Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes: The Official Biography

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Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes: The Official Biography

Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes: The Official Biography

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It was this fear that drove him to put up on the wall of his office a large picture of WH Smith’s book-pulping machine. It was there, he said, to remind him to write a better book. Yet we had no clear idea how long we had. One year? Two years? We had more time than we knew, in fact; it would be seven years before Terry’s last day at work. Yet, when it came down to it, the priority was always the novels – first Nation, the book Terry was working on at the time of the diagnosis, and then Unseen Academicals, I Shall Wear Midnight, Snuff, Dodger, Raising Steam, The Shepherd’s Crown … All through this period he was chasing to get those stories down.

Having known and worked alongside Terry as his personal assistant and business manager for over two decades, Rob is in the unique position of being able to offer both a personal and professional insight into the beloved writer’s public and private lives, as well as highlighting the origins and evolution of Terry’s extraordinarily successful creations. With the familiarity of deep friendship, and obvious respect, Rob Wilkins shares with us Sir Terry's irascible views, easily kindled curiosity, and unfailing satisfaction with tinkering. the biography is told with a deft hand, never hiding the fact that this is *not* being written as an unbiased account of a literary figure. It is instead a loving reminiscence of a life lived large. His 25th Discworld novel, The Truth, looks at the realities of working at a newspaper and is clearly informed by his years spent as a journalist. A Life with Footnotes*, however, shows how the harrowing and humorous experiences Pratchett had across those years spill into all his books, not only that one; into the methodical approach to writing that meant he regularly produced several novels a year, and into his outlook. Similar qualms on Terry’s part affected the price paid up front for Good Omens, his 1990 collaboration with Neil Gaiman. During 1985, Neil had shown Terry a file containing 5,282 words exploring a scenario in which Richmal Crompton’s William Brown had somehow become the Antichrist. Terry loved it, and the concept stayed in his mind. A couple of years later, he rang Neil to ask him if he had done any more work on it. Neil, who had been spending that time thinking about his series The Sandman, for DC Comics, said he hadn’t really given it another thought. Terry said: “Well, I know what happens next, so either you can sell me the idea or we can write it together.” Neil knew straight away which of those options he preferred. As he said: “It was like Michelangelo ringing up and saying, ‘Do you fancy doing a ceiling?’”Here’s the former press officer of the Central Electricity Generating Board, South Western Region, with his name in lights – Terry Pratchett at the peak of his powers. I heard Terry call up: ‘Come on, what have you done with it?’ I went down to him. ‘What have I done with what?’ He was staring directly down at his keyboard. ‘The “S”. You’ve taken the “S”. Where is it?’ I was mystified. I went and stood beside him and looked. The letter S was on the keyboard, in between the letters A and D, as usual. I leaned forward and punched it. He looked at me and held my gaze. There was anxiety in his eyes. How frightening that must have been for him—his known world suddenly and inexplicably not making sense, utterly disorienting signals emanating from his computer keyboard, of all the familiar places.“ After Terry was diagnosed with Posterior Cortical Atrophy, a rare form of Alzheimer’s disease, in 2007, at the cruelly early age of 59, I began to accompany him at public appearances, reading for him when he no longer could, helping him through interviews on stage as “keeper of the anecdote”. We became, of necessity, a sort of double act. As described on the tin: a nicely written, and sometimes vaguely humorous, biography of Terry Pratchett.*

Following his untimely death from Alzheimer's disease, the mantle of completing Terry's memoir was passed to Rob Wilkins, his former assistant, friend and now head of the author's literary estate. Rhianna, Terry and Lyn Pratchett, dressed for a stage adaptation of Maskerade in 1995. Photograph: Penguin Talking of humanity, I loved reading that his wife “Lyn’s strongest and most abiding first impression of Terry was of his kindness.”This is desperately moving. It's a biography of Terry Pratchett, one which makes it clear he was not the friendly grandpa people assumed because of the hat/humour/twinkly eyes. He was thin skinned, and prone to grumpiness and indeed spectacular rage, and basically was human with human failings. On the showing of this he was also a very decent person, unspoiled by wealth, who conducted his personal life well and wrote terrific books and was passionately interested in a massive variety of things and people.



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