| Alan
Garner |
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| Nationality - English |
Profession - Author |
| Date of birth - 17 Oct 1934
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Date of death - Still with us |
| Place of birth
- Congleton : Cheshire |
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Alan Garner was born in his grandmother's front room in Congleton, Cheshire on 17th October 1934, and grew up in Alderley Edge, where his father's family have lived for more than three hundred years, being craftsmen in the area.
He was educated at Alderley Edge Primary School, Manchester Grammar School (where he excelled at sprinting, being rated in 1952 "the fastest schoolboy sprinter in Great Britain") and at Magdalen College, Oxford - the first of his family to be given this opportunity - leaving, however, before he completed his degree in classics.
Whilst at Oxford he met both J R R Tolkien and C S Lewis, but has read neither The Lord of the Rings or the Narnia books (he has commented that he does not read fiction because he doesn't want to be subconsciously influenced by other writers' ideas).
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Alan completed two years' national service in the Royal Artillery as a Second Lieutenant. He began writing his first novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, at the age of twenty-two. He has also spent a period of time as a deviser-researcher-interviewer with Granada Television.
Alan Garner continues to live in Cheshire, incongruously enough near to the Jodrell Bank radio telescope as well as ancient burial mounds, and draws much of the power of his writing from his sense of place and history, and that of his and his family's history within that place. His works are much influenced also by Cheshire dialect (Garner points out that Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written in this dialect). He has been diagnosed as suffering from manic depression.
In the 2001 New Year's Honours List Alan Garner was awarded an OBE for his services to literature. In response to this award, Garner stated "I have always felt that as an author I am at the sharp end. The author is like the flyer in a high trapeze act. It is actually the catcher who does most of the hard work, often in obscurity, through telling the flyer when to let go and not letting him fall. Receiving the OBE is the best way in which I can thank the many people who have done so much to support me during my 40 years as a children's writer."
All of the above information is copyright of Robert Mapson, siteowner and author of the Unofficial Alan Garner website - a big thank you to Robert for granting us permission to use this information.
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Alan Garner
bibliography - 2
listed |
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Click
on one of the Alan
Garner books below
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| Alan
Garner books Wee
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