Piers Paul Read

Piers Paul Read (b. March 7 1941) is a British novelist and non-fiction writer and author.

Background

Read was born in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. He is the son of the poet Herbert Read.

He is a devout Roman Catholic. He received his B.A. in 1961 and M.A. in 1962 from Cambridge University. In the years 1963-64, he spent a year in West Berlin on a Ford Foundation Fellowship. This inspired his second novel The Junkers (1968) and his general sympathy towards the Germans. In the years 1967-68, he spent a year in New York - an experience he used in The Professor's Daughter' (1971).

Read is a practising Catholic and Vice-President of the Catholic Writers' Guild of England and Wales. He is married and the father of four children. He lives in London.

Work

List of Works

Fiction

Game in Heaven with Tussy Marx (1966)
The Junkers (1968)
Monk Dawson (1969)
The Professor's Daughter (1971)
The Upstart (1973)
Polonaise (1976)
A Married Man (1979)
The Villa Golitsyn (1981)
The Free Frenchman (1986)
A Season in the West (1988)
On the Third Day (1990)
A Patriot in Berlin (1995)
Knights of the Cross (1997)
Alice in Exile (2001)

Non-fiction

Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors (1974)
The Train Robbers (1978) (dt. Die Posträuber)
Quo Vadis? The Subversion of the Catholic Church (1991)
Ablaze: The Story of Chernobyl (1993)
The Templars: The Dramatic History of the Knights Templar, the Most Powerful Military Order of the Crusades (1999)
Alec Guinness. The Authorised Biography (2003)
Hell and other Destinations (Essays) (2006)

References

Literature about the Author

Read, Piers Paul. Contemporary Authors. New Revision Series, Vol. 38, pp.353-355.

External links