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20-457: Vintage Stuff is a novel of British comic writer Tom Sharpe which was written and originally published in 1982. Set in Groxbourne, a parody of Bloxham School where Sharpe received his education, the novel follows the (mis)adventures of Peregrine Clyde-Brown. Peregrine Roderick Clyde-Brown is a guileless and dim-witted teenager, who takes every phrase or word spoken to him literally. This

40-604: A 1980s novel is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . See guidelines for writing about novels . Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page . Tom Sharpe Sharpe was born in Holloway, London , and brought up in Croydon . Sharpe's father, the Reverend George Coverdale Sharpe, was a Unitarian minister who was active in far-right politics in the 1930s. He

60-636: A French countess (a "quest" set into motion by another Groxbourne teacher who hates Glodstone), Peregrine ends up storming a French castle where he commits havoc and even murder, the effects of which would span countries and affect everyone around him. 1. http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2013/06/tom-sharpe-nearly-killed-me/ Spectator news. Retrieved February 13, 2016 2. http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=6303480291 Book review, abebooks.com. Retrieved February 13, 2016 3. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/798397.Vintage_Stuff Book review, goodreads.com. Retrieved February 13, 2016 This article about

80-492: A crack shot on the school's rifle range) seem perfect for a promising career in the British Army. It is here at Groxbourne that Peregrine meets Gerald Glodstone, a teacher like others in the school, whose teaching methods involve using the cane , but who is also addicted to early- and pre-twentieth century adventure fiction. After Glodstone drags the loyal and obedient boy off to France on a seemingly romantic quest to rescue

100-458: A deliciously filthy, but anonymous, manuscript that promises bestsellerdom. Frensic supplies a fake author and they are off down the primrose path. Much of this book is funny and devastatingly accurate until the plot disperses ..." More critically, Tom Payne wrote of Wilt in Nowhere : "Even half an hour after reading Tom Sharpe's 14th novel, it's difficult to remember what happened in it. ... Wilt

120-493: A few vignettes would slide past my mind’s eye – such as my very first Governing Body meeting, when, sombrely robed, the fellows debated, hotly and with manifest ill will, whether the vomit by the chapel was beer- or claret-based." The Los Angeles Times wrote of The Great Pursuit : "No one, from author to critic, goes unscathed in this satire on the publishing business on both sides of the Atlantic. Agent Frensic comes across

140-465: A fictionalized South Africa, are his best: Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure ." Leonard R. N. Ashley wrote in the Encyclopedia of British Humorists that "Sharpe's humorous techniques naturally derive from his fundamental approach, which is that of the furious farceur who compounds anger and amusement." and "His dialogue is deft and more restrained than his characterization, which sometimes

160-514: A golden age of academic dottiness, of the kind that has all but disappeared since the 1940s when Sharpe himself was a student." Caroline Moorehead writes (in a review of Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and its Discontents ): "When I was a fellow of Peterhouse, back in the Eighties, I was asked with tedious regularity whether the experience resembled Porterhouse Blue , Tom Sharpe’s grotesquely overblown satire. But even as I (truthfully) denied it,

180-535: A lecturer at the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology . Henry Wilt is a demoralized and professionally under-rated assistant lecturer who teaches literature to uninterested construction apprentices at a community college in East Anglia. Years of henpecking and harassment by his physically powerful but emotionally immature wife Eva leave him with dreams of killing her in various gruesome ways. But

200-411: Is a victim of our times, and Sharpe doesn't seem to like them much. ... Sharpe might be happier in another age – the 18th century, perhaps – but even then he'd find plenty to rail against. It's tempting to see him as a contemporary Smollett: his plots are guided by whatever vices he feels like including, or whatever images are in his head. ... Wilt in Nowhere isn't Sharpe's finest work. His best tales put

220-604: Is mere caricature ..." Ashley also quotes reviews and comments by many critics, and cites 21 published reviews or critical comments on Sharpe's work, with brief summaries or quotations from each. Martin Levin, in a review of Porterhouse Blue , wrote that "Sharpe is one of England's funniest writers. He's in the tradition of the 19th-century satirist Thomas Love Peacock , who wrote novels of ideas laced with physical, slapstick farce." Adrian Mourby wrote that "Tom Sharpe's Porterhouse Blue and Vintage Stuff are books that hark back to

