Miles Gibson (born 1947) is a reclusive English novelist, poet and artist.
Miles Gibson (born 1947) is a reclusive English novelist, poet and artist.
Gibson was born in a squatters camp at an abandoned World War II airbase, RAF Holmsley South in the New Forest, and raised in Mudeford, Dorset. The camp was dubbed Tintown and had been sanctioned by Christchurch Town Council as a way to ease postwar housing shortages. He was educated at Sandhills Infant School, Somerford Junior School and Somerford Secondary Modern – now The Grange School.
Upon leaving school he migrated to London and worked in advertising as a copywriter at J. Walter Thompson after winning a place in their Ten Most Ingenious Undergraduate Writers in Britain Today competition, despite lacking the primary qualification – a university education.
Gibson later flirted with Fleet Street as a regular contributor to The Daily Telegraph Magazine under the editorship of the renowned John Anstey. He was the Telegraph's runner-up Young Writer of the Year 1969. [1]
Gibson has written fiction and science fiction, drama for BBC Radio 4, including 'The Church of the Cosmic Cheese' set in 16th century Italy, and starring Leslie Phillips and Hugh Dennis. [2] His essays, poetry and short stories have appeared in various newspapers, journals and anthologies, including Echoes, Twenty-five years of the Telegraph Magazine, [3] first published by WH Allen in 1989.
Gibson's darkly satirical writing has been described as both "magic realism" [4] and "absurdist fiction". [5] Although his narratives remain linear in construction his employment of black humour, [6] pastiche, [7] and untrustworthy narrators [8] places him firmly among the postmodernists.
When The Huffington Post ran a list of their favourite literary novelists to take the plunge into genre fiction, they included Gibson's Einstein: "Miles Gibson, one of the very few British authors to successfully pen a magical realism novel based in the UK, is known for his toying with genre. Maybe his most notable genre piece came in 2004 with sci-fi comedy Einstein, one of the genre's forgotten treasures." [10]
His works for children include:
His works include two collections of poetry, The Guilty Bystander (1970) and Permanent Damage (1973)
Kingdom Swann was adapted by David Nobbs as the feature-length comedy drama Gentlemen's Relish for BBC TV, starring Billy Connolly, Sarah Lancashire and Douglas Henshall (2001). [11]
Maisie Can You Hear Me? By Miles Gibson was adapted by Cameron Lee Horace as a short drama film The Other Woman, starring Sophie Colquhoun, Lisa Ronaghan, Helen Mae Austin and Andy Anson.
His manuscripts and papers are in the Special Collections of the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Centre at Boston University in the United States.
Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre, and a screenwriter. His works include the comic book series The Sandman and the novels Good Omens, Stardust, Anansi Boys, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. In 2023, he starred as the voice of Gef the talking mongoose in the black comedy film Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose.
A short story is a piece of prose fiction that can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest types of literature and has existed in the form of legends, mythic tales, folk tales, fairy tales, tall tales, fables and anecdotes in various ancient communities around the world. The modern short story developed in the early 19th century.
The Sandman is a comic book written by Neil Gaiman and published by DC Comics. Its artists include Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, Jill Thompson, Shawn McManus, Marc Hempel, Bryan Talbot, and Michael Zulli, with lettering by Todd Klein and covers by Dave McKean. The original series ran for 75 issues from January 1989 to March 1996. Beginning with issue No. 47, it was placed under DC's Vertigo imprint, and following Vertigo's retirement in 2020, reprints have been published under DC's Black Label imprint.
Magic realism or magical realism is a style of literary fiction and art. It paints a realistic view of the world while also adding magical elements, often blurring the lines between fantasy and reality. Magic realism often refers to literature in particular, with magical or supernatural phenomena presented in an otherwise real-world or mundane setting, commonly found in novels and dramatic performances. Despite including certain magic elements, it is generally considered to be a different genre from fantasy because magical realism uses a substantial amount of realistic detail and employs magical elements to make a point about reality, while fantasy stories are often separated from reality. Magical realism is often seen as an amalgamation of real and magical elements that produces a more inclusive writing form than either literary realism or fantasy.
Genre fiction, also known as formula fiction or popular fiction, is a term used in the book-trade for fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre.
Andrew Wynford Davies is a Welsh screenwriter and novelist, best known for his television adaptations of To Serve Them All My Days, House of Cards, Middlemarch, Pride and Prejudice, Bleak House, War & Peace, and his original serial A Very Peculiar Practice. He was made a BAFTA Fellow in 2002.
