The book is well written, clearly set out, and – despite some jumps backwards and forwards between topics which is inevitable with someone like Terry, who had such an interesting career path as well as an astonishingly prolific output – easy to follow.
What I can say is that it put everything that I already knew about him into proper chronological order, added a layer of gloss to it and, in addition, provided a detailed and interesting look at Terry’s progression as an author. I can’t say that I felt closer to Terry as person after I’d read it than I did before I started. Words have remarkable power but when they are being built on sources that are all publicly available – Terry’s estate have not authorised the biography, although they have wished Marc well with the book – I could not see how it was going to be possible to give me more insight into the man underneath the hat than I already had.Īnd in all honesty it didn’t. He then suggests reading this book is a way for us to meet him too.Īs a long-time fan of Terry Pratchett who also never got to meet him, this attempt to conjure him into our consciousnesses with words is completely understandable, for all that it seems deeply optimistic. He quickly goes on to tell us that writing this book was his way of getting to meet the man he admires so much, now that it is no longer possible to do so in the flesh. Yet this is what Marc Burrows choses to open his introduction with. Starting a biography of one of Britain’s best loved modern day authors, an author who has only been dead for five years, by announcing that you never met him or had any connection with him at all during his life is unorthodox, to say the least. The Magic Of Terry Pratchett is the result of painstaking archival research alongside interviews with friends and contemporaries who knew the real man under the famous black hat, helping to piece together the full story of one of British literature’s most remarkable and beloved figures for the very first time.įull disclosure, I received an ARC pdf of this book in exchange for an honest review. Journalist, comedian and Pratchett fan Marc Burrows delves into the back story of one of UK’s most enduring and beloved authors from his childhood in the Chiltern Hills, to his time as a journalist, and the journey that would take him – via more than sixty best-selling books – to an OBE, a knighthood and national treasure status. Best known for the Discworld series, his work has been translated into 37 languages and performed as plays on every continent in the world, including Antarctica. Sir Terry was Britain’s best-selling living author*, and before his death in 2015 had sold more than 85 million copies of his books worldwide. The Magic Of Terry Pratchett is the first full biography of Sir Terry Pratchett ever written.
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