| Admin History | Facing the Tank was written 1986-7 at Foncoussières, a remote hamlet in the Tarn valley while housesitting an eminent musicologist's chateau. The novel was published in 1988 in the United Kingdom, 1989 in the United Sates and 1992 in Germany, in translation by Frank Heibert.
The working title for the novel was Previously titled 'Paradise with Claws'. This is the first time gale uses the fictional town of Barrowcester as a setting, based on his home town of Winchester. The school, Tatham's, also features in gale's later novel Friendly Fire.
Gale describes the work as 'in part a sly homage to Trollope's wonderful sequence of Barchester novels...equally indebted to Firbank's 'Vainglory' ' (FCP1/A/4/2/1). |