Tom Sharpe

Tom Sharpe is one of Britain's finest comic novelists. Focusing on Grantchester Grind, this programme examines the blend of free-wheeling fantasy and acute comment that characterise his bawdy disaster epics, which build from small scrapes into avalanches of hilarious rudery. As well as discussing his writing and the subject of literature, Sharpe talks about his life and his experience of living in South Africa in the 1950s. Extracts from the television dramatisations of Porterhouse Blue and Blott on the Landscape are included.