Born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, in 1939, Lindsay Clarke was the only child of Clara Clarke and Victor Metcalfe Clarke, a stoker in a cotton-mill. He was educated at Heath Grammar School in Halifax and at King’s College, Cambridge. The landscape of hills, moors and crags around Halifax informed the growth of his imagination, while King’s refined his sensibility and sharpened his intellect.
Lindsay has been married twice: from 1961 until 1970, to Carolyn Sara Pattinson (1940–2000), who was mother to their daughter and only child, Madeleine, and again in 1980 to the ceramic artist, Phoebe Clare Mackmin (1940–2016).
Lindsay’s working life has been devoted to his two principal passions, writing and education. In both contexts he has tried to put the power of the creative imagination – in both its inventive and compassionate aspects – into the service of the radical evolution of consciousness, which he believes is seeking to happen in these transitional times.
His first novel Sunday Whiteman was shortlisted for the David Higham First Novel Award; his second The Chymical Wedding was awarded the Whitbread Prize for Fiction in 1989 and his latest novel The Water Theatre was longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin International Literary Award. His novels have been translated into many languages, and in 2014 he was awarded a Civil List Pension in recognition of his services to literature.
