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Press
Lesley Blanch, MBE | New Web Site Launch 21 August 2006
Site compiled and edited by Georgia de Chamberet | Programming and design by Ben Fiagbe at Factor IT Ltd
The celebrated author and distinguished traveller, Lesley Blanch, now has a website. You can get a taste of her life and work as you browse lesleyblanch.com
A scholarly romantic, Lesley Blanch has influenced and inspired generations of writers, readers and critics. Her first book, The Wilder Shores Of Love, pioneered a new kind of group biography focusing on women escaping the boredom of convention; it has never gone out of print in English since first publication in 1954. Philip Mansel, author of Constantinople and other works of historical scholarship, calls her 'not a school, a trend, or a fashion, but a true original.'
Media Release
L M Shakespeare MALICE
Stacey International Publishers | Published 15 June 2006 (hardback)
Malice is set in the seventeenth century French court of Louis XIV. The palace of Versailles was home to several thousand courtiers. The story centres around Madame, Princess Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatine, second wife of the king's younger brother, Monsieur, Philippe duc d'Orleans. Newly married, she attracts the jealous hatred of her husband's favourites. Led by the vicious but desirable Chevalier de Lorraine, this treacherous quartet almost certainly murdered Philippe's first wife, Henrietta of England, and now they set about the destruction of the second.
Readers who enjoyed Antonia Fraser's Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King, Patrick Suskind's Perfume and Umberto Eco's The Name Of The Rose, or films Ridicule and Le Bossu, would love this book.
COLIN THUBRON - A witty, finely researched feat of imagination. Compulsive reading; enchanting and original
From Frank Stirling's interview with L. M. Shakespeare broadcast 3 June 2006 on ONEWORD DIGITAL RADIO - Gripping and cleverly written; classic in tone like Alexandre Dumas, but also very modern
Media Release
Results
Timewell Press congratulates the winner of the 2005 J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography
Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy with his memoir HALF AN ARCH (hardback)
Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, the biographer of writer Gerald Brenan and American sexologist Alfred Kinsey, brings to bear on his own life the same rigour, cool detachment and sensitive insight. He describes vividly a wartime childhood moving between houses, taking in evacuees, yet running free in the fields and woods imagining he was Tarzan, or playing with his cousins. From an early age, he was aware of his family's unconventional sexuality and of his mother's anxiety about his sexual orientation. His subsequent tumultuous and adrenalin-tinged career in advertising and then as a writer evokes a vanished age of publishing when larger than life individuals with flair and vision were at the helm. The real test of a good writer is to write well about sex, death and money: Gathorne-Hardy does all three remarkably well.
The 2005 J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography was presented on Tuesday 12 July at the PEN Summer Party, held in the Dissenter's chapel and grounds of Kensal Green Cemetery. Since its inauguration in 1982, the PEN/Ackerley Prize has been awarded to some of Britain's most distinguished authors.
The other authors short-listed for the prize were:
Michael Blakemore ~ Arguments With England (Faber)
Jennie Erdal ~ Ghosting (Canongate)
Simon Gray ~ The Smoking Diaries (Granta)
Tim Jeal ~ Swimming With My Father (Faber)
Media Release
Zulma Classics
French Cheek? French Chic!
Parisian publishers Editions Zulma bring the French touch to English-language classics
In April 2005, the first 8 titles of the new Zulma Classics paperback series hit British bookshops:
Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey followed by Love and Freindship
Wilkie Collins' The Haunted Hotel followed by The Dream-Woman
Thomas Hardy's The Well-Beloved followed by Alicia's Diary
Nathaniel Hawthorne's Lady Eleanore's Mantle followed by Other Tales of Mystery
Henry James' Italian Tales
Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde followed by Essays in the Art of Writing
Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla
Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray followed by The Decay of Lying
Media Release
Results
HVF Winstone GERTRUDE BELL
Extensively revised and updated, with a new introduction by the author
Barzan Publishing Ltd in association with Stacey International Publishers
| Published 28 October 2004 (hardback)
Now available for a new generation and a new political reality, this scholarly yet highly readable biography - a critically-acclaimed classic - is an essential read for those who want to know the history behind the headlines covering the occupation of Iraq in 2003.