British literature is literature from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands. This article covers British literature in the English language. Anglo-Saxon literature is included, and there is some discussion of Latin and Anglo-Norman literature, where literature in these languages relate to the early development of the English language and literature. There is also some brief discussion of major figures who wrote in Scots, but the main discussion is in the various Scottish literature articles.
Kitchen sink realism is a British cultural movement that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film and television plays, whose protagonists usually could be described as "angry young men" who were disillusioned with modern society. It used a style of social realism which depicted the domestic situations of working-class Britons, living in cramped rented accommodation and spending their off-hours drinking in grimy pubs, to explore controversial social and political issues ranging from abortion to homelessness. The harsh, realistic style contrasted sharply with the escapism of the previous generation's so-called "well-made plays".
Chris Bachalo is a Canadian comic book illustrator known for his quirky, cartoon-like style. He became well known for stints on DC Comics' Shade, the Changing Man and Neil Gaiman's two Death series. Chris has also illustrated several of Marvel Comics' X-Men-related series, including Generation X, X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, and Ultimate X-Men. Beginning in April 2000 Chris illustrated his creator-owned series Steampunk.
Sarah-Jane Abigail Lancashire is an English actress. Known for her work in television and theatre, she has received numerous accolades over a career spanning four decades, including two British Academy Television Awards and a nomination for an Olivier Award. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2017 for services to drama.
Literary realism is a literary genre, part of the broader realism in arts, that attempts to represent subject-matter truthfully, avoiding speculative fiction and supernatural elements. It originated with the realist art movement that began with mid-nineteenth-century French literature (Stendhal) and Russian literature. Literary realism attempts to represent familiar things as they are. Realist authors chose to depict every day and banal activities and experiences.
Gerald Gary "Jed" Mercurio is a British television writer, producer, director and novelist. A former hospital doctor and Royal Air Force officer, Mercurio has been ranked among UK television's leading writers. In 2017, Mercurio was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Television Society and the Baird Medal by RTS Midlands.
"Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast" is an essay by Tom Wolfe that appeared in the November 1989 issue of Harper's Magazine criticizing the American literary establishment for retreating from realism.
Sean Taylor is a British author of children's books. He was born in 1965 and grew up in Surrey, England, he taught in Zimbabwe before studying at Cambridge. He currently divides his time between the United Kingdom and Brazil, where his wife is from.
A television play is a television programming genre which is a drama performance broadcast from a multi-camera television studio, usually live in the early days of television but later recorded to tape. This is in contrast to a television movie, which employs the single-camera setup of film production.
Kingdom Swann is an historical novel by the reclusive English writer Miles Gibson, his fourth book, first published 1990 by William Heinemann, London, ISNM 0-434-29133-1, in paperback by Black Swan in 1991, and subsequently reprinted by the Do-Not Press, London, in 1998. It is a rambunctious satire on the dangerously thin line between art and pornography, fact and fantasy. The protagonist, Kingdom Swann (1825-1916) is a late Victorian painter of classical nudes on an epic scale who, turning to the new-fangled camera to capture his subjects, finds himself recording the erotic fantasies of a generation. "As in Daniel Defoe's Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress, a voyeuristic fascination plays games with high morality," reported Sabine Durrant in The Times. The novel was adapted by David Nobbs as a feature-length drama Gentlemen's Relish for the BBC in 2001 starring Billy Connolly, Sarah Lancashire, and Douglas Henshall.
Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals, events, or places that are imaginary or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history, fact, or plausibility. In a traditional narrow sense, "fiction" refers to written narratives in prose – often referring specifically to novels, novellas, and short stories. More broadly, however, fiction encompasses imaginary narratives expressed in any medium, including not just writings but also live theatrical performances, films, television programs, radio dramas, comics, role-playing games, and video games.
The second series of the British medical drama television series Holby City commenced airing in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 25 November 1999, and concluded on 9 March 2000.
The type of romance considered here is mainly the genre of novel defined by the novelist Walter Scott as "a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvellous and uncommon incidents", in contrast to mainstream novels which realistically depict the state of a society. These works frequently, but not exclusively, take the form of the historical novel. Scott's novels are also frequently described as historical romances, and Northrop Frye suggested "the general principle that most 'historical novels' are romances". Scott describes romance as a "kindred term", and many European languages do not distinguish between romance and novel: "a novel is le roman, der Roman, il romanzo".
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
