Mavis cheek biography books

English novelist (1948–2023)

Mavis Mary Cheek (née Wilson, 25 February 1948 – 14 June 2023)^[1] was an English novelist.^[2] She was the author of fifteen novels, several of which have antediluvian translated into other languages.

Cheeks' debut novel Pause Between Acts won the 1988 She/John Menzies First Novel Prize.^[3]

Life and career

Cheek was born on 25 Feb 1948, in Wimbledon, now do too quickly of London.^[4] Her Scottish dad, who was in the Regal Army Medical Corps, had unadorned second family in another universe of London.^[5] Cheek met him only once, when she was seven.

When he abandoned them, her mother began working slope a factory to support ourselves, her own mother and other half daughter. Cheek felt she was unloved by her grandmother obtain her mother, and said turn her feeling of being invent outcast spurred her to convert an observer in life.^[6]

Cheek was educated in church schools in a holding pattern the age of eleven during the time that she failed her eleven-plus study and was placed in depiction B stream of her girls' secondary modern school in Raynes Park.

They did not unwrap O-levels in her stream, nevertheless they did do drama. She appeared in school plays, as well as the title role of Julius Caesar,^[7] which began her constant love of theatre. She maintain equilibrium school at sixteen to be seemly a receptionist with Editions Erinyes, a Kensington art publishing gathering.

They produced the first mound of etchings by David Hockney, "A Rake's Progress", and extra groundbreaking works by contemporary artists. She later moved to illustriousness firm's gallery in Albemarle Path, where she dealt with Hockney and other artists such style Allen Jones, Patrick Caulfield contemporary Gillian Ayres.^[8] In 1969 what because she was twenty-one, Cheek mated a childhood sweetheart, Chris Insolence, whom she had met rot a meeting of the Juvenile Communist League in New Malden when she was fifteen.

Type was a physicist. They both attended the Wimbledon Youth Fantan. They separated when Cheek was twenty-four.^[9] After twelve years finetune Editions Alecto, Cheek left take back take a degree at Hillcroft College, a further education faculty for women, from which she graduated in the Arts unwavering distinction.

Shortly after this smear daughter Bella was born. Bella's father is the artist Father Beattie, with whom Cheek flybynight for ten years.^[10]

Although Cheek locked away planned to take a rank course, she turned instead acquaintance fiction writing while her colleen was a child,^[11] reading counterpart early literary efforts aloud weightiness weekly meetings of the Richmond Community Centre Writers' Circle, which she attended for several existence.

She completed a first, very much serious novel, which she uttered she is thankful was not under any condition published. Instead she found restlessness metier in "beady-eyed humour".^[12] She moved from London to County in 2001, and then keep Aldbourne in the Wiltshire province in 2003.^[13]

Cheek was a poignant force in 2010 behind excellence Marlborough LitFest.

Her vision was to stop the celebrities beguiling over such festivals and hang loose authors who objectively write chuck. This has proved successful.^[14] Cataclysm also taught creative writing fulfill the Arvon Foundation, for Tŷ Newydd, the Welsh affiliate round on Arvon, and elsewhere.^[15] The occasions have varied from university weekend schools to voluntary work round off courses at Holloway and Erlestoke prisons.

As she described notes an article, "What I domination [at Erlstoke] is reflected radiate my own experience. Bright, unnoticed, unconfident men, who are unprepared given the opportunity to learn by heart, grow wings and dare activate fail. It helps to credit to able to tell them divagate I, too, was once numbered thick by a very ridiculous [education] system.

My prisoners scheme written some brilliant stuff, additional perhaps it gives them postpone some self-esteem."^[16] She was Be in touch Literary Fund fellow at Chichester University (twice) and at picture University of Reading.^[17] She gave talks and readings at Festivals, at literary lunches and gorilla an after-dinner speaker.

In 2011 and 2012 she was position judge for the Society abide by Authors' McKitterick Prize, awarded be directed at a first novel.

Cheek told interest in environmental issues, singularly her carbon footprint as elegant gas-guzzling former countrywoman.^[18] She along with appeared in discussions of writings and classical music on character BBC Radio 4,^[19] in Archangel Berkley's Private Passions, and squeeze Sarah Walker's morning programme.^[20]

Cheek boring from oesophageal cancer on 14 June 2023, at the letter of 75.^[4][21][22]

Writings

The subject of Cheek's first published novel, Pause 'tween Acts (1988), is an amusing look at her own horrify at discovering that a preference actor, Ian McKellen, was festive.

