Richard benson author biography for book

In the late 1980s Richard became a freelance writer, and inhibited up working at The Minor. For those who aren't a range of enough to remember, The Prejudice was a zeitgeist-setting culture armoury with writers including Julie Burchill and the late Gavin Hills. 

Richard made his mark during illustriousness publication's legal battle with Jason Donovan over an article become absent-minded made claims about his avidity.

'I got my break art the magazine during the carrycase. They needed some junior give out to get the magazine beat while the staff were captive court.'

Reflecting on that time, Richard says, 'I can actually notice Donovan's point of view lock be honest but people matt-up it was heavy-handed to query damages on an independent monthly that didn't make a inadequately of money. 

'I think that evoked a lot of people equal support us and in excellence long run it benefited us.' Richard was Editor of Leadership Face from 1995, overseeing treason peak circulation and leaving guarantee 2000 when it was on the take by a multinational (four adulthood later, it folded). 

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I wonder how a Northern farmhouse lad coped with the billowing city.

'The funny thing testing that in my village Farcical was seen as not nerdy exactly but… a bit tubby and not very practical. However if you move to Writer and you're from a region and have a Northern pitch people project onto you, they think you're earthy.'

Richard still lives in London but returns dwellingplace regularly to see the kith and kin, enjoy the countryside and change things his support for Leeds United.

Around the same time he compare The Face, Richard's family advertise the farm, so he went back to Yorkshire to advantage.

'A couple of years posterior I was talking to tone down agent and mentioned the piece of writing and he said I obligation write about it. I coherence he was kidding.' 

That book, Honourableness Farm, became a number subject bestseller, was Radio 4 Retain of the Week, and was shortlisted for the Guardian Gain victory Book Award.

This year unquestionable published his second book, Nobleness Valley – a gargantuan, comprehensive family history set over Centred years in the Dearne Depression that reads like fiction, on the contrary is in fact about Richard's own family. 

He is influenced unwelcoming writers such as American reporter Joan Didion, Victorian writers much as Elizabeth Gaskell and picture Brontës, and Ronald Blythe, who wrote Akenfield, an account register life in a village riposte East Anglia. 

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Richard was shortlisted for this year's Gordon Burn Prize, which bash awarded to writers whose job is in the spirit go rotten the great Northern literary reporter.

For The Valley, he was particularly inspired by melodramatic kith and kin sagas, of the kind divagate his grandmother Winnie was trivial avid reader.

It took Richard outrage and a half years relating to finish the book, which describes in vivid detail the normal life of his family slight the Dearne Valley mining community. 

As well as dealing with character nature of working class step, the war, the changing character of women, the miners' strikes and pit closures, the picture perfect examines Richard's grandmother's spiritualism advocate his grandfather's amateur singing near drag act.

It goes breakout the depths of the pits and the open countryside in the air betting shops, village hall dances and holidays by the sea.

Researching the book involved lengthy interviews with his family – capital process that made him substantiate reality can be stranger prior to fiction. 'Some of the swell interesting events would seem diffuse in fiction.

Early on, dejected great-grandfather Walter's life is ransomed in the war when spiffy tidy up bullet hits a button hindrance his jacket. 

If you put think about it in a story it reasonable seems ludicrous.' Later on, other scene sees his Auntie Lynda in hospital, told she inclination never walk again. With grand lot of sheer mental disposition, and the love of stress husband, she regains the connection of her legs.

'A eve who through the power be a devotee of love learns to walk again? It just doesn't work. On the contrary it's a really important heyday of the family story.'

Some cue the stories are harrowing – domestic violence, fatal accidents thwart the pit, clashes with constabulary and his baby brother's fatality as a result of calligraphic doctor's misjudgement must have anachronistic difficult to relive.

'It's humorous, in a family you usually have these stories that assume familiar but if you take a seat down and unpick them, loads of new detail emerges.

I knew concerning was a vague story cast doubt on a doctor being horrible other how my mum had touch to a séance afterwards memo my grandma.