Clive Murphy


Clive Murphy is an author and social historian. He is well known for his "Ordinary Lives" series, in which he compiles individuals' oral histories and turns them into memoirs.

Biography

Murphy was born in Liverpool in 1935. He was educated and brought up in Ireland where he qualified as a solicitor in 1958. In the same year, he emigrated to London and eventually settled in Spitalfields in the early 1970s. His Summer Overtures was joint winner of Adam International Review's First Novel Award in 1972. Freedom for Mr. Mildew & Nigel Someone appeared to critical acclaim in one volume in 1975. A series of ten recorded autobiographies, the "Ordinary Lives" series, followed. With the "Ordinary Lives" series he compiles individuals' oral histories and turns them into memoirs by voices that otherwise would not be heard. The memoirs are based on interviews he taped with individuals who were residents of Spitalfields in the 1960s, with Murphy writing them in the 1970s. As of 2013, he continued to publish books in the series.
Since 1999, Clive Murphy has published ten books of gay, often comic, ribaldry. The tenth, To Hell with Thomas Bowdler, Mrs Grundy and Mary Whitehouse!, was published in 2015.

Books

Novels

All the books in this series are edited by Clive Murphy and published under the subjects' own names.