page_title: Terence Wheeler
section_title: Early life and education
hierarchical_section_title: Terence Wheeler / Early life and education
caption_attribution_description: English: Cover of The Wreck of the Rat Trap - a novel by Terence Wheeler. Cover by Sara Wheeler.
context_page_description: Terence Wheeler was a British writer. His debut novel The Conjunction set in India was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1970. He published two other novels, From Home in Heaven also set in India and The Wreck of the Rat Trap set in Portsmouth where he grew up. He wrote two screen plays titled Spice Island, Farewell and Brent Geese both of which were broadcast by the BBC in the nineteen seventies. He also wrote short stories two of which "The Philadelphia Connection" and "Safe Wintering" were published by Macmillan in their annual collection Winter's Tales.
  He lived in Whitstable, Kent and died on 25 December 2018 at the age of 82.
context_section_description: Wheeler was born in Portsmouth, England in 1936.  His parents were Eddie and Florrie Wheeler and he had a brother Barry.
  Eddie was a worker in Portsmouth dockyard and joined the Marines in 1941. 
  As a naval dockyard, Portsmouth was subjected to heavy bombing during the war.  To escape the bombs, Florrie evacuated the two brothers to comparatively rural Waterlooville.  Wheeler's experiences during the war years would form the basis for his third novel, The Wreck of the Rat Trap.   
  Despite being active and staunch Marxists, Eddie and Florrie sent Wheeler to a Roman Catholic primary school where they thought he would get a good education.  The dissonance between the Marxism of home and the traditional Catholic doctrine of school was intense for him.  Nonetheless, he excelled, passed his eleven-plus exam and progressed to a local grammar school.
  The years at grammar school were happy and productive thanks to the influence of his charismatic English master who fired his love of literature and enabled him to gain a place at Oxford to read English. 
  The public school culture of Oxford was a shock for the boy from Portsmouth.  However, he immersed himself into the world of the University Dramatic Society.  His time at Oxford cemented his love of words and language and his practical knowledge of the theatre.
  Wheeler graduated from Oxford and took up his first teaching post at a comprehensive school in Holloway.
  Whilst at Oxford, Wheeler met Sara Tooze whom he married in 1959.  Their marriage would last nearly 60 years and together they would have a son and two daughters.
  Sara, an artist trained at Goldsmiths College of Art in London, would design the covers of two of Wheeler's books.
caption: The Wreck of the Rat Trap. Cover design by Sara Wheeler.
exif: {}