David Lodge (author)

Did You Know?

• Lodge's first unpublished novel (1953) was titled The Devil, the World and the Flesh.
• He adapted Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit for a BBC series in 1994.
• Lodge was appointed Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1997.

Biography

David John Lodge was born in Dulwich and raised in Brockley, south-east London, where his family lived at 81 Millmark Grove until 1959. His father was a saxophonist in a dance band. During the Second World War, Lodge and his mother evacuated to Surrey and Cornwall. He attended St Joseph's Academy, Blackheath, a Catholic school.

In 1952 he entered University College London, earning a first-class BA in 1955. There he met Mary Frances Jacob, a fellow student; they married in 1959. After national service in the Royal Armoured Corps, he returned to London University for an MA (1959) on the Catholic novel. From 1959 to 1960 he taught English for the British Council, then became a lecturer at the University of Birmingham, where he prepared a PhD on the Oxford Movement.

At Birmingham he met novelist Malcolm Bradbury, who became a close friend and influence. In 1963 Lodge collaborated with Bradbury and James Duckett on a satirical revue, Between These Four Walls, performed at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre; the cast included Julie Christie. During one performance, the audience heard news of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Lodge and Jacob had three children: a son (1960), a daughter (1963), and a second son, Christopher, born in 1966 with Down's syndrome.

Works

Lodge's early novels evoke post-war England, drawing on his own background: The Picturegoers (1960) is set in a fictionalised Brockley, and Ginger You're Barmy (1962) reflects his military service. The war itself is treated in Out of the Shelter (1970). (1980, US title Souls and Bodies). Later novels such as Small World (1984), Paradise News (1991), and Therapy (1995) also feature Catholic themes. The Campus Trilogy—Changing Places (1975), Small World, and Nice Work (1988)—satirises academia at the fictional University of Rummidge, modelled on Birmingham.

The trilogy shares characters, notably English lecturer Philip Swallow and American professor Morris Zapp. Changing Places originated from Lodge's visiting professorship, swapping settings between Birmingham and Berkeley. Therapy (1995) follows protagonist Laurence Passmore after a breakdown, as he recalls his adolescent courtship at a Catholic youth club and seeks his first girlfriend on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Lodge noted that his novels show a Roman Catholic becoming less orthodox over time.

Theatre

Lodge wrote three stage plays: The Writing Game, Home Truths, and Secret Thoughts (adapted from his novel Thinks...). The Writing Game, set at a residential writers' course, originated from Lodge's own experience teaching such a course; it opened at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre on 13 May 1990 and ran for three weeks. An American production followed at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts in March 1991. Lodge later adapted it for television, broadcast on Channel 4 on 18 February 1996, attracting 1.2 million viewers.

Home Truths, performed at the Birmingham Rep in 1998, centres on semi-retired writer Adrian Ludlow being interviewed by a sarcastic journalist; Lodge later rewrote it as a novella. Secret Thoughts, a two-character play, opened at the Octagon Theatre, Bolton on 12 May 2011. The Stage called it an intriguing, witty, brainy play, while The Guardian noted it boiled down neatly into an intellectually and erotically charged dialogue but felt some material belonged more naturally in a novel. Secret Thoughts won Best New Play at the Manchester Theatre Awards.

Awards and recognition

Lodge's works earned numerous honours. Changing Places won the Hawthornden Prize and the Yorkshire Post Fiction Prize. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1976. How Far Can You Go? received the Whitbread Book of the Year in 1980. Small World and Nice Work were each shortlisted for the Booker Prize, in 1984 and 1988 respectively. Nice Work also won the Sunday Express Book of the Year award in 1988. Therapy was a regional winner and finalist for the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1996. Lodge was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1998 New Year Honours. The television adaptation of Nice Work, which he wrote, won the Royal Television Society's Award for best drama serial in 1989 and a Silver Nymph at the International Television Festival, Monte Carlo, in 1990.