Stuart: A Life Backwards is a book by Alexander Masters, the biography of Stuart Shorter. It explores how a young boy, somewhat disabled from birth, became mentally unstable, criminal and violent, living homeless on the streets of Cambridge. As the title suggests, the book starts from Shorter's adult life, tracing it back in time through his troubled childhood, examining the effects his family, schooling and disability had on his eventual state.
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Stuart: A Life Backwards is a book by Alexander Masters, the biography of Stuart Shorter. It explores how a young boy, somewhat disabled from birth, became mentally unstable, criminal and violent, living homeless on the streets of Cambridge. As the title suggests, the book starts from Shorter's adult life, tracing it back in time through his troubled childhood, examining the effects his family, schooling and disability had on his eventual state.
The book won the Whitbread Book-of-the-Year Award in 2005 for biography, and the 2006 Hawthornden Prize. A television dramatisation was also made with the same name, starring Tom Hardy.
Stuart Shorter (born Stuart Clive Turner on 19 September 1968 in Cambridge - died 6 July 2002 in Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire) was a homeless man and advocate whose life was chronicled by Alexander Masters in his book.
Stuart was born in a condemned cottage on the edge of Cambridge, to his father, Rex, a gypsy and his mother, Judith, a barmaid. Judith later...
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