 |
 First edition | |
| Author | Beryl Bainbridge |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Historical novel |
| Publisher | Gerald Duckworth and Company |
Publication date | 5 December 1991 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 200 pp |
| ISBN | 0-7156-2378-8 |
| OCLC | 25110855 |
The Birthday Boys is a novel by Beryl Bainbridge. First published in 1991, this book tells the story of Captain Robert Scott's 1910-13 expedition to Antarctica.
Five first-person narratives give different perspectives on the voyage: Petty Officer Taff Evans; the ship's scholar, medic, and biologist Dr. Edward Wilson; Robert Falcon Scott; Lieutenant Henry Bowers; and Captain Lawrence Oates each give their account of the hardships, the problems, and finally the failure of their endeavour: Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen beats them to the South Pole by a month.
Beryl Bainbridge's book unites many features which have come to be seen as typical of Postmodernism: The five tales differ greatly and it is clear that readers are expected to make up their own minds as to the extent of "truth" in historical accounts of the events.
Post-modernist literature often tries to subvert the assumption that there is a definite distinction between the imagined and the real. Traditionally, historiography is concerned with the domain of "truth" and "reality" and literature, on the other hand, deals with the "imaginative". The Birthday Boys blurs the borders between "fact" and "fiction".
Captain Robert Falcon Scott was a British Royal Navy officer and explorer who led two expeditions to the Antarctic regions: the Discovery expedition of 1901–04 and the Terra Nova expedition of 1910–13.
Captain Robert von Ranke Graves was an English poet, soldier, historical novelist and critic. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves, a celebrated Irish poet and figure in the Gaelic revival; they were both Celticists and students of Irish mythology.
Dame Beryl Margaret Bainbridge was an English writer. She was primarily known for her works of psychological fiction, often macabre tales set among the English working class. She won the Whitbread Awards prize for best novel in 1977 and 1996, and was nominated five times for the Booker Prize. She was described in 2007 as a national treasure. In 2008, The Times named Bainbridge on their list of the "50 greatest British writers since 1945".
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1996.
The WH Smith Literary Award was an award founded in 1959 by British high street retailer W H Smith to "encourage and bring international esteem to authors of the British Commonwealth". Originally open to all residents of the UK, the Commonwealth and Ireland, it later admitted foreign works in translation and works by US authors. The final three winners were Americans, and 2005 was the award's final year.
Heartaches is a 1981 Canadian comedy film written by Terence Heffernan and directed by Donald Shebib. It stars Margot Kidder, Annie Potts, Winston Rekert and Robert Carradine. The movie is about two young women who form an unlikely friendship on a bus ride to Toronto.
Petty Officer Edgar Evans was a Welsh Royal Navy petty officer and member of the "Polar Party" in Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition to the South Pole in 1911–1912. This group of five men, personally selected for the final expedition push, attained the Pole on 17 January 1912. The party perished as they attempted to return to the base camp.
The Lovers is a British television sitcom by Jack Rosenthal, starring Richard Beckinsale and Paula Wilcox as a courting couple, Geoffrey and Beryl. It was made between 1970 and 1971 by Granada Television for the ITV network. A spin-off feature film was released in 1973. The series was also given a repeat run on Channel 4 in 1996.
Brett Josef Grubisic is a Canadian author, editor, and sessional lecturer of the English language at the University of British Columbia.
A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates, or simply A General History of the Pyrates, is a 1724 book published in Britain containing biographies of contemporary pirates, which was influential in shaping popular conceptions of pirates. Its author uses the name Captain Charles Johnson, generally considered a pen name for one of London's writer-publishers. The prime source for the biographies of many well-known pirates, the book gives an almost mythical status to the more colourful characters, and it is likely that the author used considerable artistic license in his accounts of pirate conversations. The book also contains the name of Jolly Roger, the pirate flag, and shows the skull and crossbones design.
The non-fiction novel is a literary genre that, broadly speaking, depicts non-fictional elements, such as real historical figures and actual events, woven together with fictitious conversations and uses the storytelling techniques of fiction. The non-fiction novel is an otherwise loosely defined and flexible genre. The genre is sometimes referred to using the slang term "faction", a portmanteau of the words fact and fiction.
Hysteria: Or Fragments of an Analysis of an Obsessional Neurosis is a two-hour comedy play, by British dramatist Terry Johnson, fictionalising a real-life 1938 meeting between Salvador Dalí and Sigmund Freud a year before the latter's death. It is named after the Freudian psychological term "hysteria".
The Bottle Factory Outing is a 1974 novel by English writer Beryl Bainbridge. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize that year, won the Guardian Fiction Prize and is regarded as one of her best. It is also listed as one of the 100 greatest novels of all time by Robert McCrum of The Observer. The book was inspired by Beryl Bainbridge's own experiences working as a cellar girl in a bottling factory after her divorce in 1959.
Injury Time is a novel by English author Beryl Bainbridge and first published in 1977 by Duckworth. It won the 1977 Whitbread Book of the Year Award.
Lawrence Edward Grace "Titus" Oates was a British army officer, and later an Antarctic explorer, who died from hypothermia during the Terra Nova Expedition when he walked from his tent into a blizzard. His death, which occurred on his 32nd birthday, is seen as an act of self-sacrifice when, aware that the gangrene and frostbite from which he was suffering was compromising his three companions' chances of survival, he chose certain death for himself to relieve them of the burden of caring for him.
Young Adolf is a novel written by author Beryl Bainbridge, and first published in 1978 by Duckworth. Presented as biographical fiction, the book's main character is 23-year-old Adolf Hitler. Hitler visits relatives in Liverpool, where he gets into serious trouble with the English.
Every Man for Himself is a 1996 novel by Beryl Bainbridge about the 1912 RMS Titanic disaster. The novel won the 1996 Whitbread Prize, and was a nominee of the Booker Prize. It also won the 1997 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
Birthday Boy may refer to:
According to Queeney is a 2001 Booker-longlisted biographical novel by English writer Beryl Bainbridge. It concerns the last years of Samuel Johnson and his relationship between Hester Thrale and her daughter 'Queeney'. The bulk of the novel is set between 1765 and his death in 1784, with the exception of the correspondence from H. M. Thrale (Queeney) to Laetitia Hawkins from 1807 onwards, at the end of the chapters.
The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress is the last novel by writer Beryl Bainbridge published in 2011 following her death. As explained in the postscript:
Beryl Bainbridge was in the process of finishing The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress when she died on 2 July 2010. Her long-time friend and editor, Brendan King prepared the text for publication from her working manuscript, taking into account suggestions Beryl made at the end of her life. No additional material has been included.