Creativity and mental illness : the Madness and Literature Network

Abstract

In this video author Patrick Gale shares his thoughts on madness and creativity during the Madness and Literature Network Seminar in 2009. For related videocasts see those presented by Professor Paul Crawford and Paul Sayer.

Presentation delivered May 2009.

Suitable for: Undergraduate study and Community Education

Patrick Gale, Author.

Patrick Gale was born on the Isle of Wight in 1962, where his father was prison governor at Camp Hill prison. Later the family moved to London. He boarded at The Pilgrim's School, where he was a chorister, then went to Winchester College before reading English at Oxford University. He did a series of odd jobs to support his writing before becoming a full-time novelist, moving to Cornwall in 1987. He is the author of several novels, and also writes short stories and novellas. He has written one book of non-fiction, on the American novelist Armistead Maupin, and also writes book reviews for The Daily Telegraph.

His first two novels, Ease and The Aerodynamics of Pork, were published on the same day in 1986. The Facts of Life (1995) tells the story of Edward Pepper, an exile saved from Nazi Germany in the Kindertransport, and Tree Surgery for Beginners (1998) is about Laurence Frost, an inarticulate tree surgeon. A Sweet Obscurity (2003) is told from the alternating viewpoints of four separate characters. Friendly Fire (2003) draws on the author's own experience of a late 1970s adolescence, and Notes from an Exhibition (2007) is set in Cornwall, exploring the effects of mental illness on artist Rachel Kelly and her family.

Important Copyright Information:

You are free to copy, distribute and transmit this video as long as you credit the original author. The video is also available on YouTube