Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett (OBE), knight of the realm and author of the incredible Discworld series, standing at 40 Volumes, with the latest being Raising Steam. He was the UK's best selling Author of the 1990's and up to December 2007 had sold 55 million books worldwide in 33 languages.

Terry Pratchett (Terence David John Pratchett) was born in Beaconsfield in the county of Buckinghamshire. He passed the eleven plus and as a result attended High Wycombe Technical High School. At the tender age of 13, terry published his first short story "the hades business" in the school magazine which was published commercially 2 years later.

Terry left school at 17 with 5 "O levels" to begin a career in journalism, working for "Bucks Free Press" however he continued to study A level english and a proficiency course in jornalism.

In 1968, Terry was interviewing Peter Bander Van Duren who was a Director of a small publishing company and happened to mention that he has written a novel called "The Carpet People", this gained Peter's interest and the novel was published in 1971. The Carpet People was followed by 2 Science Fiction novels The Dark Side of the Sun in 1976 and Strata in 1981.

In 1983 Terry took a change of career direction by becoming Press Officer for the "Central Electricity Generating Board" which covered 3 nuclear power stations. Terry has commented that he had demonstrated "impeccable timing" by making this career change so soon after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania, USA, and said he would "write a book about his experiences, if he thought anyone would believe it!"

1983 was also the year that Terry published the very first Discworld Novel The Colour of Magic which was very well received. The Light Fantastic followed in 1986 with Equal Rites and Mort published in 1987. After Mort was published, Terry finished working for the Central Electricity Generating Board to concentrate on writing full time. Since that time Terry has written an average of 2 books per year and his book sales in the UK alone amount to more than 2.5 million per year.

2003 Marked a confirmation of his position as one of britains best loved authors by joining Charles Dickens as the only Authors with five novels in the "BBC's Big Read Top 100", he is also the author with the most in the "top 200" with 15 books.

In August 2007, Terry was misdiagnosed as having had a minor "stroke between 2004 and 2005, believing to have damaged the right side of his brain. The effects of this included his motor skills and on 11th December 2007, Terry announced that he had been newly diagnosed with a form of Early Onset Alzheimers Disease which explained the "stroke" diagnosis and loss of motor function. This rare form of Alzheimers causes areas at the back of the brain to shrink and is called "Posterior Cortical Atrophy". Terry appealed to his fans to "keep things Cheerful" and advised he was taking things with a mild optimism and quite philosophically.

In March 2008 Terry donated £494 000 ($1 000 000) to the Alzheimers Research Trust after saying he had spoken to at least three brain cancer survivors but had not yet met an Alzheimers survivor. He was also shocked that the funding for Alzheimers research is just 3% of the Funding for cancer cures. This has since inspired a campaign by his fans to raise another £494 000 ($1 000 000) to "Match it for Pratchett".

Terry Pratchett continues to write, look after his greenhouse of carnivorous plants and has recently begun a documentary with the BBC about his illness. He has recently published his first book outside of the discworld series in some time, called "nation".