The English novelist Tom Sharpe, known for a life of penning dark and comic tales, is at the centre of a plot twist in his own death.
A church court has fined his partner, Dr Montserrat Verdaguer, for unofficial burial of his ashes.
Verdaguer dug a hole and buried the ashes – along with a bottle of whisky, the author’s favourite pen and a Cuban cigar – in a country churchyard in Northumberland.
But they were exhumed because it is claimed they were buried without permission of the church authorities.
Sharpe, known for Porterhouse Blue and his Wilt series, died in 2013. Verdaguer drove 1,200 miles from Spain to St Aidan’s church in Thockrington in June 2014, after discovering documents in which Sharpe had written of his desire to return to where his father, the Rev George Sharpe, had been a preacher and was later buried, the court heard.
Verdaguer, Sharpe’s partner of 10 years, dug the hole with her hands, and laid the whisky, cigar and pen in the earth with him, local press reported at the time.
Euan Duff, chancellor of the diocese of Newcastle and a judge of the consistory court, told the court hearing that in November last year the Rev Michael Slade, vicar of St Aidan’s, had carried out a dig in the churchyard. He found “some loose mortal remains (ashes) from a small plastic bag, a medium sized bottle of Famous Grouse whisky, a fountain pen, two small tea-light candles and two red plastic numerals (broken)”.
Duff gave permission for the exhumation. The items found in the churchyard are said to have been put there without permission by Verdaguer.
Sharpe died in June 2013 in Llafranc, north-east Spain. Both his wife, Nancy, and Verdaguer spoke at the funeral on 9 June.
Duff said in his statement: “The domestic arrangements of Mr Sharpe are not clear but it seems he was living apart from his wife prior to his death and in some sort of relationship with Dr Verdaguer. He was apparently cremated and, according to what Dr Verdaguer has later claimed, the majority of his ashes were taken by his widow, but some were left with Dr Verdaguer.”
The first the Rev Slade heard of plans for Sharpe’s ashes to be put in his churchyard was when a story appeared in the Newcastle Journal suggesting that they would be scattered at the church.
Sharpe’s widow “expressed her surprise and distress” at what had occurred, though she acknowledged that Sharpe would have wished to have been buried at Thockrington, said Duff. Verdaguer said an empty coffin had been buried in the churchyard and that the whole exercise had been “just a TV documentary”.
Of the series of events that had unfolded, the Rev Slade was said to have been “certain as he can be that the remains found were human”.
