Alexander Masters
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Template:DMCAAlexander Wright Masters[1] is an English author, screenwriter, and worker with the homeless. He lives in Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Profile
Masters is the son of authors Dexter Masters and Joan Brady.[2] He was educated at Bedales School, and took a first in physics from King's College London. He then went to St Edmund's College, Cambridge for a further degree in maths, and then the beginnings of a PhD in the philosophy of quantum mechanics. He was studying for an MSc degree in mathematics with the Open University, and working as an assistant at a hostel for the homeless in Cambridge, when he wrote his first book.
He is the writer and illustrator of the biography Stuart: A Life Backwards (Template:ISBN), his best-known book. As the title suggests, the book starts from Shorter's adult life, tracing it back in time through his troubled childhood, examining the effects his family, schooling and disability had on his eventual state. Masters authored the book with Shorter's active and enthusiastic help.[citation needed]
Masters and Shorter jointly helped campaign to secure the release of the Cambridge Two(Ruth Wyner and John Brock) who had been convicted in 1999 of failing to prevent heroin from being dealt at the Cambridge homeless shelter they were managing. Masters helped to organise protests and provided administrative help whilst Shorter undertook a three day occupation of the pavement in front of the Home Office in protest of the conviction. Wyner and Brock were released following a successful appeal in July 2000, and Wyner later praised Masters and Shorter's vigorous campaigning, saying: "I owe them everything."[3][4][5]
Alexander Masters won an Arts Council Writers' Award for Stuart and went on to win the Guardian First Book Award and the Hawthornden Prize.[6] The book was also shortlisted (in the biography category) for the Whitbread Book-of-the-Year Award, the Samuel Johnson Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award in the United States. He also wrote a screenplay adaptation, filmed in 2006 for the BBC and HBO, and broadcast in September 2007. It won the Royal Television Society Award in the Single Drama category and the Reims International Television award for the Best TV Screenplay.
In 2007, he collaborated with photographer Adrian Clarke on the book Gary's Friends, chronicling the lives of drug and alcohol abusers in North East England.[7]
Masters is also the author of The Genius in My Basement (Template:ISBN), a biography of mathematician Simon P. Norton.[8]
In 2016, Masters published A Life Discarded: 148 Diaries Found in a skip, Template:ISBN (US title A Life Discarded: 148 Diaries Found in the Trash, Template:ISBN).[9][10][11][12]
Alexander Masters has been portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch in Stuart: A Life Backwards the 2007 BBC dramatization of his biography of Stuart Shorter.[13]
Publications
- Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Masters, Alexander (2011), The Genius in My Basement, Harper Collins Ome, ISBN 978-0-00-744527-1
References
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- ^ Cambridge University List of Members Up to 31 July 1998, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 523
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Joan Brady (2008). "My Life". Archived from the original on 4 May 2011.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Masters, Alexander (6 July 2005). "In from the cold". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on 22 February 2025. Retrieved 22 February 2025.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."'I was amazed how quickly I became a prisoner. It is brutalizing' – The Justice Gap". Retrieved 23 February 2025.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Edemariam, Aida (9 December 2005). "My friend Stuart". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 23 February 2025.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Alexander Masters wins the Guardian First Book Award 2005". The Guardian. 9 December 2005.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Gary's Friends by Adrian Clarke, Alexander Masters | Waterstones". www.waterstones.com. Retrieved 14 October 2025.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Brown, Helen (12 September 2011). "Review of The Genius in My Basement by Alexander Masters". The Independent.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Harrison, Melissa (13 May 2016). "'A Life Discarded: 148 Diaries Found in a Skip', by Alexander Masters". Financial Times. Retrieved 14 November 2016.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Cooke, Rachel (3 May 2016). "Review of A Life Discarded by Alexander Masters". The Guardian.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Toyne, Becky (13 July 2016). "Review of A Life Discarded by Alexander Masters". National Post.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Masters, Alexander (2016). A Life Discarded: 148 Diaries Found in the Trash (1st American ed.). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-17818-5.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."BBC - Press Office - Stuart: A Life Backwards". www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 14 October 2025.
External links
- Alexander Masters at IMDbTemplate:Edit at Wikidata
- Alexander Masters' staff CV, Kingston University department of humanities website
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