| Wikipedia: Stuart: A Life Backwards |
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 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.
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Stuart Shorter
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.
Early life
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 remarried, to Paul. Stuart had two siblings: an older brother, Gavvy, and a younger sister, Zoe. He also suffered from muscular dystrophy, which he inherited from his father.
As a child, Stuart was sexually abused by his brother, and also by a babysitter, after which he was put into a children's home. Here, he was abused again by the notorious paedophile Keith Laverack, who in 1996, was jailed for 18 years for various offences against children. During his adult life, Shorter was in and out of various homeless hostels, as well as spending much time in prison for a number of violent crimes. He also fathered one son.
Activism
In 1998, following a five-year jail sentence for armed robbery, Stuart's life reached its lowest ebb. Whilst living in a subterranean multi-storey car park, he was rescued by two outreach workers, and was found a flat to live in. He subsequently became one of the first people to bring The Big Issue into Cambridge, and his work as an activist for the homeless began when he presented a short BBC2 documentary, Private Investigations, denouncing police plans to ban homeless people from the city centre.
In 1999, Shorter became a leading figure in the campaign to release Ruth Wyner and John Brock, the Director and Day Centre Manager of Wintercomfort for the Homeless, who had been sent to prison because some of the people they were looking after had been secretly trading drugs on the charity's premises. Stuart negotiated with police to organise marches and vigils, and arranged the campaign's most successful gesture – a three-day sleep-out of homeless people outside the Home Office in London – which ended in the release of the "Cambridge Two" after just six months.
Death
On 6 July 2002, just outside his home village of Waterbeach, Stuart Shorter stepped in front of the 11.15 p.m. London to King's Lynn train, and was killed instantly. He was 33 years old. As to the cause of his death, the jury returned an open verdict.
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