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Bernard
Ashley lives in Charlton, south east London, only a street
or so from where he was born. He was educated at the Roan
School, Blackheath and Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical
School, Rochester. After National Service in the RAF Bernard
trained to teach (Primary Education and Drama) at Trent
Park College of Education. He followed this with an Advanced
Diploma at the Cambridge Institute. During his career as
a teacher he worked in Kent, Hertfordshire, Newham and Greenwich,
with headships in the last three.
He is now writing full time. His first novel,
The Trouble with Donovan Croft , was published in
1974 and won the Other' Award, an alternative to the Carnegie
Medal (for which he has been shortlisted three times). Twelve
further novels have followed, gaining him a reputation as
a gritty' writer in sympathy with the under dog. In Margaret
Meek's view he gets inside children's heads, who say that
this is what it's like for them.
Of Tiger
Without Teeth Philip Pullman wrote in The Guardian:
A commonplace setting, an everyday situation, ordinary
characters. Bernard Ashley's great gift is to turn what
seems to be low-key realism into something much stronger
and more resonant. It has something to do with empathy,
compassion, an undimmed thirst for decency and justice.
In a way, Ashley is doing what Play for Today' used to do
when TV was a medium that connected honestly with its own
time, and what so few artists do now: using realism in the
service of moral concern.
Television work has included Running
Scared (from which he wrote the novel), The Country
Boy (BBC) and his adaptation of his own Dodgem which
won the Royal Television Society award as the best children's
entertainment of its year. Bernard serves on the BAFTA Children's
Awards Committee.
Stage plays are The Old Woman Who Lived in A Cola Can (Edinburgh
Festival and tour) and The Secret of Theodore Brown (Unicorn
Theatre for Children in the West End). He is a producer with
a small professional theatre company, Ashley Chappel Productions,
and is on the Board of the Greenwich Theatre.
A strong family man, Bernard is married to Iris Ashley, until
recently a London headteacher, and they have three sons. Their
eldest, Chris, also a headteacher, co-wrote with Bernard the
TV series Three Seven Eleven (Granada), and his latest
book Wasim in the Deep End is published by Red Fox.
David is a London headteacher and an expert on children's
reading, and Jonathan is an actor and playwright, whose new
play Stiffs was recently staged in London. They have
four grandchildren, Paul, Carl, Rosie and Luke.
Profile
supplied by Bernard Ashley
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