Dominic Cooper (born 1944) is a British novelist, poet and watchmaker. He won the
Somerset Maugham Award
The Somerset Maugham Award is a British literary prize given each year by the Society of Authors
The Society of Authors (SoA) is a United Kingdom trade union for professional writers, illustrators and literary translators, founded in 1884 to ...
for his novel ''The Dead of Winter'' (1975).
Background & career
Born near
Winchester
Winchester (, ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city in Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government Districts of England, district, at the western end of the South Downs N ...
, he is the son of musicologist
Martin Cooper and artist Mary Cooper.
After university, he worked in London for the
Decca Record Company and for the publishers, Fabbri & Partners. In 1970, he went to live in
Iceland
Iceland is a Nordic countries, Nordic island country between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is culturally and politically linked with Europe and is the regi ...
, began to concentrate on writing, and taught English in a language school in
Reykjavík
Reykjavík is the Capital city, capital and largest city in Iceland. It is located in southwestern Iceland on the southern shore of Faxaflói, the Faxaflói Bay. With a latitude of 64°08′ N, the city is List of northernmost items, the worl ...
to earn a living.
In 1972, he moved to Sweden and then to the
Isle of Mull
The Isle of Mull or simply Mull ( ) is the second-largest island of the Inner Hebrides (after Skye) and lies off the west coast of Scotland in the Council areas of Scotland, council area of Argyll and Bute.
Covering , Mull is the fourth-lar ...
in Argyll, Scotland, where he drew inspiration from the landscape and people to write his first novel, ''The Dead of Winter'', published in 1975. This won him the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976.
Little of his poetry has been published, but commenting on the poetic quality of his fiction, he has said: ″By nature I feel myself to be first and foremost a poet ... but poetry for me has always been an essentially private affair and I have never felt any great need for it to be published.″
He has described writing his fourth book, ''The Horn Fellow'', set in Northern Europe around 500 BC, as “perhaps the greatest experience of my life” and its publication as being met “with a mixture of incomprehension and vague ridicule”.
[from archived, unabridged interview supporting article of 31.03.2007 .] He has written little during the intervening years.
In 1973 he undertook training in
horology
Chronometry or horology () is the science studying the measurement of time and timekeeping. Chronometry enables the establishment of standard measurements of time, which have applications in a broad range of social and scientific areas. ''Hor ...
in
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...
and since then he has worked restoring clocks and watches. He returned to the
West Highlands
The Highlands (; , ) is a historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots language replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlan ...
in 1985 and soon afterwards built himself a house on a remote part of the North Argyll coast where he now lives.
Works
::''The Dead of Winter''
:::::::Chatto & Windus 1975
:::::::St Martin’s Press, NY 1975
:::::::Faber & Faber 1985
:::::::Thirsty Press 2010
:::::::Italian edition, Einaudi 1989
:::::::Spanish edition, Mario Muchnik 2003
:::::::French edition, Métailié 2006
:::::::''Somerset Maugham Award'' 1976
::''Sunrise''
:::::::Chatto & Windus 1977
:::::::Faber & Faber 1985
::''Men at Axlir''
:::::::Chatto & Windus 1978
:::::::St Martin’s Press, NY 1978
:::::::Collins Harvill 1988
:::::::Icelandic edition, Örn og Örlygur 1980
::''The Horn Fellow''
:::::::Faber & Faber 1987
::''Jack Fletcher''
:::::::Encounter 1978
::''Judgements of Value'' (editor)
:::::::OUP 1988
::''The Open Places'' (essay)
:::::::self-published 1989
also short stories, poems, essays and the script for ''Jack Fletcher'', BBC TV 1979.
References
External links
Personal website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cooper, Dominic
Scottish novelists
Scottish poets
Living people
1944 births