Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières

He plays flute, mandolin, clarinet and guitar, although he considers himself an 'enthusiastic but badly-educated and erratic' amateur.

He has never remarried.ĭe Bernières is an avid musician. Eventually, he gained equal custodial rights. In 2009 he separated from his partner, actress Cathy Gill, who took custody of their children, Robin and Sophie.

As of 2008 he lived near Bungay in Suffolk. Before he began to write full-time he held a wide variety of jobs, including being a mechanic, a motorcycle messenger and an English teacher in Colombia. He next attended the Victoria University of Manchester and the Institute of Education, University of London. He was educated at Grenham House school-where he reported the pupils were subjected to 'hellish abuse' -and at Bradfield College, and joined the army when he was 18, but left after four months of the officer training course at Sandhurst. The name de Bernières is inherited from a French Huguenot ancestor. de Bernières-Smart was born near Woolwich in London in 1954 and grew up in Surrey. Politically, he identifies himself as Eurosceptic and has voiced his support for the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union. On 16 July 2008, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in the Arts by the De Montfort University in Leicester, which he had attended when it was Leicester Polytechnic. It has been translated into over 11 languages and is an international best-seller. It was also shortlisted for the 1994 Sunday Express Book of the Year. Captain Corelli's Mandolin was published in the following year, winning the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book. In 1993 de Bernières was selected as one of the '20 Best of Young British Novelists', part of a promotion in Granta magazine.

He is known for his 1994 historical war novel Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Louis de Bernières (born 8 December 1954) is an English novelist. De Bernières at the 2006 Humber Mouth festival

Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières