Terry Pratchett
Creator of the extraordinary Discworld...
Terry Pratchett sold his first short story, The Hades Business, at the tender age of 13 and bought a typewriter with the proceeds. His first novel, The Carpet People, was published when he was 23 and he continued to write in his spare time while working on local newspapers. Unpredictably, in his thirties he left journalism and spent the next eight years as a press officer for the Central Electricity Generating Board. And then in 1983 The Colour of Magic was published, the first Discworld novel, and the rest is as they say - history.
In 1987 Terry realised that writing was his future and he gave up his job. These days, he lives behind a keyboard in Wiltshire and says he "doesn't want to get a life, because it feels as though he is trying to lead three already". He is passionate about orangutans but doesn't give a monkey's about anything else.
As well as being awarded an OBE in 1998 and an honorary Doctorate of Literature from Warwick University in 1999, he is one of the most popular authors writing today. He has sold more than 70 million books and his work has been translated into 37 languages.
Find out more about Terry by reading our interview, by Neil Gaiman.
Fact file
Name: Terry Pratchett
Date of birth: 1948
Place of birth: Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire
Current Home: Wiltshire
Education: High Wycombe Technical High School, National Council for the Training of Journalists
Our choice
Dodger
(Hardback)
Dodger is a tosher - a sewer scavenger living in the squalor of Dickensian London. Everyone who is nobody knows Dodger. Anyone who is anybody doesn't. But when he rescues a young girl from a beating, suddenly everybody wants to know him. And...
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