Biography
Gascoigne was born in London and won scholarships to both Eton College and Magdalene College, Cambridge (1955), where he read English literature. While at Magdalene, he wrote a musical, Share My Lettuce, which was produced in London in 1957 by Michael Codron, and performed by Maggie Smith and Kenneth Williams (music by Patrick Gowers and Keith Statham). He then spent a year as a Commonwealth Fund scholar at Yale University (1958–59). After National Service in the Grenadier Guards he became a theatre critic. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (elected 1976). He has served as a trustee of the National Gallery, a trustee of the Tate Gallery, a member of the council of the National Trust, and as a member of the board of directors of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. His uncle is Sir Julian Gascoigne who was in charge of the Household Division during the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
Read more about this topic: Bamber Gascoigne
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“A biography is like a handshake down the years, that can become an arm-wrestle.”
—Richard Holmes (b. 1945)
“There never was a good biography of a good novelist. There couldnt be. He is too many people, if hes any good.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (18961940)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, memoirs to serve for a history, which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)