Tim Pears

Born in 1956, Tim Pears grew up in Devon, left school at 16 and worked in a wide variety of jobs: farm labourer, mental hospital nurse, pianist’s bodyguard, painter and decorator, night porter, art gallery manager and others. His first novel In the Place of Fallen Leaves (1993) was awarded the Hawthornden prize. Also in 1993 he graduated from the direction course at the National Film and Television School. He wrote the script for a feature film Loop (1999) and others unmade. His second novel In a Land of Plenty (1997) was made into a 10-part BBC TV series (2001). Further novels are: A Revolution of the Sun (2000), Wake Up (2002), Blenheim Orchard (2007), Landed (2010, shortlisted for the International Impac Dublin literary award), Disputed Land (2011) and In the Light of Morning (2014).

The novels are pretty varied but share characters in moral conflict, whose behaviour and choices affect, and are affected by, their intimate relationships, often across generations. Tim is happiest in, and writing about, rural landscapes.

Sport is one of Tim’s passions, and he has written a number of essays about how sport illuminates our understanding of politics, religion, history. He plays tennis with sadly decreasing competence, and coaches a youth football team. Tim was writer-in-residence at Cheltenham Festival of Literature in 2002 and 2003. He has taught creative writing for the Arvon Foundation, the University of Oxford department of continuing education and at Ruskin College, in Oxford, where he lives with his wife and children.