Rupert Thomson

Rupert Thomson, FRSL (born November 5, 1955) is an English writer.

He is the author of thirteen critically acclaimed novels and an award-winning memoir.

He has lived in many cities around the world, including Athens, Berlin, New York, Sydney, Los Angeles, Amsterdam and Rome.

Rupert Thomson was born in Eastbourne, East Sussex, on November 5, 1955, to Rodney Farquhar-Thomson, a War Disability Pensioner, and Wendy Gausden, a nurse.

His mother died on a tennis court when he was eight From the age of ten, he attended Christ's Hospital, a charity boarding school that offers children from humble backgrounds a better education.

While at Christ's Hospital, he began to write poetry.

His early influences were Thomas Hardy and TS Eliot.

When he was fifteen, he rode his bicycle 150 miles on a "pilgrimage" to Hardy country.

He was also influenced by a series called Penguin Modern European Poets – in particular, Montale, Rilke, Yevtushenko, Pavese, and Zbigniew Herbert.

In 1972 he was awarded an Exhibition to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge to study Medieval History and Political Philosophy.

While at Cambridge University, he published poems in several small magazines, including The Windless Orchard.

He graduated as a Bachelor of Arts in 1976.

After leaving university, Thomson flew to New York.

He has stated that there were cultural reasons behind choosing America as a destination, since it was linked with artists as diverse as David Bowie and Alexander Trocchi Thomson spent six weeks living in Hell's Kitchen with a 63-year-old alcoholic and his family.

Afterwards, he travelled throughout the United States, principally by Greyhound bus.

He also visited Vancouver and the Canadian Rockies, and travelled through Mexico.

Thomson returned to Eastbourne in November of that year and worked in the Birds Eye factory.

In January 1977 he left again – this time for Athens.

Once in Athens, Thomson rented a flat on Iliados Street and made a living by teaching English.

He began work on a novel.

He met WH Auden's secretary, Alan Ansen, who read his poetry and gave him encouragement.

Thomson completed a 160-page first draft of a novel, but it was never finished.

In 1978 Thomson moved to London and found a job as a copywriter.

He was employed by Robin Wight's Euro Advertising.

Later, he worked for FCB (Foote, Cone and Belding).

While working in advertising, he kept notebooks and wrote 50-word short stories.

After four years in advertising, he gave up his job, moved a friend into his South London council flat, and set off for Italy in his Vauxhall Viva.

From now on, he would devote himself to writing.

In November 1982, Thomson took a job as winter caretaker of a converted Tuscan farmhouse that belonged to Miriam Margolyes.

In the Italian countryside that winter, he wrote the first draft of a book that would become Dreams of Leaving: "There was no heating in the house, and I worked in the kitchen, huddled against a free-standing gas stove. I typed on sheets of yellow foolscap, using a maroon Olympia portable I had inherited from my last agency. I was disciplined about the hours I put in: I would start at three in the afternoon and finish at one in the morning. The routine felt natural, comfortable, even seductive."The following year, he moved to West Berlin, where he rented an apartment on Sanderstrasse in Kreuzberg and continued to work on the novel he had started in Italy.

He was on the point of taking up a job as a cleaner in the Olympiastadion when his father died.

He returned to Eastbourne in February 1984.

At the end of the year he moved to New York, where he worked at the Strand Bookstore, running the outdoor bookstall in Bryant Park In the summer of 1985 Thomson moved to Japan, inspired by his grandfather who lived there for more than thirty years.

He spent several months in Tokyo, redrafting his first novel.

By 1986, he was back in London.

Dreams of Leaving was picked up by Liz Calder and published by Bloomsbury in June 1987.

It prompted the New Statesman to say: "When someone writes as well as Thomson does, it's a wonder other people bother", while Nicholas Lezard of the Guardian called it "one of the most haunting, resonant and clever parables about England you'll ever read".

In 2010, after several years in Barcelona, he moved back to London.

He has contributed to the Financial Times, the Guardian, the London Review of Books, Granta and the Independent.

The seven months Thomson spent with his brothers in the house where he grew up would provide the inspiration for his award-winning 2010 memoir, This Party's Got to Stop.