BERYL BAINBRIDGE Biography - Writers

 
 

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BERYL BAINBRIDGE

Dame Beryl Bainbridge was born in Lancashire on 21 November 1934. She was               
educated at Merchant Taylors' School in Liverpool and worked as an actress at           
Liverpool Repertory Theatre. She was awarded a DBE in 2000. She wrote her first         
novel, Harriet Said, during the 1950s, although it was not published until 1972.       
                                                                                       
Her first published novel, A Weekend with Claud, appeared in 1967 (revised             
edition 1981), and was followed by Another Part of the Wood (1968), and The             
Dressmaker (1973), adapted as a film in 1989. The Bottle Factory Outing (1974)         
won the Guardian Fiction Prize and Injury Time (1977) won the Whitbread Novel           
Award. An Awfully Big Adventure (1989) drew on her experiences as an actress           
working in Liverpool during the 1950s and was adapted as a film. Her more recent       
novels, based on real lives and historical events, include The Birthday Boys (1991),   
the story of Captain Scott's ill-fated Antarctic expedition; Every Man For             
Himself (1996), set on board the Titanic; and Master Georgie (1998), chronicling       
a young surgeon's adventures during the Crimean War. Every Man for Himself won         
the Whitbread Novel Award and Master Georgie won the James Tait Black Memorial         
Prize (for fiction), the WH Smith Literary Award and was shortlisted for the           
Booker Prize for Fiction. Her most recent novel, According to Queeney (2001), is       
the story of Dr Johnson's relationship with Hester Thrale.                             
                                                                                       
Beryl Bainbridge lives in north London.