Clive King |
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David Clive King was born in Richmond, Surrey, England in 1924 but spent most of his childhood in Ash, a small village some 30 miles from London on the Kentish North Downs, where he and his three brothers used to play in a disused chalk pit. He was a boarder at King's School, Rochester at a time when every boy expected to be called up for the armed services in World War Two, and he opted for the Navy. This gave him seagoing experience that took him to the Arctic, Australia and the Far East, where he witnessed the recent devastation of Hiroshima.
He returned with a post-war grant to Downing College, Cambridge, where he read English and Russian. The British Council offered him jobs, mostly concerned with teaching English, in Amsterdam, Belfast, Aleppo and Damascus, Beirut, Dhaka and Madras. Many of these places provided settings for the stories he was writing. In 1973, he became a full-time writer, heartened by the growing popularity of his third book, Stig of the Dump. He settled with his second wife in a marshman's cottage in Norfolk, which they converted. Their child, Emma, is growing up there and they ride their horses together. He now has seven grandchildren.
He comments:
"Places give me ideas for stories, and I like to get the topography exactly right. My travels have also given me an interest in the misunderstanding caused by different languages and backgrounds - though, yes, I do believe we can all get on with each other. I don't really know why Stig of the Dump is so much more popular than my other books. Perhaps it's because it combines my own experience and fantasies with those of my son Charles, in the English countryside we both knew so well."
PLACE AND DATE OF BIRTH:
Richmond, Surrey; 28 April 1924
FAVOURITE BOOK:
Oxford Dictionary (4,116 pages!)
MOST TREASURED POSSESSION:
Stig of the Dump paperback from 1963 price 15 pence (3 shillings)
FAVOURITE SONG:
'Song of the Volga Boatmen'
FAVOURITE FILM:
Anything with Charlie Chaplin
When did you start writing?
1930 Story for a western film (not published)
1938 Articles for school magazine printed!
1942 Story for college magazine printed!
1958 'Hamid of Aleppo', story about the ancestor of all Syrian Golden Hamsters, published
by The Macmillan Co., New York, illustrated by Giovannetti.
Where do you get your ideas?
From places I have lived in: Ash, Kent; Rochester, Kent; Rye, Sussex; Aleppo, Syria; Beirut, Lebanon; Dhaka, Bangladesh; Madras, India; Camden Town, London; Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. Each of these places has inspired at least one book.
Can you give your top three tips to becoming a successful author?
1. Keep writing, even if it's only a diary of things happening to you or things you notice.
2. Grab any opportunity to appear in print (or, I suppose, on screen).
3. Be kind to editors. They are doing their best!
Favourite memory?
My twenty-first birthday in the Arctic Circle, a week before the end of the Second World War.
Favourite place in the world and why?
At sea. Away from things.
What are your hobbies?
Rough carpentry and cooking.
If you hadn't been a writer, what do you think you would have been?
A boring professor.
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