Patrick Gale

Patrick was born on 31 January 1962 on the Isle of Wight, where his father was prison governor at Camp Hill, as his grandfather had been at nearby Parkhurst. He was the youngest of four - one sister, two brothers, spread over ten years. The family moved to London, where his father ran Wandsworth Prison, then to Winchester. At eight Patrick began boarding as a Winchester College Quirister at the cathedral choir school, Pilgrim's. At thirteen he went on to Winchester College. He finished his formal education with an English degree from New College, Oxford in 1983.

He has never had a grown-up job. For three years he lived at a succession of addresses, from a Notting Hill bedsit to a crumbling French chateau. While working on his first novels he eked out his slender income with odd jobs; as a typist, a singing waiter, a designer's secretary, a ghost-writer for an encyclopedia of the musical and, increasingly, as a book reviewer.

His first two novels, The Aerodynamics of Pork and Ease were published by Abacus on the same day in June 1986. The following year he moved to Camelford near the north coast of Cornwall 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 lover, Aidan Hicks. They raise beef cattle for the open market and winter cauliflowers (broccoli) for Sainsbury's. His current ambition is to perfect the art of reversing a tractor and trailer around a corner.

His latest novel, Notes From An Exhibition tells the story of troubled artist Rachel Kelly who dies raving in her attic studio in Penzance, her saintly husband and adult children have more than the usual mess to clear up. She leaves behind her paintings of genius - but she leaves also a legacy of secrets and emotional damage it will take months to unravel.
This book will be published in July 07.

For more information visit Patrick's website www.galewarning.org  

About creating the show Patrick says:

"'Increasingly novelists are expected to be able to perform their work in public, which can be a strain given that most of us became writers precisely because we were a bit shy and would rather perform inside people's heads. Luckily I had the acting bug throughout my teens to the point of auditioning for drama school when I left university, so working on the performance side of Wig has been strangely familiar.

Developing the story from the dry printed page into this enhanced reading has been fascinating. I've always been conscious of the musicality of my prose - its rhythms, echoes and so on - but collaborating with a composer has made me much more so and I've found myself making fresh cuts to the text to improve it as a piece of word music.

Going back to reading on my own in windswept festival marquees and badly lit bookshops after performing with a tailor-made soundtrack and lighting rig is going to be a bit like having to give up matches to go back to starting fires with flints!'