Satirical novelist Sharpe dies in Spain aged 85

The writer, whose works had been adapted for TV, had major success with his 16 books, although lengthy gaps appeared between them because of his health problems.

He had lived in northern Spain for two decades, partly because he preferred the country’s healthcare system and is understood to have died at his home in Catalonia.

The novelist won huge acclaim for his books, with one newspaper calling him “the funniest novelist writing today”, although he did not publish his first, Riotous Assembly, until he was 43 in 1971.

Within a few years he had published his best known works Porterhouse Blue, Wilt and Blott On The Landscape.

Susan Sandon, managing director of his publisher Cornerstone, said: “Tom Sharpe was one of our greatest satirists and a brilliant writer: witty, often outrageous, always acutely funny about the absurdities of life.

“The private Tom was warm, supportive and wholly engaging. I feel enormously privileged to have been his publisher.”

Despite moving from Cambridge to Spain in the early 1990s, he had little interest in learning Spanish and kept a circle of English-speaking friends.

He said he was disenchanted with the UK: “It is so depressing. I can’t bear it. There is no such thing as the English gentleman any more. Money rules everything.”