Jonathan
Gathorne-Hardy
AUTHOR & BIOGRAPHER
(May 1933- July 2019)
“
Delightfully quirky […] tinged throughout with more than a faint sense of the absurd. Every twist and turn of the six-month voyage by land and see there (and back) is described […]but the best moments come with the colourful descriptions of Constantinople and the often surprising behaviour of the Ottoman court.
Gathorne-Hardy enriches his book with much cultural background
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The author’s research has been thorough, but his learning is as lightly worn as his eye for detail or a telling anecdote is keen. He writes with an easy and agreeable elegance; in short, his book is a delight. A lesser writer would have made it two or three times as long.
ALLAN MASSIE, THE SCOTSMAN
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About his late book "The Sultan's Organ"
BOOKS
Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy is the author of 27 books - 16 for adults, 11 for children:
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FICTION
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One Foot In The Clouds
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Chamaleon
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The Office
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The Centre Of The Universe Is 18 Baedekerstrasse
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The City Beneath the Skin
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Particle Theory - A Novel
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The Voice of God And Other Disasters
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(As Silvia Thornton)
The Man From The Sea
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NON-FICTION
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The Rise And Fall Of The British Nanny
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The Public School Phenomenon
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Love, Sex, Marriage And Divorce
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Doctors
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The Interior Castle - A Life Of Gerald Brenan
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Alfred C. Kinsey: Sex The Measure Of All Things - A Biography
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Half An Arch
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The Sultan's Organ
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FOR CHILDREN
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Jane's Adventures In And Out Of The Book
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Jane's Adventures On The Island Of Peeg
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Jane's Adventures In A Baloon
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The Terrible Kidnapping Of Cyril Bonhamy
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Cyril Bonhamy v Madam Big
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Cyril Bonhamy And The Great Drain Robbery
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Cyril Bonhamy And Operation Ping
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Cyril Of The Apes
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The Munros' New House
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The Tunnel Party
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The Twin Detectives
CHAMELEON
CYRIL OF THE APES
CYRIL BONHAMY AND OPERATION PING
CYRIL BONHAMY AND THE GREAT DRAIN ROBBERY
Jane's Adventures: Jane's Adventures in and Out of the Book, Jane's Adventures on the Island of Peeg, and Jane's Adventures in a Balloon
ONE FOOT IN THE CLOUDS
THE TERRIBLE KIDNAPPING OF CYRIL BONHAMY
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BIO
Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy was born in Edinburgh in 1933. Educated at Bryanston, he gained a scholarship to Trinity College in Cambridge, where he read history and edited the legendary Granta magazine. He then worked for fifteen years in advertising and publishing. He has been an intensive researcher and productive writer of over twenty books, including an autobiography Half an Arch, (winner of the JR Ackerley prize), Kinsey: Sex The
Measure Of All Things, which was adapted into a successful film starring Liam Neeson, The Rise and Fall of the British Nanny, described as "an instant classic of social history" by Faber & Faber, A Life of Gerald Brenan which was used in the making of the film South from Granada and The Public School Phenomenon 1587-1977.
In his later years he lived in Aldeburgh with his wife, the painter and writer Nicky Loutit.
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Mr. Gathorne-Hardy died peacefully in his house on the 16th of July 2019.
PRESS QUOTES
“
Delightfully quirky [...] tinged with more than a faint sense of the absurd [...] with colorful descriptions [...](and) much cultural background.
DIANA DARKE,
THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
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He writes with an easy and agreeable elegance; in short, his book is a delight. A lesser writer would have made it two or three times as long.
ALLAN MASSIE,
THE SCOTSMAN
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Marvellously researched and beautifully written.​
W. H. AUDEN, OBSERVER
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Enough to delight the sternest critic.​
AUBERON WAUGH, HARPERS & QUEEN
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A great pleasure to read... Mr. Gathorne-Hardy writes with a kind of boisterous cunning.​
SIMON RAVEN, SPECTATOR
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He writes with a genuine irony which transforms the squalid into the comic.​
MAURICE EDELMAN,
SUNDAY TIMES
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By no means unworthy to stand beside P. N. Furbank's Forster, Michael Holroyd's Strachey or Quentin Bell's Woolf ... Affectionate but acerbic, learned but witty, elegant but relaxed, [Gathorne-Hardy] entertains as consistently as he informs.​
PIERS BRENDON, THE INDEPENDENT
CONTACT
For any media inquiries, please contact Benjamin Hardy
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