Philip Ardagh

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Philip Ardagh is the best-selling British children’s author of the Eddie Dickens books, currently in 31 languages (2007).

Philip Ardagh has written over sixty books, many of them non-fiction, including The Hieroglyphs Handbook: Teach Yourself Ancient Egyptian, The Truth About Christmas and Why Are Castles Castle-Shaped?His name is Irish and that is why it is spelled so strange.. He is best-known, however, for his fiction: The Eddie Dickens Trilogy (Awful End, Dreadful Acts and Terrible Times) and The Further Adventures of Eddie Dickens (Dubious Deeds, Horrendous Habits and Final Curtain) and for his Unlikely Exploits (The Fall of Fergal, Heir of Mystery and The Rise of the House of McNally).

In 2004/5 he collaborated with rock legend Sir Paul McCartney and illustrator-animator Geoff Dunbar to create Sir Paul’s first children’s book ‘High In the Clouds’. Published simultaneously in the UK and US and other countries around the world in October 2005 there was an initial print run of half-a-million copies in the United States.


Contents

[edit] Early years

Philip Ardagh (pronounced ar-der) was born on September 11th 1961 and christened in Sir Christopher Wren’s domed-masterpiece St Paul’s Cathedral, London (by the Canon Residentiary, Chancellor and Chapter Treasurer, Frederick Hood, who co-wrote, with poet laureate John Betjeman, the introduction to the book Folly Farm by philosopher Cyril Joad). Ardagh was educated privately at five different schools but is reluctant to say which ones “in case I choose to write about thinly disguised versions of them in the future,” he explained in one interview. “I want to avoid possible litigation.”

Not a fan of conventional education, Ardagh didn’t apply to go to university but got a place on what was then Britain’s only advertising copywriting course, at Watford College of Art. (This had nothing to do with copyright issues, but with writing copy. In other words, creating advertisements.)

[edit] Career

After a placement at London advertising agency Darcy McManus & Masius, next to the Libyian embassy in St James’s Square, he found full-time employment at McCann-Erickson (owned by the US multi-national corporation Interpublic), beneath the Telecom Tower (formerly the Post Office Tower) where he first met children’s author Anthony Horowitz, who joined the agency just as he was leaving. Ardagh retired from advertising in 1984 to become a hospital cleaner (and to write when he wasn’t scrubbing floors). He later became a library assistant for the London Borough of Lewisham Leisure Services, where one rather astute assistant librarian described him as “resting between gigs”.

[edit] Eddie Dickens

After years of working seven days a week writing non-fiction titles and retelling myths and legends (often for ‘fixed-fee’ non-royalty payments), Philip Ardagh became an overnight success with his runaway best-seller Awful End.

Ardagh has achieved both critical and popular acclaim for his work. Set in Victorian England, his Eddie Dickens books have been described as “A cross between Dickens and Monty Python” (The Guardian) and as “a national treasure” (The Independent). Strangely popular in Germany, he has won both the Luchs (Lynx) Prize and the prestigious Deutscher Jugendliteratur prize, for which he received a statuette which makes an Oscar look lightweight.

In the US, some critics accused Ardagh of “jumping on the Lemony Snicket bandwagon”, an accusation which must have hurt Ardagh seeing as how he wrote the first Eddie Dickens book, Awful End, as letters to his nephew Ben long before the first Snicket book was published anywhere in the world. Add to this the fact that, when looking beyond how his publishers might choose to package or promote his books, Ardagh’s and Snicket’s work have few similarities except for a shared love of language. Ardagh once described the Snicket books as being more a homage to Poe, while his own Eddie Dickens books were a homage to Charles Dickens (though the title ‘The Rise of the House of McNally’ does sound suspiciously like Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’).

[edit] Movie

The movie rights to the Eddie Dickens books were optioned by Circle of Confusion’s Jason Lust for Warner Bros, with director Francis Lawrence (Constatine) slated in to direct. The option was renewed and Lawrence was replaced by young Canadian director Brad Peyton. Lust has since become a key player in Henson’s -- of Muppets fame -- movie division, but remained a producer on the Eddie Dickens project until Warner Brothers' second option ran out at the end of 2006.

[edit] Trivia

As well as children’s books, Ardagh has written two humorous titles for adults: The Not-So-Very-Nice Goings-On At Victoria Lodge: Without Illustrations By The Author and The Silly Side of Sherlock Holmes: A Brand New Adventure Using A Bunch of Old Pictures. The first uses pictures taken from the 19th-century Girls’ Own Paper and the second uses illustrations of the original Sherlock Holmes stories taken from The Strand Magazine. He’s also a regular reviewer of children’s books for The Guardian, and writes plays and short stories for BBC radio. In the six-week radio serial ‘Secret Undercover Vets On Ice’ he played himself and also ‘pigeon on a ledge’.

Philip Ardagh appeared as an uncredited extra (background artist) in If Money Be the Food Of Love, Play On, an episode of the cult British TV series Minder, first broadcast in 1984. He played ‘man in pub’ and ‘man on tow path’. Being so tall, he was kept a good distance from the star (Dennis Waterman) on screen by director Terry Green. Ardagh's brother, Martin, provided the car -- a 1956 Standard Vanguard -- central to the story.

[edit] Personal life

Philip Ardagh is of Irish extraction. The Gaelic name for Ardagh is Árd Archadh which means the “high field”. He is married to a Doctor Coffey with one son.

[edit] Books Written

Philip Ardagh has written over seventy books, including:

[edit] Fiction

  • THE EDDIE DICKENS TRILOGY:
    • Dreadful Acts
    • Terrible Times
  • THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF EDDIE DICKENS:
    • Dubious Deeds
    • Horrendous Habits
    • Final Curtain
  • UNLIKELY EXPLOITS:
    • The Fall of Fergal
    • Heir of Mystery
    • The Rise of the House of McNally
  • High In the Clouds

(with Sir Paul McCartney & Geoff Dunbar)

  • FOR ADULTS:
    • The Not-So-Very-Nice Goings-On At Victoria Lodge

Without Illustrations by the Author

    • The Silly Side of Sherlock Holmes

A Brand New Adventure Using A Bunch of Old Pictures

[edit] Non-fiction

  • THE HANDBOOKS:
    • The Hieroglyphs Handbook

Teach Yourself Ancient Egyptian

    • The Archaeologist's Handbook

An Insider's Guide to Digging Up The Past

  • Why Are Castles Castle-Shaped?
  • Did Dinosaurs Snore?
  • THE WOW! CHANGING THE WORLD BOOKS:
    • WOW! Ideas that Changed the World
    • WOW! Events that Changed the World
    • WOW! Inventions that Changed the World
    • WOW! Discoveries that Changed the World
  • TRUTH BOOKS:
    • The Truth About Christmas
    • The Truth About Love
    • The Truth About Fairies
  • The History Detectives series
  • The Get A Life series

[edit] Awards

[edit] External links

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