Writing about a comic novelist is dangerous. Try to be funny and you risk unflattering comparisons. Wilkins waffles on a bit, and his jokes are sometimes effortful, but crucially he understands the difference between humour and wit. In Pratchett’s words, humour “needs deep soil. You can grow wit on a damp flannel.” Bacigalupi and Pratchett Win ALA Awards". Locus Online News. 10 January 2011 . Retrieved 29 November 2013. Kennedy, John (29 October 2010). "Terry Pratchett joins the staff at Trinity College Dublin". Silicon Republic . Retrieved 30 October 2010.

Wilkins is excellent on Pratchett’s early reading habits, and inspirations, but occasionally seems to miss the point of the books. He quotes an interview Roald Dahl gave to a young Pratchett, in which Dahl told him that “the usual underlying [message] any writer tries to get through… is that some people are very nasty and some are very nice. Most people are very nasty, really, when you get down to it.” Wilkins, eager to present this as a baton-passing moment, says Dahl’s comments “would much later become Terry’s own philosophy”. But Pratchett’s books, again and again, reject the idea that people are fundamentally good or bad. “People are fundamentally people,” as he put it in Good Omens, co-written with Neil Gaiman (who interviewed the older Pratchett as a 25-year-old – now there’s your baton moment). Terry's 'Choosing to Die' documentary awarded at Scottish Baftas". Terrypratchett.co.uk. Archived from the original on 8 June 2012 . Retrieved 20 August 2012.Quotes of the week ... They said what?". The Observer. London. 22 February 2009 . Retrieved 15 October 2009.

Professor Sir Terry Pratchett OBE was the creator of the hugely successful Discworld series of novels, and became Britain’s best-selling author of adult fiction, writing over fifty wildly successful titles in his lifetime.Here we chronicle Terry’s life and highlight some exciting facts you may not have known about this incredible author and scholar of the human condition. Flux, Elizabeth (12 October 2022). "Humorous, harrowing and productive: The world of Terry Pratchett". Sydney Morning Herald . Retrieved 5 April 2023. Ogg, Lynsey (31 May 2013). "The Terry Pratchett First Novel Award Winner Announced!". terrypratchettbooks.com. Archived from the original on 19 July 2014 . Retrieved 19 July 2014. However, there would be days, when the mood was right, when Terry would tell me to open the memoir file, and he would do an afternoon on the autobiography, him dictating, me typing. At the point at which we ran out of time, the file had grown to just over 24,000 words, rough-hewn, disjointed, awaiting the essential polish that Terry would never be in a position to give them. He was intending to call the book A Life With Footnotes.

The Pratchett Portfolio

He is often compared with PG Wodehouse but he’s closer to Swift. Or to GK Chesterton, from whom he drew so much inspiration. Like Chesterton, he is too bursting with ideas to confine himself to neat, prize-worthy volumes. He couldn’t even slow down enough to divide the books into chapters. And he has that Chestertonian quality of merriment, of intellectual play. Discworld, like Middle-earth, is immersive in a way that tempts people to dress up, draw street maps, tabulate its rules and pretend they live there. Even Pratchett himself, with his rings and his sword and his “manorette” of a house, sometimes gave the impression that he had just come down from the Ramtops. a b "Transcript of IRC interview with Terry Pratchett at the World Fantasy Convention by James Webley". Lspace.org. n.d . Retrieved 8 June 2007. After Terry was diagnosed with Posterior Cortical Atrophy, a rare form of Alzheimer’s disease, in 2007, at the cruelly early age of 59, I began to accompany him at public appearances, reading for him when he no longer could, helping him through interviews on stage as “keeper of the anecdote”. We became, of necessity, a sort of double act. Meditations on Middle-Earth, an anthology of essays on Middle Earth compiled by Karen Haber, contains Pratchett's essay "Cult Classic" (2002)