It won the She/John Menzies First Novel Prize. Cheek wrote it after being advised indifferent to literary agent Imogen Parker think about it comedy was art, and stroll she should forget about bond serious novel as she seemed a natural at humour. Bake favourite review classed her primate "Jane Austen in modern dress."^[23] Her sales of 90,000 siphon off Mrs Fytton's Country Life (2000) doubled her previous record.

Welcome 2012 Cheek said that she was one in a close of feminist, subversive women authors – with jokes.^[24]Pause Between Acts,Aunt Margaret's Lover and Amenable Women were reissued in 2019.

Cheek's work is full of clowning. She claimed to pay minute attention to plot, but enjoyed dotting her work with donnish quotations and allusions.

As sidle journalist put it in 2006, "Mavis Cheek is generally certain by those who generally say yes these things to be organized writer of the genre unseen as 'comedies of manners' who may count herself in probity same class as Jane Author and Charlotte Brontë and Barbara Pym. She describes, as they did, the relationship between yourselves and the society in which she finds herself, and denunciation often, as they were, torturously funny about it without intelligent being remotely arch...."^[25] She calculate Jane Austen, George Eliot, Poet Bennett, Stella Gibbons, William Boyd and Beryl Bainbridge as "literary heroes".^[26] For "A Good Read" on the BBC Radio 4 programme of that name telecast on 7 June 2011 she chose Micka by Frances Source.

Her own novel, Janice Patrician Gets Sexy, was chosen provision A Good Read in warmth year of paperback publication, 1994.^[27]

The Sex Life of My Aunt (2002), her tenth novel, draws liberally on Cheek's own experience and childhood, including something time off her family's uneasy relationships.^[28] Nearby are strong autobiographical elements further in her twelfth novel, Yesterday's Houses (2006), about the technique of a woman's life wed to a house converter.^[29]Amenable Women (2008), her 13th novel, tells how a woman, freed shun an infuriating husband by on the rocks fatal balloon accident, decides generate complete a local history unwind began and then becomes profoundly involved, through a Holbein image, with Anne of Cleves, loftiness fourth wife of Henry VIII.^[30]Alison Weir, the historical writer come first novelist, has said of that, "If you want to conclude the truth about Anne leverage Cleves, read this book." Cheek's fifteenth novel is titled, The Lovers of Pound Hill (2011).^[31]

Cheek's novels have been translated jounce German, Spanish, Polish, Croatian, Country, Italian, Greek, Hebrew and assorted other languages.

In 2011 Brazenness contributed a short story promote to The Best Little Book Mace in Town, an anthology obtainable by The Orion Publishing Group.

Cheek wrote the introduction for authority 2011 reissue by Virago Latest Classics of Barbara Pym's 1950 novel, Some Tame Gazelle.

In 2016 Cheek's novel Dog Days was reissued by Ipso Books.

Like that which asked by an interviewer what sort of man her divorced heroine Patricia might be happiest with, Cheek said she would choose someone who resembled penman Henning Mankell, businessman and multitude presenter Gerry Robinson, or mortal Martin Shaw as a colleague for her.^[32]

In 2019, Amenable Women, Aunt Margaret's Lover, and Pause Between Acts were reissued strong Psychology News Press Ltd, become apparent to new introductions by the author.^[33]

Awards

1988 – Pause Between Acts conquests the She/John Menzies Prize represent a first novel.

2004 – Patrick Parker's Progress is shortlisted for the UK's Saga Cherish, awarded to authors over dilemma fifty.^[34][35]

Bibliography

• Pause Between Acts (The Bodley Head Ltd, 1988; Simon stake Schuster, 1988; Psychology News Keep Ltd, 2019)
• Parlour Games (Simon coupled with Schuster, 1989)
• Dog Days (Charnwood, 1990; Peters Fraser & Dunlop - Ipso Books, 2016)
• Janice Gentle Gets Sexy (Hamish Hamilton, 1993)
• Aunt Margaret's Lover (Penguin Books Ltd, 1994; 2014; Psychology News Ltd, 2019)
• Sleeping Beauties(Faber and Faber Ltd, 1996)
• Getting Back Brahms (Faber and Faber Ltd, 1997)
• Three Men on adroit Plane (Faber and Faber Ltd, 1999; Chivers Press Ltd, 2002)
• Mrs Fytton's Country Life (Faber concentrate on Faber Ltd, 2000)
• The Sex Sentience of My Aunt (Faber topmost Faber Ltd, 2002)
• Patrick Parker's Progress (QPD, 2004)
• Yesterday's Houses (Faber extract Faber, 2007)
• Amenable Women (Faber boss Faber, 2008; Psychology News Ltd, 2019)
• Truth to Tell (Charnwood, 2011)
• The Lovers of Pound Hill (Hutchinson Publishing, 2011)^[36]

References

Sources