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Christopher Royston George Ellis,
writer, biographer and beat poet, was born February 10, 1941, in Pinner,
England. He attended state school there until the age of sixteen, when he left
school to become a writer. Two years later
Jiving to Gyp, his first collection of
poems, was published. Ellis performed poetry from the book on stage and
television accompanied by rock music. His mix of poetry and rock music was
called "rocketry." Some of the most famous
bands performing with Ellis include Cliff Richard's group The Shadows, as well
as Jimmy Page, and John, Paul, and Stuart, who would later become the Beatles.
In the sixties, Ellis was in Liverpool where he met John Lennon, who wanted to
become a pop star and had already thought of a name for his group. It was Ellis
who suggested he spell Beatles with an "a," and
the group went on to record the hit song
"Paperback Writer," which Lennon and
McCartney wrote about Ellis. |
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Ellis left England at the age of twenty. His
travels took him to Berlin in the 1960s where he saw the Berlin Wall being
built, and later to Moscow, where he was invited by the poet Yevtushenko to
perform his own poetry. |
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In 1963 his travels took him to the Canary
Islands where he acted in the movie
Wonderful Life with Cliff Richard. While
there, he worked for the only English language newspaper on the islands and
also as a beachboy renting canoes. In 1964, while living in Las Palamas, Canary
Islands, he wrote his unpublished novel based on life in the islands
"The Cherry Boy," not to be confused
with his published collection of poems under the same name. In September of
1965, after brief travels back to England and to Africa, Greece, and Turkey,
Ellis returned to the Canary Islands to write a novel. Commissioned after an
article in
The People exposing the Canary
Islands sex market,
The Flesh Merchants, his new novel,
incorporated many chapters he had previously written for his unpublished novel
"The Cherry Boy."The Flesh Merchants
caused enough sensation for Ellis that he claims he was forced to leave Las
Palamas in November of 1966 because of police reaction to the novel.
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From 1966-1980 Ellis lived in Dominica, where he wrote a series of
historical novels under the pen name Richard Tresillian. He has also written
under the pseudonym Raynard Devine. In 1980 he settled in Sri Lanka writing
guidebooks, biographies, novels, and travel features. Ellis now lives there
permanently in a cottage overlooking the Indian Ocean. |