A. A. Gill was a successful British writer and critic. A. A. Gill is also was known for writing food and travel and was a restaurant reviewer for The Sunday Times as well as a TV critic.
Death
On November 20, 2016, A. A. Gill wrote of his dedication to Formby in his Sunday Times column and also announced that he was suffering from cancer’s absolute English. In his final article published on December 11, 2016, in the Sunday Times Journal, he announced that he had a primary lung tumor with metastases to his neck and pancreas, and described the medical attention he was seeking, with a commentary on his experiences as a terminal cancer patient at the National Health Service. Sadly, on the morning of 10 December 2016, Gill died in London at the age of 62.
Early Life and Childhood
A. A. Gill was born on 28 June 1954, in Edinburgh, Scotland. Whereas, he was born to (father) Michael Gill and (mother) Yvonne Gilan. Similarly, his father worked as a television producer and director and his mother was an actress. Additionally, he grew up with a brother named Nicholas. When he was one year old, his family moved back to the south of England. In 1964, he briefly appeared as a chess player in his parents ‘ movie The Peaches. Likewise, he belongs of British nationality.
Caption: Gill’s picture of the old school, Source: the times
Education
Gill was enrolled at St Christopher’s Independent School, Letchworth, Hertfordshire, and later recalled his school experience in his novel The Angry Island. He moved to London after St Christopher’s to study at Saint Martin’s School of Art and the Slade School of Art, cultivating aspirations to become an artist.
After Gill’s art school, he spent six years signing on, trying to paint, until one day he realized that he was no good. Having left his interests in art at the age of 30 he spent several years working in restaurants and teaching cooking.
A. A. Gill – Career Life
In his thirties A. A. Gill started his writing career, writing art reviews for little magazines. His first article for Tatler in 1991 was an account of being in a rehab facility, published under the pseudonym, Blair Baillie. He switched to The Sunday Times in 1993, where, according to Lynn Barber, he soon identified himself as their most brilliant star. He managed to report for the Sunday Times until he died in 2016 shortly before. Gill has contributed to Vanity Fair and GQ. For GQ, he wrote a series of columns on fatherhood and other topics. He has written for Esquire, where he worked as an agony uncle, Uncle Dysfunctional.
His travel writing articles have been published as AA Gill is Away (2002), Previous Convictions (2006) and AA Gill was Further Away (2011), Tatler and Sunday Times food writing as Table Talk (2007), and TV columns as Paper View (2008). He has written several books on individual restaurants and their cuisine – Ivy (1997), Le Caprice (1999), Breakfast at the Wolseley (2008), and Brasserie Zedel (2016).
He also wrote two critically negatively received novels-Sap Rising (1996) and Starcrossed (1999). Starcrossed won the Bad Sex in Literature Award from the Literary Review. He wrote books investigating England – The Angry Island (2005) – and the USA – The Golden Door (2012).
In 2014, Gill received an Amnesty International Media Award and a Women on the Move award for a series of Sunday Times Magazine stories on refugees in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Jordan, and Lampedusa. In 2014, for his scathing review of Morrisey’s Autobiography. Gill also received the Hatchet Job of the Year Award. In 2015, he wrote a book, Pour Me.
Caption: Book was written by Gill, Source: amazon
A. A. Gill – Controversies
A. A. Gill’s acerbic personality led to criticism in many media outlets. The Sunday Times reported in 2010, that Gill was the subject of 62 complaints from the Press Complaints Commission in five years.
Wales
In 1998 Gill mentioned the Welsh as loquacious dissemblers, unethical liars, shocked, bigoted, grim, disgusting, pugnacious little trolls in The Sunday Times. His remarks were submitted to the Commission for Racial Equality and included in a motion in the National Assembly for Wales as an example of what was described as persistent anti-Welsh racism in the UK media. The CRE refused to prosecute, saying that Gill did not want to stir up racial discrimination.
Therefore, In 2006 Gill’s conflict with the Isle of Man started with a critique of Cappelli’s Douglas restaurant. Gill wrote that the island: managed to slip a crack in the space-time continuum that fell from the back of the historic lorry to lie amnesiac on the road to the advancement of its main industry money. And pull Benny in The foul of the weather, the medieval food. Filled with suicidal motorists and people who believe in fairies. The analysis was attacked by a member of the House of Keys, calling for apologies for the unacceptable and scurrilous attack.
Whereas, In his Sunday Times column of 23 May 2010, Gill made more comments on the Isle of Man. In February 2011, Gill described Norfolk County as the End of England’s hernia. Likewise, In December 2013 his column was the product of a night on the beat in Grimsby and Cleethorpes just before New Year’s Eve. It was highly critical of both cities where Grimsby is on the road to nowhere and where Cleethorpes is full of hunted and grubby semi-detached homes.
A. A. Gill – Personal Life
However, A. A. Gill had serious dyslexia and thus dictated much of his writing. Gill was married to the author Cressida Connolly from 1982 until 1983. After his separation from Cressida Connolly, he got married to Amber Rudd. Amber Rudd was a political journalist who later became a home secretary and state secretary.
Therefore, she worked as home secretary and state secretary from 1990 to 1995. Whereas, the couple was blessed with two children. He then had a long-term relationship with Nicola Formby, Tatler’s editor-in-chief, for whom he left Rudd in 1995, writing “The Blonde” in his column. They’d born twins in 2007.
Caption: Picture of A. A. Gill and her daughter, Source: daily mail
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