“My earliest influences were Stan Barstow, John Braine, Alan Sillitoe, David Storey and Barry Hines. I was born and raised in Ossett in West Yorkshire, which is where Stan Barstow is also from and, although I have never met him, it was an inspiration knowing that the author of A Kind of Loving lived on the next street. From these writers I moved onto Greene and Chandler, Beckett and Burroughs. But my teenage reading aside, generally I have been influenced more by individual books rather than perhaps the entire work of an author, and as much by non-fiction as fiction. But to be honest, I think the single biggest influence upon me was growing up when and where I did. I was ten years old and five miles away when Jayne McDonald was murdered in Leeds on 26 June 1977; from that day until the capture of the Yorkshire Ripper on Friday 2 January 1981, I was obsessed with trying to solve the case…”

At the British Council, David Peace will talk about his book "1980", recently published in Italy by Marco Tropea Editore and will discuss crime writing with the highly-acclaimed Neapolitan novelist Diego De Silva and the Director of the Noir in Festival film festival, Giorgio Gosetti.

Dates:

17 November 2004 (h. 18:30)

Venue:   Rome

British Council, Via Quattro Fontane 20

Information:

tel. 06 47814206