Tom Sharpe was an English author, born in Holloway, London in 1928, and raised in Croydon. His father, Reverend George Coverdale, was a Unitarian minister who was actively involved in politics during the 1930s. Sharpe was educated at Lancing College and Pembroke College, Cambridge. After completing his National Service with the Royal Marines, he moved to South Africa in 1951, where he worked in social welfare and teaching in Natal until his deportation in 1961.
Sharpe is best known for his satirical novels, including the Wilt series, as well as Blott on the Landscape and Porterhouse Blue. His experiences in South Africa served as inspiration for his novels Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure. From 1963 to 1972, Sharpe worked as a history lecturer at the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology, which provided the backdrop for his Wilt series. Sharpe's novels feature sharp and outrageous satire, targeting a wide range of subjects, including the apartheid regime, dumbed-down education, English class snobbery, political extremism, bureaucracy, and stupidity. His work often includes characters indulging in bizarre sexual practices and graphic language in dialogue. Sharpe's novels have been translated into many languages and have been bestsellers in several countries.