a corrupt local official, Lord Leakham, the environmental equivalent of a hanging judge, and Dundridge, a troublesome bureaucrat with an unhealthy passion for order. Against this powerful lobby are ranged a mere handful of local residents led by Lady Maude. Hardly at first sight a team to withstand the batteries of official inertia, Compulsory Purchase Orders and bulldozer blades. But Lady Maude enlists a surprising ally in her enigmatic gardener Blott, the Dresden born, ex-Italian naturalised Englishman, in whom adopted patriotism burns bright. Lady Maude's dynamism and Blott's concealed talents enable them to meet pressure with mimicry, loaded tribunals with publicity and chilli powder, requisition orders with wickedly spiked beer. To every official ploy Blott and Lady Maude oppose their own ingenious and unprincipled countermove until in a spectacular finale Blott, with four hundred tins of baked beans among his armoury, takes on the army single-handed. This explosively comic novel will gladden the heart of everyone who has ever confronted a bureaucrat, and spells out in riotous detail how the forces of virtue play an exceedingly dirty game when the issue is close to home.

Title: Ancestral Vices: Description:
More hilarity from Tom Sharpe.

Title: Wilt: Description:
A very very funny book.

Title: The Throwback: Description:
Classic Tom Sharpe humour.

Title: Indecent Exposure (isis Audio): Description:
It is Heroes Day in Piemburg, the capital of Zululand. Lt. Verkramp's thoughts are awash with promotion prospects, as rumours are flying that the chief of police, Kommandant van Heerden, is exhibiting some very strange behaviour: speaking English, wearing a tweed jacket and displaying a picture of the Queen of England on his desk. Promotion is not the only thing Verkramp is thinking about. The voluptuous form of the stern psychiatrist Dr von Blimenstein, however, is more concerned with how best to treat the large numbers of sex-obsessed policemen

Title: The Wilt Alternative: Description:
In this, the second of Tom Sharpe's chronicles about Henry Wilt, our hero is no longer the victim of his own uncontrolled fantasies. As Head of a reconstituted Liberal Studies Department, he has assumed power without authority at the Fenland College of Arts and Technology and the fantasies he now confronts are those of political bigots and reactionary bureaucrats - in addition to his wife's enthusiasm for every Organic Alternative under the compost heap and the insistence of his quadruplets on looking at every problem with a foreign student and the hostility of medical services unwilling to attend to his most urgent needs. But it is only when Wilt becomes the unintentional participant in a terrorist siege that he is forced to find an answer to the problems of power, which have corrupted greater men than he. With a mental ingenuity born of his innate cowardice, Wilt fights for those liberal values which are threatened by the sophisticated methods of police anti-terrorist agents. In the confusion that follows, Wilt resumes his dialogue with the unflagging Inspector Flint and is himself subjected to the indignity of a psycho-political profile. Bitingly funny and brilliantly written, "The Wilt Alternative" exposes the farcical anomalies, which have become the social norma of our time.

Title: Wilt On High: Description:
Wilt is still teaching at the Fenland Tech, attempting to drill English into plasterers, dozing through tedious committee meetings and occasionally getting mildly plastered in 'The Pig in a Poke' with one of his few bearable colleagues. But the even tenor of his days is rudely interrupted when the shadow of drug dealing flickers across the Tech. Suddenly Wilt becomes the target of suspicion. His colleagues believe him to be responsible for triggering a departmental inquiry, and his old adversary Inspector Flint, knowing that he's guilty of something, sees a chance to settle a number of scores. What his wife thinks is...well, what all wives think. But what none of them have reckoned with is Wilt's talent for making new enemies. What starts with an accusation of voyeurism in the staff lavatory (of the wrong gender to boot) leads, more or less directly, to a massive confrontation at a nearby US airbase with the forces of law and order on both sides and Wilt in his usual place -- in the middle.

Title: Indecent Exposure: Description:
Once again, the setting d Piemburgem, the deceptively peaceful-looking capital of Zululand, where Kommondant van Heerden, Konstabel Els and Luitenant Vekramp continue to terrorise true Englishman and even truer Zulus in their relentless search for a perfect South Africa. While that great Anglophile, Kommondant van Heerden, gropes his way towards attaining true 'Englishness' in the company of the eccentric Dornford Yates Club, Luitenant Vekramp, whose hatred of all things English is surpassed only by his fear of sex, sets in motion an experiment in mass chastity, with the help of the redoubtable lady psychiatrist, Dr. Von Bliminstein, which has remarkable and quite unforseen results. The Kommondant, hunting the fox in the Aardvark Mountains, succumbs to the bizarre charms of Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon, as Luitenant Verkramp's essays in counter espionage backfire in a bird sanctuary. Once more, Konstable Els, homicidal to the last, saves the day - or what's left of it - in one of the most savage hunts ever chronicled in fiction. From the Publisher Tom Sharpe's second South African novel and a brilliant follow-up to Riotous Assembly About the Author Tom Sharpe was born in 1928 and educated at Lancing College and Pembroke College, Cambridge. He did his National Service in the Marines before going 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. From 1963 to 1972 he was a lecturer in History at the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. In 1986 he was awarded the XXXIII-me Grand Prix de l'Humour Noir Xavier Forneret. He divides his time between Cambridge and Spain.

