Patrick Gale
Welcome to the website of Patrick Gale, author of the Emmy award-winning BBC drama, Man in an Orange Shirt and of novels including The Whole Day Through, the Richard and Judy bestsellers Notes From An Exhibition and A Perfectly Good Man, the Costa nominated A Place Called Winter and his fourth Sunday Times bestseller, Take Nothing With You.
Patrick Gale » The books
She leaves behind her paintings of genius – but she leaves also a legacy of secrets and emotional damage it will take months to unravel. Patrick Gale’s novel is the story of a woman he has called “my most frightening mother to date”. She’s … READ MORE >
Patrick Gale » About Patrick
As well as gardening, he plays both the modern and baroque cello. He is artistic director of the North Cornwall Book Festival, patron of Penzance LitFest and the Charles Causley Trust and a founder director of the arts charity Endelienta. His chief extravagance in life is opera tickets.
Patrick Gale » A Place Called Winter
A Place Called Winter combines the backdrop of the stuffy Edwardian drawing room and the rugged and windblown Canadian Prairies with the effects of the Great War and the steely determination of the European settlers to tame the Indian wildernesses of Canada’s frontier.
Patrick Gale » Mother’s Boy
In Mother’s Boy, by Patrick Gale, we tag a long as WW2 takes him out into the world, as well as into hard battle, but also into the first lustful encounters that need to be kept secret. Extremely beautiful and well-written.
Patrick Gale » Books
Patrick’s seventeenth novel is his first fully historical one since A Place Called Winter. It is based around the known facts of the boyhood and youth of the great Cornish poet, Charles Causley and the life of the mother who raised him singlehandedly.
Patrick Gale » The Whole Day Through
The Whole Day Through is a restrained novel, its pitch steady, unremarkable and firmly tethered to reality. Laura Lewis, now in her mid-40s, has moved from a life of independence and dead-end affairs in Paris to care for her mother at home in Winchester.
Patrick Gale » Friendly Fire
Patrick Gale’s precise, delicate style in Friendly Fire lends itself well to a story of adolescent turmoil in the hothouse environment of a public school where the narrative, if not the language, is occasionally in danger of becoming overwrought….
Patrick Gale » Rough Music
Deeply personal, Patrick’s most overtly autobiographical novel to date, Rough Music’s unsparing portrayal of the painful realities of being a gay child (at whatever age), of unrequited married love, of losing one’s mind, made this the novel with which he has found thousands of new readers.
Patrick Gale » A Perfectly Good Man
Returning us to the rugged Cornish landscape of Notes from an Exhibition, Patrick Gale lays bare the lives and the thoughts of a whole community and asks us: what does it mean to be good? A Perfectly Good Man tells two stories in tandem.