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27 May 2010 09:26:40
Retirement was always unlikely to dull the energies of Nigel Robinson who after a successful career in marketing and publishing has just achieved the University’s first PhD in Creative Writing.
Driven by new challenges, Nigel, 63, dug into his pension to undertake an MA by Research in Creative Writing at the University, graduating in 2005. Hooked on research – he describes it as a “drug-free high” – Nigel then embarked on his PhD.
He chose as his subject a fictional character he had created earlier in his writing career, Hippo Yeoman, a Jacobean apothecary who uses his powers of intuition and clue reading to attempt to foil a plot to assassinate King James. To lend the novel greater authenticity, Nigel drew upon a database he created of 40,000 words and phrases he researched from the period.
“Every time I wrote a sentence I had to look it up to see if there was an equivalent historical word I could use. It was extremely slow going but it was great fun with lots of in-jokes,” said Nigel. When submitting his novel for evaluation Nigel also included a supporting 80,000-word glossary and 90,000-word thesis.
Keith Jebb, the University’s Senior Lecturer and programme leader in Creative Writing, said the sheer volume or work was double that of most PhDs.
“It was a remarkable piece not just for its size but also for its historical knowledge. There are details about how people would garden and the food they ate; the amount of social knowledge and degree of minutiae was absolutely remarkable.
“Nigel’s thesis while being a great piece of scholarship is also extremely playful, exploiting the notion of a literary hoax. That sense of questioning academic earnestness and playing with people’s expectations is a valid tradition.”
And there seems no end to Nigel’s creative output. He has set the Hippo Yeoman character in an Elizabethan detective novel for which he is currently seeking an agent. Mentored by crime novelist Michelle Spring, he is hoping to have the novel published by the end of this year.
“Having been a commercial writer for 40 years, I always knew I could write. The creative writing course has given me a love of research; it has been the most intellectually stimulating time of my life,” he added.
Latest news» 2010» May» Nigel takes a novel approach to his PhD