Title: Indecent Exposure: Description:
The brilliant follow-up to Riotous Assembly

Title: Tom Sharpe, Complete & Unabridged.: Description:
Indecent Exposure. The great Persuit. Porterhouse Blue. Blott on the Landscape.

Title: Vintage Stuff: Description:
Novel

Title: Wilt On High: Description:
Wilt is still teaching at the Fenland Tech, attempting to drill English into plasterers, dozing through tedious committee meetings and occasionally getting mildly plastered in 'The Pig in a Poke' with one of his few bearable colleagues. But the even tenor of his days is rudely interrupted when the shadow of drug dealing flickers across the Tech. Suddenly Wilt becomes the target of suspicion. His colleagues believe him to be responsible for triggering a departmental inquiry, and his old adversary Inspector Flint, knowing that he's guilty of something, sees a chance to settle a number of scores. What his wife thinks is...well, what all wives think. But what none of them have reckoned with is Wilt's talent for making new enemies. What starts with an accusation of voyeurism in the staff lavatory (of the wrong gender to boot) leads, more or less directly, to a massive confrontation at a nearby US airbase with the forces of law and order on both sides and Wilt in his usual place -- in the middle. About the Author Tom Sharpe was born in 1928 and educated at Lancing College and Pembroke College, Cambridge. He did his National Service in the Marines before going 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. From 1963 to 1972 he was a lecturer in History at the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. In 1986 he was awarded the XXXIIIeme Grand Prix de l'Humour Noir Xavier Forneret. He divides his time between Cambridge and Spain.

Title: Ancestral Vices: Description:
This title involves left-wing academics, right-wing capitalists, true-blue country gentry, workers, peasants, police and lawyers. From the Publisher ‘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 About the Author Tom Sharpe was born in 1928 and educated at Lancing College and Pembroke College, Cambridge. He did his National Service in the Marines before going 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, when he was deported- From 1963 to 1972 he was a lecturer in History at the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. In 1986 he was awarded the XXXIII-me Grand Prix de l'Humour Noir Xavier Forneret. He is married and lives in Cambridge.

Title: Porterhouse Blue: Description:
Porterhouse College is world renowned for its gastronomic excellence, the arrogance of its Fellows, its academic mediocrity and the social cachet it confers on the athletic sons of county families. Sir Godber Evans, ex-Cabinet Minister and the new Master, is determined to change all this. Spurred on by his politically angular wife, Lady Mary, he challenges the established order and provokes the wrath of the Dean, the Senior Tutor, the Bursar and, most intransigent of all, Skullion the Head Porter - with hilarious and catastrophic results. From the Publisher A Rabelaisian portrait of a college and the ancient traditions of the university, Porterhouse Blue is one of the best-loved, classic comic novels of our times About the Author Tom Sharpe was born in 1928 and educated at Lancing College and Pembroke College, Cambridge. He did his National Service in the Marines before going 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, when he was deported- From 1963 to 1972 he was a lecturer in History at the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. In 1986 he was awarded the XXXIII-me Grand Prix de l'Humour Noir Xavier Forneret. He is married and lives in Cambridge.

Title: Wilt: Description:
Henry Wilt, tied to a daft job and a domineering wife, has just been passed over for promotion yet again. Ahead of him at the Polytechnic stretch years of trying to thump literature into the heads of plasterers, joiners, butchers and the like. And things are no better at home where his massive wife, Eva, is given to boundless and unpredictable fits of enthusiasm - for transcendental meditation, yoga or the trampoline. But if Wilt can do nothing about his job, he can do something about his wife, in imagination at least, and his fantasies grow daily more murderous and more concrete. After a peculiarly nasty experience at a party thrown by particularly nasty Americans, Wilt finds himself in several embarrassing positions: Eva stalks out in stratospheric dudgeon, and Wilt, under the inspiration of gin, puts one of his more vindictive fantasies into effect. But suspicions are instantly aroused and Wilt rapidly achieves an unenviable notoriety in the role of The Man Helping Police With Their Enquiries. Or is he exactly helping? Wilt's problem - although he's on the other side of the fence - is the same as Inspector Flint's: where is Eva Wilt?But Wilt begins to flourish in the heat of the investigation, and as the police stoke the flames of circumstantial evidence, Wilt deploys all his powers to show that the Law can't tell a Missing Person from a hole in the ground. About the Author Tom Sharpe was born in 1928 and educated at Lancing College and Pembroke College, Cambridge. He did his National Service in the Marines before going 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, when he was deported… From 1963 to 1972 he was a lecturer in History at the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. In 1986 he was awarded the XXXIIIème Grand Prix de l’Humour Noir Xavier Forneret. He is married and lives in Cambridge.