Rob Wilkins was hired as a personal assistant to Terry Pratchett in 2000. In later years, he became the author’s business manager and caregiver. He is now Pratchett’s authorized biographer and the executor of his literary estate. Wilkins’s biography, Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes, will be an essential tool for any future study of Pratchett and his work.
Wilkins gives us a sharp picture of the way Pratchett worked day to day and a good sense of the irascible energy and submerged anger that underlays his humor. Wilkins says that no matter how much money he made, Pratchett never abandoned his working-class sensibility. He was grateful to his father for teaching him the value of engineering, and he was aware that his mother always worried that he didn’t have “a real job.” In fact, he got a late start as a full-time novelist, working as a journalist and public relations officer until the success of Equal Rites when he was 39. He was always a little worried the money wouldn’t last. He often refused offers of large advances he thought his books might not cover. He did not need to worry. Pratchett enjoyed his success, but it never changed his essential character.
His fight against early-onset Alzheimer’s deserves our respect, and Wilkin’s description of his last years brought more than one tear to my eyes.
I was disappointed that Wilkins does not tell us much about Pratchett’s relationship with his daughter, Rhianna, who has a successful career as a journalist and is an author of video games.
Finally, this is not a literary biography. Wilkins is still worried about costing Pratchett a reader by giving away plot details. ( )

The life of an exceptional energetic creative genius, written with feeling. ( )

A very easy to read and follow heartfelt biography - well it's never easy to read about the failing and death of a beloved author, but otherwise. Terry Pratchett's early life is covered well enough to give a sense of his roots and very early engagement in writing and F&SF. The real concentration is first on his working life with not quite cursory coverage of his marriage and copious "hippy" pastimes of his twenties. Once he embarks on the Discworld books it's very much a working biography, but the impression is very strongly that working was very much what Terry Pratchett was willing to share and his private life is to be left private.
Oh, and the footnotes are not documentation but asides and do slow reading considerably. Not that that's a problem and if you're only going through the book once, read them. ( )

Took me a while to start reading this (published in 2022), mostly because this book, of all the books around Terry Pratchett, will mean knowing something personal about the man behind the genius. Written by Terry's long-time assistant, and very good friend, Rob Wilkins, this is an emotional (inspiring / hilarious and frequently brutally honest) walk through exactly that. At the heart of the writing genius was a gloriously grumpy, irascible, kind and funny human being, with a capacity for vision and thought that was utterly astounding.

Wilkins came into Terry's life as a result of a very fun episode in which a bad case of staff envy overtook Terry on hearing novelist Jilly Cooper talk about her invaluable PA. Of course that could simply be Terry's way of justifying a deep seated understanding that the day to day wasn't his strong point - and how could it be with a proto-book on the page in front of him and goodness knows how many brewing quietly in the back of his mind. Aside from the day to day reality of dealing with "the author" Wilkins became a firm friend, almost a family member in some ways - dealing with the complications of the day to day, as well as life on the road before, and sadly after, Terry's increasing impairment due to the early and rare form of Alzheimer's he was dealing with.

To read about life in the day to day job of "the author" was fascinating, but to read about it as he gradually lost capacity such an emotional journey - Terry was a perfectionist, and a deep and creative thinker, who was gradually and inexorably losing all of that - his ability to think remained until the final book, but his ability to transcribe was lost. The idea that he managed to hold onto the complex Discworld and Chalk environments as he described the stories to Wilkins was heart-breaking. I can't imagine what it was like for Wilkins, and Terry's family as they stood by, unable to do anything but support, never able to stop the progress. In particular, the scene described as Neil Gaiman arrived to visit his dear friend one final time took me quite some time to read - the kindness, the gentleness of approach, the sense of profound sorrow and loss, and the sheer awfulness of a disease that takes the core of someone and leaves the shell behind was moving, beautiful and utterly devastating all at the same time.

Wilkins did an outstanding job with this biography (including footnotes which made me smile a lot). It can't have been easy to write, every moment a reminder of what those close to Terry lost. What we have all lost. Of course, there are always the books which are wonderful to read and re-read over and over again, the thought that there were other entries percolating in his mind, before he lost the ability to write them, and before he lost his life, well, it's sad. The thought that his presence has now gone from his family and friends way too early is awful.

This book definitely serves as a reminder that his name must continue to be spoken.

GNU Sir Terry Pratchett.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/terry-pratchett-life-footnotes ( )

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/bsfa-best-non-fiction/

This is also a very good book about a very important subject. A lot of us know parts of the Terry Pratchett story – I first heard him speak in public in Cambridge in, I think, 1987, and last saw him at the 2010 Discworld Convention, and spoke to him a couple of times in between. It’s lovely to have it all between two covers, with the laughs and the tears, and with Rob also explaining the complicated nature of his relationship with Terry over the years, beginning as amanuensis and ending as nurse. At 439 pages, it’s easily twice as long as the other four finalists combined, and also surely has more weight and relevance than the other four combined; I am voting for it and I expect that others will do so as well. ( )