Robert Nye's bestselling novel Falstaff, published in 1976, was described by Michael Ratcliffe as "one of the most ambitious and seductive novels of the decade", and went on to win both The Hawthornden Prize and Guardian Fiction Prize.
13 Facts About Robert Nye
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2.
Robert Nye's father was a civil servant, his mother a farmer's daughter.
3.
Robert Nye attended Southend High School for Boys and had published his first poem, "Kingfisher", in the London Magazine by the age of sixteen.
4.
In 1961 they moved to a remote cottage in north Wales, where Robert Nye devoted himself full-time to writing.
5.
Robert Nye's first book, Juvenilia 1, was a collection of poems.
6.
Robert Nye became the poetry editor for The Scotsman in 1967, and served as poetry critic of The Times from 1971 to 1996, while contributing regular reviews of new fiction to The Guardian.
7.
Robert Nye started writing stories for children to entertain his three young sons.
8.
Robert Nye provided the illustrations for Bee Hunter: Adventures of Beowulf and was an inspiration for some of Nye's most personal poetry of the time.
9.
Robert Nye has had poetry published in Arts Council anthologies and other journals, in Antonia Fraser's Scottish Love Poems.
10.
Robert Nye's next publication after Doubtfire was a return to children's literature, a freewheeling version of Beowulf that has remained in print in many editions since 1968.
11.
In 1970, Robert Nye published another children's book, Wishing Gold, and received the James Kennaway Memorial Award for his collection of short stories, Tales I Told My Mother.
12.
Robert Nye was commissioned by Covent Garden Opera House to write an unpublished libretto for Harrison Birtwistle's opera, Kronia.
13.
Robert Nye's selected poems, entitled The Rain and The Glass, published in 2005, won the Cholmondeley Award.