BEATTIE, Geoffrey

PERSONAL:

Born in Northern Ireland. Education: Trinity College, Cambridge, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—PFD, Drury House, 34-43 Russell St., London WC2B 5HA, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of Sheffield, Sheffield, England, former member of staff; University of Manchester, Manchester, England, professor of psychology, 1994—, head of psychology department, 2000-03.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Spearman Medal, British Psychological Society, 1984, for published psychological work of outstanding merit.

WRITINGS:

Talk: An Analysis of Speech and Non-verbal Behavior in Conversation, Open University Press (Milton Keynes, England), 1983.

(With Andrew W. Ellis) The Psychology of Language and Communication, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 1985, Guilford Press (New York, NY), 1986.

The Survivors of Steel City: A Portrait of Sheffield, Chatto & Windus (London, England), 1986.

Making It: The Reality of Today's Entrepreneurs, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 1987.

Beachwatching, Rambletree Press (Hove, England), 1988.

All Talk: Why It's Important to Watch Your Words and Everything Else You Say, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 1988.

England after Dark, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 1990.

We Are the People: Journeys through the Heart of Protestant Ulster, Heinemann (London, England), 1992.

On the Ropes: Boxing as a Way of Life, Gollancz (London, England), 1997.

The Corner Boys (fiction), Gollancz (London, England), 1998.

Hard Lines: Voices from Deep within a Recession, University of Manchester Press (New York, NY), 1998.

The Shadows of Boxing: Prince Naseem and Those He Left Behind, Orion (London, England), 2002.

Visible Thoughts: The New Psychology of Body Language, Routledge (New York, NY), 2003.

Contributor to books, including Faith in Ulster, edited by A. Thompson, ECONI, 1996; Oralite et gestualite communication multimodale, interaction, edited by S. Santi, I. Guaitella, C. Cave, and G. Konopczynski, L'Harmattan (Paris, France); and Oralite et Gestualite: Interactions et comportements multimodaux dans la communication, edited by C. Cave, I. Guaitella, and S. Santi, L'Harmattan, 2001. Contributor to professional journals, including Semiotica, British Journal of Social Psychology, Human Relations, and Journal of Language and Social Psychology.

SIDELIGHTS:

Well known in England as the body-language guru on the Big Brother television series, Geoffrey Beattie is a professor of psychology, author of a number of studies on verbal and nonverbal communication, and a longtime chronicler of ordinary people trying to survive in seedy, high-stress climates. Beginning in the Guardian with a "series of lengthy, riveting articles from the violent, grubby underbelly of [former Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher's Britain," in the words of Belfast News Letter writer Ian Hill, Beattie's books and articles paint a portrait of the frayed ends in Great Britain during the 1980s and 1990s, from the rough-and-tumble world of boxing to a dying steel town or the war torn streets of Ulster.

In The Survivors of Steel City: A Portrait of Sheffield, Beattie surveys the damage done by the closing of the steel mills in England's fourth largest city. What he finds is a mixed bag of chronic unemployment combined with a curious optimism and streets surprisingly devoid of the violence and anger that have plagued other cities in decline. That is not to say that all is well, and there are plenty of tales of homeless youngsters and people scraping by on illegitimate earnings. Indeed, Beattie finds that cheating is endemic, in the face of indifferent institutions and silly laws. While he has no grand theory for Sheffield's survival as a community, Beattie's "descriptions give a rich flavor of a place where what matters most is a sense of identity," according to an Economist reviewer.

Beattie followed up this study in 1998 with Hard Lines: Voices from Deep within a Recession, another series of vignettes from northern England's struggle with the recession that hit it in the 1980s and 1990s. "Each chapter of the book is divided into several case studies, all of which make compelling reading," according to Labor History contributor Geoffrey Timmins. Choice reviewer L. J. Satre predicted that "this superb journalist account will interest" historians, sociologists, and the general public.

Beattie's accounts of war-torn Northern Ireland, a world he has known intimately since childhood, have also attracted great interest. In We Are the People:Journeys through the Heart of Protestant Ulster, Beat-tie again provides a portrait of a city through a series of conversations with ordinary citizens. He finds a people resentful of the compromises London has forged with the northern Catholic populace, a people largely defined by what they oppose and who they dislike. The book "is gritty as it must be, unsmiling and grim," noted New Statesman & Society reviewer Tony Parker.

Having provided these hard-edged glimpses of the Ulstermen, in 1998 Beattie went deeper in his first novel, The Corner Boys, "a heavily autobiographical study of the North Belfast street gangs in which Beattie himself grew up," in the words of New Statesman contributor Ra Page. The story of a high-school dropout and gang member named James, the novel illustrates the effects of everyday violence on the psyche, such as the way people instinctively search out an escape route wherever they are or dress to be able to scale a wall if necessary; the ubiquitous presence of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Ulster Defence Association (UDA) is also a major theme in the book. When James falls in love with a Catholic girl, the results are not the usual Romeo and Juliet motif. Instead, wrote Publishers Weekly reviewer Sybil Steinberg, Beattie "sketches a convincing picture of the shifting alliances and rough and tumble life" in a city he knows so well.

By the time his first novel was completed, Beattie had taken an interest in another rough-and-tumble world, the boxing ring. On the Ropes: Boxing as a Way of Life is, in a way, similar to his previous books, in that it is set around a series of conversations with others—in this case boxers, trainers, and fans. "Although the reader is constantly aware of the authorial presence, Beattie's is in fact an impersonal narrative, and it does something very interesting. It puts at its centre a gym—that of Brendan Ingle, who trains the world featherweight champion, Prince Naseem Hamed—and, around this, it rings representations of local Sheffield life," observed New Statesman reviewer Laura Thompson. The book is not entirely impersonal. Beat-tie himself climbs into the ring with retired boxer Mick Mills, quickly and painfully learning the difference between a professional and an amateur boxer. He also takes a ride in a patrol car, visits a pawnshop, and attends an illegal dogfight. As London Sunday Times reviewer Nick Pitt found, "He reports it all straight, sparing us theories and moralizing. The nearest he comes to passing judgment is in his portrayal of Brendan Ingle … a philosopher of a kind, whose work proves that boxing can be beneficial as well as brutalizing." Beattie went on to produce The Shadows of Boxing: Prince Naseem and Those He Left Behind, a fuller treatment of the complex relationship between Ingle and his prodigy.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Belfast News Letter, December 16, 2000, Ian Hill, "Beattie's Boys," p. 12.

Choice, February, 1999, L. J. Satre, review of Hard Lines: Voices from Deep within a Recession, p. 1121.

Economist, October 4, 1986, review of The Survivors of Steel City: A Portrait of Sheffield, pp. 88-89.

Labor History, November, 1999, Geoffrey Timmons, review of Hard Lines, p. 1121.

New Statesman, May 24, 1996, Laura Thompson, review of On the Ropes: Boxing as a Way of Life, p. 36; March 13, 1998, Ra Page, "A Rough Life as Usual on Belfast Streets," p. 54.

New Statesman & Society, July 24, 1992, Tony Parker, "Taking Sides," pp. 39-40.

Publishers Weekly, November 15, 1999, Sybil Steinberg, review of The Corner Boys, p. 56.

Sunday Times (London, England), April 21, 1996, Nick Pitt, review of On the Ropes.*