Friday 12 Jul 2024, 7:30pm
Louis de Bernieres is an internationally acclaimed writer whose novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin was made into a film and cemented his reputation.
He is also a talented poet and songwriter
Before he made it as a writer he worked variously as hospital porter, landscape gardener, mechanic in a bent Morris Minor garage in East London, philosophy tutor, carpenter, motorcycle messenger, and English and Drama teacher in Ipswich. He trained to be a teacher in Leicester, and won a masters with distinction at the Institute of Education in London. He worked with truants in Battersea until his third novel was published and he was earning the same by writing as he had been as a teacher.
He has written every book he ever intended to write when he started out in the nineties, but probably has a few more left in him. He intends to write more poetry and become more grumpy, reactionary and unreasonable as he gets older. He hopes to meet his end by being shot through the heart by a jealous lover at the age of ninety six.