David Mitchell was born on January 12th, 1969 in Southport, Lancashire, where his parents worked as freelance artists. Having moved to a working-class rural community in Malvern, Worcestershire at the age of seven, Mitchell’s childhood was largely uneventful, though significantly shaped by a self-conscious ambivalence towards his middle-class upbringing and a debilitating stammer which left him feeling isolated among his peers. Mitchell has said that “I knew I wanted to be a writer since I was a kid”, and his talent for playful, heteroglossic narrative, his observational skill and his empathy for outsiders can be traced back in part to his own childhood experiences. An overriding anxiety about the possibility of nuclear …

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Citation: Dunlop, Nicholas. "David Mitchell". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 31 October 2008 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12234, accessed 22 November 2024.]

12234 David Mitchell 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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