| Description | This Collection features a wide range of materials relating to Gale's novels, including manuscript drafts (written in hard copy, pen-and-ink form) research materials, correspondence, editors notes, book jackets and publicity materials.
The Archive also holds a large amount of previously unseen material, including drafts and rewrites, unpublished short stories and comissioned sitcoms and scripts that never made it to the screen. Gale's early career as a literary journalist is also well represented through his large body of book reviews and magazines articles. |
| Admin History | Patrick Gale was born on 31 January 1962 at Newport on the Isle of Wight, where his father was the governor of Camp Hill Prison, as his grandfather had been at nearby Parkhurst. He was the youngest of four - one sister, two brothers, spread over ten years. The family later moved to London, where his father ran Wandsworth Prison, then on to Winchester. At age eight Patrick began boarding as a Winchester College Quirister at the cathedral choir school, Pilgrim's. At age thirteen he went on to Winchester College. He finished his formal education with an English degree from New College, Oxford in 1983.
Following a short spell working in various jobs during the early years of his career, including working as a singing waiter, a typist, and a designer's secretary, Gale also undertook many commissions as a literary journalist. This inlcuded writing copius book reviews and magazine work which is well represented in the Collection. Gale's break came when his short story 'Borneo' was shortlisted for the Whitbread Short Story prize in 1985 and subsequently published. His Agent was then able to find Gale a publisher and his first novels 'The Aerodynamics of Pork' and 'Ease' - published by Abacus in June 1986 on the same day. A successful wiriting career, supported by a limited but loyal fanbase followed over the next near-twenty years including titles such as 'Little Bits of Baby' (1989) 'The Facts of Life' (1995), 'Rough Music' (2000) and 'Friendly Fire' (2005).
The inclusion of his book 'Notes From An Exhibition' in Channel Four's Richard and Judy's Bookclub in 2008, brought Gale's work to a new and wide ranging audience. Gale's biggest selling novel to date, it went on to win The Booksellers Association Independent Booksellers Book Prize. To date Gale has published 16 novels, compliations of short stories and a biographical work on writer and Gay activist Armistead Maupin.
Gale has also worked on many adapatations of his novels and short stories for film and television, as well as h further commissions for new original work. In November 2018 Gale won the International Emmy for Best Mini series for the BBC Drama 'Man in an Orange Shirt' which told three love stories from two generations of a family, in the 1940s and 2017. The two-part series was broadcast on BBC One as part of its flagship Gay Britannia season to mark 50 years since the Sexual Offences Act which decriminalised homoexuality in 1967.
Gale moved from London to Camelford in Cornwall in 1988 and the County has come to dominate his work ever since. Gale now lives on a farm in the far west of Cornwall near Land's End with his husband Adrian Hicks, where alongside raising cattle and crops he divides his time between his writing and his passion for gardening. Gale is also chair of the North Cornwall Book festival, patron of the Penzance LitFest and a Director of both the music festival Endelientia and the Charles Causley Trust.
Sarah Jane & Carole Green, 2020 |