[1] Thorne grew up in Bristol, England, and was educated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.
The book is an attack on the negative effects of tourism on Weston-super-Mare, an English seaside town near Bristol.
His second book Eight Minutes Idle, which drew on Thorne's experiences of having worked in a call centre, was published in 1999 and won an Encore Award.
In 2000, Thorne and his fellow novelist Nicholas Blincoe co-founded a minor literary movement, the New Puritans, whose Dogme-style manifesto pledged to bring simplicity and relevance back to contemporary British fiction.
[4] Thorne is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London.