Adventurer, archaeologist and arabist, Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) was a counsellor to Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, and a confidante of sheikhs. To T E Lawrence she was 'Gerty,' and he was her 'Little One.' Wilfred Thesiger, when asked to compare Gertrude with her successor Freya Stark, replied: 'If any one woman was to be thought of as a serious traveller, it had to be Gertrude Bell.' She cut a unique figure in the turbulent politics of the Middle East at the turn of last century.
Media ReleaseResults
BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour Martha Kearney talks to HVF Winstone
Naim Attallah THE OLD LADIES OF NAZARETH
Quartet Books Limited | Published 21 October 2004 (hardback)
ANNE CHISHOLM, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH - A short, simple account with fairytale overtones of how, as a boy, his life was changed for the better by his grandmother and great aunt
CAROLINE MOOREHEAD, THE SPECTATOR - A short morality tale about two elderly sisters . modest, poor, sickly ladies of great kindness, never speaking ill of others and imparting a sense of virtue and goodness ... simply written and pleasant to read
Naim Attallah, the astute Palestinian-born businessman, publisher and film producer, pens a poignant and touching portrait of two ageing sisters and evokes a way of life in a small Palestinian town that is fast becoming a thing of the past.
Media Release
David Sexton, literary editor of the Evening Standard talks to Naim Attallah
BlackAmber Books congratulate the winner of
The 2004 Inaugural 3:AM Good Sex Prize
Mounsi with his novel THE DEMENTED DANCE
BBC WORLD SERVICE Mounsi is an extraordinary French novelist. His life was completely turned round by a book (Villon's The Ballad of the Hanged Man) when he was in prison as a teenager. In his novel The Demented Dance, Mounsi uses almost mythic language, imagery and rhythms to tell the essentially brutal story of young Tarik struggling to survive among the ugly shantytowns, immigrant outskirts, wasteland and tower blocks that circle the Paris of tourist brochures.
The 2004 Inaugural 3:AM Good Sex Prize was awarded to Mounsi during the 3:AM Magazine summer shindig, 'A Riot of Our Own' held at the Stuckist Gallery in Shoreditch, London EC2.
The other authors short-listed for the prize were: Frédéric Beigbeder ~ £6.99 (Picador) Stewart Home ~ Down and Out in Shoreditch and Hoxton (The Do-Not-Press) Michel Houellebecq ~ Lanzarote (Heinemann) Ben Myers ~ The Book of Fuck (Wrecking Ball Press) Adam Thirlwell ~ Politics (Jonathan Cape) Helen Walsh ~ Brass (Canongate) Tony White ~ Foxy-T (Faber)
Media ReleaseMarcel Desailly with Philippe Broussard CAPITAINE
Editions Stock, Paris | Published 20 March 2002
Marcel Desailly can look back on a great career - Will Buckley hears his moving story.
Published in The Observer Sunday August 11, 2002
LAUNCH PARTIES
Launch of Le Foot: the Legends of French Football
Held on 8 May 2000 at His Excellency the French Ambassador's private residence in Kensington
Arranged by the publisher in association with BookBlast
Sponsored by Moët & Chandon
Launch of XCiTés: the Flamingo Book of New French Writing
Held on 14 July 1999 at China White, Air Street, London W1
Arranged by the publisher in association with BookBlast
Sponsored by Absinthe
Launch of BookBlast Ltd, writers' agency
Held on 24 March 1997 at The Cobden Club, Kensal Road, London W10
Sponsored by Appleton Jamaica Rum
Photo Credits: Lesley Blanch at the Golestan Palace (Iran) © Roloff Beny; Mounsi at the Stuckist Gallery (Shoreditch) © Tania Glyde; Frank Leboeuf with David Baddiel and Andrew Logan, Alan Samson & Stephen Pickles at the French Ambasador's Private Residence (Kensington) © Sue Greenhill
