The activist, academic and now novelist explains why, when you use a wheelchair, it’s good to be able to see the funny side
When the disabled rights activist, academic and broadcaster Tom Shakespeare sat down to write a novel, he knew two things. He wanted to write a comical tale, a modern country-house farce. And the main character would be an ordinary paraplegic wheelchair user.
“Representations of disabled characters tend to be tragic but plucky, the Tiny Tim type figure, or very sinister and evil, like Richard III,” he says. “I wanted to write about an ordinary disabled character who, yes, uses a wheelchair. But most of the time, it’s not a big issue.”
