Patrick Gale (2026)
The recipient of the sixth TILA is Patrick Gale for his novels A Place Called Winter and Love Lane.
Gale's own life has been as rich and wide-ranging as his eighteen novels. His father and grandfather were prison governors. As a child, he boarded at the Winchester cathedral school where he sang and showed considerable talent on the cello. After Oxford and a colourful young adult life, he settled in Cornwall, where he still lives, nurturing a garden which has become legendary and includes England's westernmost walled rose garden.
His novels have largely reflected this quintessential Englishness, but for the two which specifically prompted his selection for the 2026 TILA, A Place Called Winter, and Love Lane, he cast his net further afield. Over a decade separates the publication of the two novels, and they can be read separately, but for those who loved A Place Called Winter, to start reading the recently published Love Lane is to feel the joy of picking up an old and treasured friendship almost without interruption.
The main character, Harry Cane, is loosely based on Gale's own somewhat mysterious "Cowboy Grandpa", and emerges as one of contemporary literature's most engaging and sympathetic characters. Born into a privileged Edwardian family, the threat of scandal turns his family against him and drives him into exile as a settler farmer on the Canadian prairie, where he endures great hardship and is forced to learn a wide range of skills to survive.
Without judgment, he meets people of kindness and villainy, of generosity and malice, of confidence and confusion, and he learns hard life lessons that would potentially break others. Harry however is no ordinary man. There is a great gentleness and sweetness of character in him which make him vulnerable, but there is also an inherent decency and deep resilience. He is profoundly compassionate, loving, accepting and patient, all without flamboyance or vanity. The story of his journey out and his ultimate coming home is written in Gale's clear and lovely prose, and is deeply moving.
It is a great pleasure to award a TILA to such a beautiful writer.
The official announcement will as usual be made at the Cheltenham Literary Festival in October.
