Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes

Get in the xigxag app
This book is not purchasable in your country. Please select another book.
Pre-order Buy Now £{{ price }}
How does xigxag pricing work?

Listen to a sample

What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

WINNER OF THE BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION ASSOCIATION AWARD FOR BEST NON-FICTION

'PEOPLE THINK THAT STORIES ARE SHAPED BY PEOPLE. IN FACT, IT'S THE OTHER WAY AROUND.'

At the time of his death in 2015, award-winning and bestselling author Sir Terry Pratchett was working on his finest story yet - his own.

At six years old, Terry was told by his headteacher that he would never amount to anything. He spent the rest of his life proving that teacher wrong. At sixty-six, Terry had lived a life full of achievements: becoming one of the UK's bestselling writers, winning the Carnegie Medal and being awarded a knighthood for services to literature.

Following his untimely death from Alzheimer's disease, the mantle of completing Terry's memoir was passed to Rob Wilkins, his former assistant, friend and now head of the author's literary estate.

Drawing on his own extensive memories, along with those of Terry's family, friends, fans and colleagues, Rob recounts Terry's extraordinary story - from his early childhood to the literary phenomenon that his Discworld series became; and how he met and coped with the challenges that 'The Embuggerance' of Alzheimer's brought with it.

'Of all the dead authors in the world, Terry Pratchett is the most alive.' - John Lloyd

'Always readable, illuminating and honest. It made me miss the real Terry.' - Neil Gaiman

© Rob Wilkins 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Critics Review

  • Always readable, illuminating and honest. It made me miss the real Terry.

    Neil Gaiman

  • Heart breaking and funny . . . sometimes joyfully, sometimes painfully, intimate . . . it is wonderful to have this closeup picture of the writer’s working life.

    Observer

  • The joy of this biography . . . is that it spins magic from mundanity in precisely the way Pratchett himself did.

    The Telegraph

  • No one, after Pratchett’s wife, Lyn, and daughter, Rhianna, knew the author as well as Wilkins. I wept through the last 20 pages – beautifully done – charting Pratchett’s decline in a way that is both sensitive and unsparing.

    The Times

  • Fond, funny and conveys a pitch-perfect sense of how Pratchett managed to take the elements of his 1950s working-class childhood . . . and turn it into a universe of limitless richness and invention.

    Mail on Sunday

Subscribe to our newsletter

Sign up to get tailored content recommendations, product updates and info on new releases. Your data is your own: we commit to protect your data and respect your privacy.