James W. Clarke

James Clarke was born in Leicester on 8th May 1945 - two hours after his birth the Germans surrendered. Whether the events are connected Jim cannot say!

Jim's excursions into fiction include both novels and plays, and he has also written an autobiography based on his life in the Shetlands. He also writes poetry and occasionally performs this at venues in Blackpool.

Brought up in Leicester, James began writing by producing pantomimes for his local drama group before going to Oxford to become a Religious Education teacher. He gave up the idea of a teaching career in order to join the Youth Service, studying at West Hill, Selly Oak, Birmingham and later at Manchester Polytechnic, and started his professional life in Walsal. Moving to Blackburn via Islington, in London, he was the first youth worker in the country to hand out free condoms.

Circumstances led him to the Shetland Islands, where he worked a croft and also ran the local drama group, writing plays and winning a prize for best actor at the Shetland Festival. He would have stayed on the Shetlands but for an incident with a pregnant cow which made a spirited attempt to kill him. This incident made him unable to work his croft and he returned unexpectedly to Leicester. He joined a local community drama group and wrote plays for them, winning several prizes in the Leicester and Leicestershire One Act Play Festival, and the Nottingham Play Festival. His play An Interview with Macbeth netted Best Stage Presentation and Best Actress, and Shades of Isis won Best Supporting Actress and Best Director. He also took up the novels he had begun in the Shetland Isles, and revised them, adding a third novel to his hilarious Wetlund Chronicles (Gorilla Warfare), aided in this enterprise by his fourth wife, fellow writer Jenny Clarke.

Currently Jim is working on a novel about Will Shakespeare and Kit Marlowe, whilst Jenny is writing a controversial history of the playwrights.