Patrick Gale is a beloved Cornwall-based British novelist and the author of sixteen novels including the Costa Award Shortlisted A Place Called Winter. His two-part drama, Man in an Orange Suit, starring Vanessa Redgrave, won the International Emmy for Best Miniseries in November 2018.
Patrick’s latest novel Take Nothing With You draws in part on his own boyhood experiences. Taking us back to the 1970s in Weston-Super-Mare it tells the story of ten-year-old oddball Eustace, an only child, whose life is transformed by his mother’s quixotic decision to sign him up for cello lessons. A sad-funny comedy of resilience and survival, Take Nothing With You explores a collision between childish hero worship and extremely messy adult love lives.
For Word Nights at CAST, Patrick will be reading from the new novel and talking about the relationship between fiction and autobiography – the place where creativity and imagination takes over from lived experience.
Patrick Gale moved to Camelford near the north coast of Cornwall in the late 1980 and began a love affair with the county that has fed his work ever since. He now lives in the far west, on a farm near Land’s End with his husband, Aidan Hicks where they raise beef cattle and grow barley.
Word Nights is a series of occasional literary evenings programmed by Colin Midson, Creative Director of Port Eliot Festival.
The public programme at CAST is currently supported from funds awarded by Arts Council England for the Groundwork programme.