45 Facts About Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan's novel Enduring Love was adapted into a film of the same name.

Ian McEwan was awarded the 1999 Shakespeare Prize, and the 2011 Jerusalem Prize.

McEwan was born in Aldershot, Hampshire, on 21 June 1948, the son of David McEwan and Rose Lilian Violet.

Ian McEwan's father was a working-class Scotsman who had worked his way up through the army to the rank of major.

Ian McEwan's family returned to England when he was 12 years old.

Ian McEwan was educated at Woolverstone Hall School in Suffolk; the University of Sussex, where he received a degree in English literature in 1970; and the University of East Anglia, where he undertook a master's degree in literature.

Ian McEwan's first published work was a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, which won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976.

Ian McEwan achieved notoriety in 1979 when the BBC suspended production of his play Solid Geometry because of its supposed obscenity.

Ian McEwan followed these works with his second book for children, The Daydreamer.

Ian McEwan has written a number of produced screenplays, a stage play, children's fiction, and an oratorio and a libretto titled For You with music composed by Michael Berkeley.

In 2006, Ian McEwan was accused of plagiarism; specifically that a passage in Atonement closely echoed a passage from a memoir, No Time for Romance, published in 1977 by Lucilla Andrews.

Ian McEwan acknowledged using the book as a source for his work.

Ian McEwan had included a brief note at the end of Atonement, referring to Andrews's autobiography, among several other works.

Ian McEwan denied charges of plagiarism, claiming he was unaware of the earlier work.

In June 2008 at the Hay Festival, Ian McEwan gave a surprise reading of this work-in-progress.

Ian McEwan noted "The novel's protagonist Michael Beard has been awarded a Nobel prize for his pioneering work on physics, and has discovered that winning the coveted prize has interfered with his work".

Ian McEwan said that the work was not a comedy: "I hate comic novels; it's like being wrestled to the ground and being tickled, being forced to laugh", instead, that it had extended comic stretches.

In September 2019, Ian McEwan announced a quick surprise follow-up novella, The Cockroach.

Ian McEwan has been nominated for the Booker Prize six times to date, winning the prize for Amsterdam in 1998.

Ian McEwan received nominations for the International Booker Prize in 2005 and 2007.

Ian McEwan is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Ian McEwan was awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation, Hamburg, in 1999.

Ian McEwan was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to literature.

In 2008, Ian McEwan was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature by University College London, where he had previously taught English literature.

In 2010, McEwan received the Peggy V Helmerich Distinguished Author Award.

Ian McEwan accepted the prize, despite controversy and pressure from groups and individuals opposed to the Israeli government.

Ian McEwan said he will donate the amount of the prize, "ten thousand dollars to Combatants for Peace, an organisation that brings together Israeli ex-soldiers and Palestinian ex-fighters".

Ian McEwan commented that his novel Atonement started out as a science fiction story set "two or three centuries in the future".

In 2019, Ian McEwan received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.

In 2020, Ian McEwan was awarded the Goethe Medal, a yearly prize given by the Goethe-Institut honouring non-Germans "who have performed outstanding service for the German language and for international cultural relations".

In 2008, Ian McEwan publicly spoke out against Islamism for its views on women and on homosexuality.

Ian McEwan was quoted as saying that fundamentalist Islam wanted to create a society that he "abhorred".

Ian McEwan's comments appeared in the Italian newspaper, to defend fellow writer Martin Amis against allegations of racism.

Ian McEwan put forward the following statement on his official site and blog after claiming he was misinterpreted:.

In 2008, McEwan was among more than 200,000 signatories of a petition to support Italian journalist Roberto Saviano who received multiple death threats and was placed in police protection after exposing the Mafia-like crime syndicate, Camorra, in his 2006 book Gomorrah.

On winning the Jerusalem Prize, Ian McEwan defended himself against criticism for accepting the prize in light of opposition to Israeli policies, saying: "If you didn't go to countries whose foreign policy or domestic policy is screwed up, you'd never get out of bed".

Ian McEwan personally attended a protest in Sheikh Jarrah against the expansion of Israeli settlements.

In 2009, Ian McEwan joined the 10:10 project, a movement that supports positive action on climate change by encouraging people to reduce their carbon emissions.

Ian McEwan is traditionally a Labour supporter and said he had his "fingers crossed" that Miliband would become Prime Minister.

In May 2017, speaking at a London conference on Brexit, apparently referring to what he believed to be the older demographic of leave voters, Ian McEwan stated that 'one and a half million oldsters freshly in their graves' would result in a putative second referendum returning a 'remain' outcome.

Two years later in 1997, McEwan married Annalena McAfee, a journalist and writer who was formerly the editor of The Guardians Review section.

In 2002, Ian McEwan discovered that he had a brother who had been given up for adoption during the Second World War; the story became public in 2007.

Sharp has the same mother and father as Ian McEwan but was born from an affair that occurred before they married.

The brothers are in regular contact and Ian McEwan has written a foreword to Sharp's memoir.

Ian McEwan was a long-time friend of Christopher Hitchens, the writer and polemicist.