Donald Michael Thomas was born in Cornwall in 1935, so he was only a child when the war broke out and he was not exposed to encounter terrible experiences during the war. He studied Russian and deepened connection to the language by studying Russian Literature at New College, Oxford University, where he completed his B.A. as well as M.A. degree. He lived in America and in Australia for some time but he was not able to secede from England. He wrote poems, biographies, novels, scripts and he was also a translator. When his novel, The White Hotel was published in 1981 it met with mixed receptions from critics in which extremely different views were expressed. On one hand it was called a pornographic writing what is more Thomas was charged with plagiarism, the total reliance on a previous literary source and was criticized for his morally questionable mixing of fact and fiction. On the other hand it met with a relatively great success and has been considered a definitely important book, a masterpiece amongst post modern novels. It has been praised for its narrative ambition, its dramatic inventiveness and for its many pages of finely rendered lyrical prose. (Simonds: The White Hotel: A Sexual satire)(Introduction)