Michael Bywater (born 11 May 1953) is an English non-fiction writer and broadcaster. He has worked for many London newspapers and periodicals and contributed to the design of computer games.

Biography

Bywater was educated at the

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independe ...

Nottingham High School and at

Corpus Christi College, Cambridge Corpus Christi College (full name: "The College of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin Mary", often shortened to "Corpus"), is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. From the late 14th century through to the early 19th centur ...

. He was a long-running columnist for ''

The Independent on Sunday ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publish ...

'' and an early futurist for ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper Sunday editions, published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group, Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. ...

''. He spent ten years on the staff of ''

Punch Punch commonly refers to: * Punch (combat), a strike made using the hand closed into a fist * Punch (drink), a wide assortment of drinks, non-alcoholic or alcoholic, generally containing fruit or fruit juice Punch may also refer to: Places * Pun ...

'', where he wrote a regular computer column and the anonymous "Bargepole" column. He wrote regularly for ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' ...

'' and had been a contributing editor to '' Cosmopolitan'' and ''

Woman's Journal ''Woman's Journal'' was an American women's rights periodical published from 1870 to 1931. It was founded in 1870 in Boston, Massachusetts, by Lucy Stone and her husband Henry Browne Blackwell as a weekly newspaper. In 1917 it was purchased ...

''. He also writes regularly on high-tech subjects for ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

'' and a wide variety of technology magazines. He is termed a cultural critic for the ''

New Statesman The ''New Statesman'' is a British political and cultural magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney and Beatrice Webb and other leading members o ...

''. In 1998 he was part of BBC Radio 4's five-part political satire programme ''Cartoons, Lampoons, and Buffoons''. He also supervises on the ''Tragedy'' paper for a number of

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge beca ...

colleges and in 2006 was Writer-in-Residence at

Magdalene College, Cambridge Magdalene College ( ) is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1428 as a Benedictine hostel, in time coming to be known as Buckingham College, before being refounded in 1542 as the College of St Mar ...

. Bywater was the inspiration for his close friend

Douglas Adams Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English author and screenwriter, best known for ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''. Originally a 1978 BBC radio comedy, ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' developed into a " ...

's character Dirk Gently. Bywater was previously identified as a

young fogey "Young fogey" is a term humorously applied, in British context, to some younger-generation, rather buttoned-down men, many of whom were writers and journalists. The term is attributed to Alan Watkins writing in 1984 in '' The Spectator''. However ...

. In ''The Young Fogey Handbook'' (Poole, Dorset: Javelin Books, 1985), author Suzanne Lowry writes: "Michael Bywater, 30-year old ''Punch'' columnist and former trendy who once worked in films, made bold to criticise

Burberry Burberry is a British luxury fashion house established in 1856 by Thomas Burberry headquartered in London, England. It currently designs and distributes ready to wear, including trench coats (for which it is most famous), leather accessor ...

s for the inferior quality of their product - the

trench coat A trench coat or trenchcoat is a variety of coat made of waterproof heavy-duty fabric, originally developed for British Army officers before the First World War, and becoming popular while used in the trenches. Originally made from gabardine ...

s are not what they were in the days of the trenches. Burberrys riposted that indeed they could live up to their past, and made Bywater a coat to the 1915 design devised by Kitchener and Burberry – complete with camel hair lining to protect a gentleman officer's flesh on the field..."

Games, books, music

In the mid-1980s, Bywater co-designed and co-wrote several interactive fiction games. He collaborated with

on '' Bureaucracy'' and the never-completed '' Milliways: The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe'' for

Infocom Infocom was an American software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced a business application, a relational database called ''Cornerstone''. Infocom was founded on ...

, and with Anita Sinclair on '' Jinxter'' for

Magnetic Scrolls Magnetic Scrolls was a British video game developer active between 1984 and 1990. A pioneer of audiovisually elaborate text adventure games, it was one of the two largest and most acclaimed interactive fiction developers of the 1980s. ''Magneti ...

. He revisited computer games in the late 1990s as a member of the writing team on another Douglas Adams project, '' Starship Titanic''. Bywater's book ''Lost Worlds'', on the human tendency to nostalgia, appeared in 2004. His subsequent ''Big Babies'', on the infantilisation of Western culture, was published in November 2006. A book on his journeys round the

Australian Outback The Outback is a remote, vast, sparsely populated area of Australia. The Outback is more remote than the bush. While often envisaged as being arid, the Outback regions extend from the northern to southern Australian coastlines and encompass a n ...

in a

Cessna 172 The Cessna 172 Skyhawk is an American four-seat, single-engine, Monoplane#High, high wing, fixed-wing aircraft made by the Cessna Aircraft Company.

continues to be a work in progress, due out "soon". Bywater is a certified

pilot An aircraft pilot or aviator is a person who controls the flight of an aircraft by operating its directional flight controls. Some other aircrew members, such as navigators or flight engineers, are also considered aviators, because they a ...

and

harpsichord A harpsichord ( it, clavicembalo; french: clavecin; german: Cembalo; es, clavecín; pt, cravo; nl, klavecimbel; pl, klawesyn) is a musical instrument played by means of a musical keyboard, keyboard. This activates a row of levers that turn a ...

ist. He has one daughter, Benedicta, who played church organ with

Gary Brooker Gary Brooker (29 May 1945 – 19 February 2022) was an English singer and pianist, and the founder and lead singer of the rock band Procol Harum. Early life Born in Hackney Hospital, East London, on 29 May 1945, Brooker grew up in Hackney ...

for the "Within Our House" charity concert, also released on CD.

References

External links

Essay taken from Bywater's book, "Big Babies"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bywater, Michael 1953 births British writers Fellows of Magdalene College, Cambridge Living people People educated at Nottingham High School