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240-482: Is where the author displays his skill in playing with the English language, His attorney father (wishing to get rid of him) and his mother (having high hopes on him as a 'late bloomer') finally manage to get him admitted to a boarding private school called Groxbourne. In a school, asynchronous to its surrounding, Peregrine's tendency for unflinchingly taking orders and having negligible individual thought (and his becoming

260-555: The Royal Marines before being admitted to Pembroke College, Cambridge , where he read history and social anthropology. Sharpe moved to South Africa in 1951, where he worked as a social worker and a teacher. He was friendly with the activist and artist Harold Strachan until they fell out over a woman. Sharpe's time in South Africa inspired his novels Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure , in which he mocked

280-932: The apartheid regime. He also wrote a play, The South African , which was critical of the regime. After it was performed in London, Sharpe was arrested for sedition in 1961 and deported from South Africa. After returning to England, Sharpe took a position as a history lecturer at the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology , later Anglia Ruskin University. This experience inspired his Wilt series. From 1995 onward he and his American wife, Nancy, divided their time between Cambridge and their home in Llafranc , Spain, where he wrote Wilt in Nowhere . The couple had three daughters. Despite living in Catalonia , he did not learn either Spanish or Catalan. "I don't want to learn

300-468: The BBC in 1977, which contained similar elements of parody. Wilt (novel) Wilt is a comedic novel by Tom Sharpe , first published by Secker and Warburg in 1976. Later editions were published by Pan Books , and Overlook TP . The novel was a bestseller. Its success led to the author writing several sequels. The descriptions of teaching in the novel are drawn from Sharpe's own experience as

320-548: The language," he said, "I don't want to hear what the price of meat is." Sharpe died on 6 June 2013 in Llafranc from complications of diabetes at the age of 85. He was reported to have been working on an autobiography. It was also said that he had suffered a stroke a few weeks earlier. Paying tribute, the author Robert McCrum wrote "The Tom Sharpe I knew was generous, acerbic, engaging, and full of wicked fun." Susan Sandon, Sharpe's editor at Random House , remarked that he

340-668: The reader firmly in a world: we can cherish the memories of the atavistic dons in Porterhouse Blue , or rail at the South African police in Indecent Exposure (1973). The present novel is simply a hapless tour of bits of England and Florida, in which colourful things happen and puzzle the police." Sharpe sent up the class-conscious English writer Dornford Yates in Indecent Exposure . He worked on an adaptation of Yates' thriller She Fell Among Thieves for

360-627: Was "witty, often outrageous, always acutely funny about the absurdities of life". His ashes were interred in the graveyard at the remote church in Thockrington , Northumberland , where his father had been a preacher. Blott on the Landscape was adapted by BBC TV in 1985 and broadcast in six episodes of 50 minutes each. It was scripted by Malcolm Bradbury and starred George Cole as Sir Giles Lynchwood, Geraldine James as Lady Maud and David Suchet as Blott. In 1987 Porterhouse Blue

380-545: Was adapted for television, again by Bradbury, in four episodes for Channel 4 . It starred David Jason as Skullion and Ian Richardson as Sir Godber Evans . In 1989 Wilt was made into a film by LWT , featuring Griff Rhys Jones as Henry Wilt, Mel Smith as Inspector Flint and Alison Steadman as Eva Wilt. Michael Dirda said in an interview: "Tom Sharpe is very funny – but exceptionally vulgar, crude and offensive. Many view him as Britain's funniest living novelist. Most people feel that his first two novels, set in

400-719: Was chairman of the Acton and Ealing branch of The Link , and a member of the Nordic League . He declared that he hated Jews "in the sense that he hated all corruption". Sharpe initially shared some of his father's views, but was horrified on seeing films of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp . Sharpe was educated at Bloxham School , on which he based Groxbourne in Vintage Stuff , followed by Lancing College . He then did national service in

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