Douglas Adams was born on March 11, 1952, the son of Christopher Douglas, a management consultant, and Jane Donovan, a nurse. Adams read English at St Johns College, Cambridge, graduating in 1974. He began his writing career as a scriptwriter for radio and television comedies. For a time, he supported himself with odd jobs ranging from cleaning chicken houses to guarding the royal family of Qatar. I was lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck and gazing up at the stars, he says of the inspiration for his most famous story. It occurred to me that somebody ought to write a hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. His idea, first conceived as a radio script, was developed for the BBC and the 1978 series gradually won an enthusiastic following. Pan Books approached Adams to write a novel based on the series and the book of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy sold 100,000 copies in its first month and went on to sell two million copies in the United Kingdom alone. ...