Tom Sharpe - a short biography and bibliography of this KwaZulu-Natal author.
Tom Sharpe
(1928 - ) was educated at Lancing and Pembroke College,
Cambridge. He did his
National Service in the British Marines before going to
South Africa in 1951, where
he did social work for the Non-European Affairs Department
before teaching
in Natal. He had a photographic studio in Pietermaritzburg
from 1957 until
1961, when he was deported. From 1963-72 he was a lecturer
in history at the
Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. His second
novel, the sequel to
Riotous Assembly, is called Indecent
Exposure. His other
novels include The Great Pursuit, Wilt,
Porterhouse Blue and Blott on the Landscape.
Tom Sharpe is
married and lives in Dorset, U.K. Selected WorkFrom Riotous Assembly
(1971)(Note: Piemburg is Sharpe's thinly veiled fictitious
name for
Pietermaritzburg.)
Kommandant van Heerden had few illusions about himself and
a great many
about everything else. And it was thanks to his illusions
that he found
himself in charge of the Police station in Piemburg. It
was not a very
onerous position. Piemburg's mediocrity was not conducive
to more than
petty crime and it had been felt at Police Headquarters in
Pretoria
that, while Kommandant van Heerden's appointment might
push the city's
crime rate up, it would at least serve to lower the waves
of violence
and theft that had followed his posting to other more
enterprising
towns.
Besides, Piemburg deserved the Kommandant. As the one town
in the
Republic still to fly the Union Jack from the Town Hall,
Piemburg needed
to be taught that the Government could not be challenged
without taking
some revenge.
Kommandant van Heerden knew that his appointment was not
due to his
success in the field of criminal investigation. He fondly
imagined it
had come to him because he understood the English. It was
in fact due to
the reputation of his grandfather, Klaasie van Heerden,
who had served
under General Cronje at the Battle of Paardeberg and had
been shot by
the British for refusing to obey the order of his
commanding officer to
surrender. He had instead stayed put in a hole in the bank
of the Modder
River and shot down twelve soldiers of the Essex Regiment
who were
relieving themselves there some forty-eight hours after
the last shot
had been fired. The fact that Klaasie had been fast asleep
throughout
the entire battle and had never heard the order to cease
fire was
discounted by the British during his trial and by later
generations of
Afrikaans historians. Instead he was accounted a hero who
had been
martyred for his devotion to the Boer Republics and as a
hero he was
revered by Afrikaans Nationalists all over South
Africa.
It was this legend that had helped Kommandant van Heerden
to his present
rank. It had taken a long time for his incompetence to
live down the
reputation for cunning that had been bequeathed him by his
grandfather,
and by that time it was too late for Police Headquarters
to do anything
about his inefficiency except put him in command of
Piemburg.
Kommandant van Heerden imagined that he had got the post
because it was
in an English town and certainly it was just the post he
wanted. The
Kommandant believed that he was one of the few Afrikaaners
who really
understood the English mind. In spite of the treatment the
British had
meted out to his grandfather, in spite of the brutality
the British had
shown to the Boer women and children in the concentration
camps, in
spite of the sentimentality the British wasted on their
black servants,
in spite of everything, Kommandant van Heerden admired the
British.
There was something about their blundering stupidity that
appealed to
him. It called out to something deep within his being. He
couldn't say
exactly what it was, but deep called to deep and, if the
Kommandant
could have chosen his place of birth, its time and
nationality, he would
have plumped for Piemburg in 1890 and the heart of an
English gentleman.
zoom
Pietermaritzburg City Hall. Photo: Gerald Hoberman
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Bibliography1971. Riotous Assembly.
1973. Indecent exposure.
1974. Porterhouse Blue.
1975. Blott on the landscape.
1976. Wilt.
1977. Great Pursuit.
1978. The Throwback.
1979. The Wilt Alternative.
1980. Ancestral Vices.
1984. Wilt on High.
1995. Grantchester Grind: A Porterhouse Chronicle.
1996. The Midden.
1996. Vintage Stuff.
2004. Wilt in Nowhere.
- Pietermaritzburg -
- Index -
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