C. P. Snow was born in Leicester in 1905 and educated at a secondary school. He started his career as a professional scientist, though writing was always his ultimate aim. He won a research scholarship to Cambridge and became a Fellow of his college in 1930. He continued his academic life there until the beginning of the Second World War, by which time he had already begun his masterwork – the eleven-volume Strangers and Brothers sequence, two of which (The Masters and The New Men) were jointly awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1954. His other novels include The Search, The Malcontents and In Their Wisdom, the last of which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1974. Snow became a civil servant during the war and went on to become a Civil Service commissioner, for which he received a knighthood. He married a fellow novelist, Pamela Hansford Johnson, in 1950 and delivered his famous lecture, The Two Cultures, that same year. C. P. Snow died in 1980.
Mr Snow has established himself, on his own chosen ground, in an
eminent and conspicuous position among contemporary English
novelists
*New Statesman*
He has the solid worth of Trollope and Bennett at their best
*Reynold's News*
Together, the sequence presents a vivid portrait of British
academic, political and public life. Snow was that rare thing, a
scientist and novelist.
*Jeffrey Archer, Guardian*
Balzacian masterpieces of the age
*Philip Hensher, Telegraph*
Through [the Strangers and Brothers sequence] as in no other work
in our time we have explored the inner life of the new classless
class that is the 20th century Establishment
*New York Times*
A very considerable achievement … It brings into the novel themes
and locales never seen before (except perhaps in Trollope).
*Anthony Burgess*
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