Michael de Larrabeiti
| Michael de Larrabeiti | |
|---|---|
| Born |
18 August 1934 Lambeth, London, England, United Kingdom |
| Died | 18 April 2008 (aged 73) Oxford, England, United Kingdom |
| Occupation | Novelist, journalist |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fantasy literature |
| Notable works | The Borrible Trilogy |
| Website | |
| michaeldelarrabeiti |
|
Michael de Larrabeiti (18 August 1934 – 18 April 2008) was an English novelist and travel writer. He is best known for writing The Borrible Trilogy, which has been cited as an influence by writers in the New Weird movement.
One of five children, de Larrabeiti was born in St Thomas' Hospital and was mostly brought up in Battersea, South London. His mother was of working-class Irish descent and lived most of her life in the Lavender Hill area of London; his father was a Basque from Bilbao and was often absent.
In 1939 he was evacuated to Arundel in West Sussex, before returning to London in 1940, only to be evacuated again to Askern, a mining village near Doncaster in Yorkshire, in the winter. At the end of the Second World War he returned to London and, after failing the 11-plus, was educated at Clapham Central Secondary School. The teachers he had here, often men who had returned from fighting in the war determined to make a better world, were a great influence on de Larrabeiti, something he would later fictionalise in Journal of a Sad Hermaphrodite.
After leaving school at sixteen, de Larrabeiti initially worked as a librarian at a public library on Magdalen Road in Earlsfield, south London. In 1952 he began attending Battersea Polytechnic with a view towards taking A-Levels and attending university. This ambition took nine years to fulfill, mainly because of economic reasons. During this period de Larrabeiti, guided by his elder brothers, worked at many things, initially as a cinema projectionist in a 3D cinema in Festival Gardens, Battersea Park during the Festival of Britain. His experiences in the Gardens are recorded in A Rose Beyond the Thames. He later worked as a cameraman in documentary films and as a travel guide in France and Morocco.
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