Personal Life
In 1952 Gardner married Margaret Mercer and the couple had two children, Simon and Alexis. Gardner also had another daughter, Miranda, the result of a long affair with Susan Wright, former PA to Peter Sellers. In 1989, Gardner and his family moved to the US and it was in America that he was diagnosed with cancer; firstly for the prostate and then, six years later, of the oesophagus. The subsequent medical treatment in the US left him near bankrupt and he returned to the UK in November 1996. Shortly after his return, in February 1997, Margaret died unexpectedly.
When Gardner returned to writing, his second book, Bottled Spider, introduced a new character, Detective Sergeant Suzie Mountford. Gardner took the surname from Patricia Mountford, an ex-girlfriend to whom he'd been engaged in 1949. When she read the book Mountfoot contacted Gardner through his publishers and the two were subsequently engaged.
Read more about this topic: John Gardner (British Writer)
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or life:
“The ingrained idea that, because there is no king and they despise titles, the Americans are a free people is pathetically untrue.... There is a perpetual interference with personal liberty over there that would not be tolerated in England for a week.”
—Margot Asquith (1864–1945)
“We only seem to learn from Life that Life doesn’t matter so much as it seemed to do—it’s not so burningly important, after all, what happens. We crawl, like blinking sea-creatures, out of the Ocean onto a spur of rock, we creep over the promontory bewildered and dazzled and hurting ourselves, then we drop in the ocean on the other side: and the little transit doesn’t matter so much.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)