We are overwhelmed by a sense of a creeping paranoia. ibid.
The 39 Steps: ‘This cold-blooded indoor business was different’. ibid.
Rule 4: The Hero Doesn’t Have to be a Spy. ibid.
For many writers Eric Ambler remains the spy novelist of choice. ibid.
Bond’s global appeal sold thirty million books during his lifetime, and doubled since his death. ibid.
Rule 6: Send in a Double Agent. ibid.
Rule 7: Don’t Trust the Old Boy Network. ibid.
Len Deighton’s unnamed spy – he only becomes Harry Palmer in the films – was a different class altogether. ibid.
The same weary cynicism that permeates the books. ibid.
Rule 9: The Spy’s loyalties are open to question. ibid.
Graham Greene: The Human Factor is the spy novel at its very finest. ibid.
Spy: George, you won.
George: Did I? Yes, yes I suppose I did. ibid. Smiley’s people
Rule 12: Never lose sight of the human factor. ibid.
Austen wrote novels, which are books. Cunk on Britain s1e3, BBC 2016
Publishing giants Mills & Boon are celebrating their centenary … Classic romance stories on which they have built their reputation … The BBC set me [Stalla Duffy] a challenge to write a Mills & Boon. It will prove even more difficult than I thought. Timeshift: How to Write a Mills & Boon, BBC 2018
It’s Philip Roth’s 80th birthday. And his entire home town of Newark, New Jersey, has turned out to celebrate with him. Roth is considered by many to be America’s greatest living writer, but he hasn’t always been this accessible. Alan Yentob, Imagine … Philip Roth Unleashed I II, BBC 2014
Over 31 books he charted the American century detailing both the political and the personal. ibid.
A series of fictional disguises which have teased his readers. ibid.
1976: Roth moved to London … ‘A Jew clearly without a home.’ ibid.
‘There’s a journalistic side to writing novels because you need the facts, you need the information, you need the details. You have to invent off of something.’ ibid.
Following the acclaim of I Married a Communist, Roth was awarded the national medal of arts by President Clinton. ibid.
30 years ago a book was published that lit a fire across the country. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie sparked a culture war between Muslims who believed they were defending the honour of their prophet and the fundamental right of free speech. The Satanic Verses: 30 Years On, BBC 2019
In the interval between Miami and Chicago I read Myra Breckinridge [Gore Vidal]. It attempts heuristic allegory but fails, giving gratification only to sadist homosexuals and challenge only to taxonomists of perversion. I thought and thought about it. There is nothing left to say about Myra. Bill Buckley, cited Best of Enemies ***** 2015
Today, one novel more than any other stands up for women’s rights across the world: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopian story of state-sponsored female oppression published in 1985 and a rallying call for women everywhere. Novels that Shaped Our World I: A Woman’s Place, BBC 2019
‘The Me-Too novel for this generation.’ ibid. comic
The novel has always strongly reflected women’s concerns … The novel has shaped women’s lives and sustained them. ibid.
Samuel Richardson’s Pamela: the work of a London printer Samuel Richardson: it sold like hotcakes. ibid.
Thanks largely to Pamela, the novel was now considered an essentially female form. ibid.
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein became the best known horror story ever. ibid.
‘The book and the film have almost nothing in common.’ ibid. Anthony Horowitz
Jane Austen: the supreme chronicler of women’s real lives. ibid.
An editor, critic and translator, Mary Ann Evans [T S Eliot] chose the male pseudonym partly because she wanted to distance her novels from what she regarded as frivolous women’s fiction. ibid.
Constance Maud: No Surrender … ‘A real historical account with fictional characters.’ ibid. novelist
Zora Neale Hurston: The Eyes Were Watching God … All four of her grandparents had been slaves. ibid.
Throughout its whole history, one of the most popular, controversial and compelling themes of the English novel has been the story of Empire. Long after it ended, some novelists were still defending Britain’s status as a world power just as it was coming to a close. Novels that Shaped Our World II: The Empire Writes Back
The English language novel began as the Empire was gearing up. ibid.
Robinson Crusoe has been endlessly translated, adapted, filmed and painted. The English novel was off to a flying start. ibid.
Jane Eyre: ‘I knew Mr Rochester had been a traveller to distant shores’. ibid.
1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin … Long been criticised for being sentimental and sensationalist, but it showed what a campaigning novel can achieve. ibid.
Samuel Selvon: The Lonely Londoners … published in 1956. ibid.
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist … Trainspotting … Oliver Twist … The Code of the Woosters … Billy Liar … Sybil … Mary Barton … The Great Gatsby … Lady Chatterley’s Lover … A Kind of Loving … Billy Liar … Novels that Shaped Our World III: The Class Ceiling
One of the most famous of all novelists – Charles Dickens – made his name by taking us into the hidden world of the very lowest members of society. ibid.
Joseph Conrad’s book Heart of Darkness was influenced by the Battle of Omdurman. Exterminate All the Brutes s1e3: Killing at a Distance or … How I Thoroughly Enjoyed the Outing ***** Sky Documentaries 2021
This knowledge is a fundamental prerequisite. That is why the narrator can tell his story as he does in Conrad’s novel, Heart of Darkness. He has no need to count the crimes Kurt committed. He has no need to describe them. He has no need to produce evidence. For no-one doubted it. Exterminate All the Brutes IV: The Bright Colours of Fascism
The most satirical novelist of the 1930s … ever popular with readers to this day. Waugh was born into a comfortable literary middle-class family in London … He then stumbled into teaching. Evelyn Waugh: Face to Face, BBC 2021
There was no more quintessentially English writer than Agatha Christie. Through her sensational murder mysteries she created a literary universe that captured our national spirit like no-one before or since. The magical worlds where she set her stories are in fact drawn from real places. Agatha Christie’ England, Channel 5 2021
Born 1890 in the Devon town of Torquay. The youngest to three children she lived a charmed life thanks to her American father’s large inheritance. ibid.
She introduced the world to Miss Marple when she published The Murder at the Vicarage. ibid.
In 1920 Agatha published her debut novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. The lead character was the now iconic Belgium detective Hercule Poirot. ibid.
‘Agatha absolutely abhorred the loss of empire, the changing attitudes to British dominance over the world. This big change in social values, the class system.’ ibid. J C Bernthal, Agatha Christie scholar
Arguably the biggest writer of the twentieth century. ibid.
What Christie’s books also reflect, though, is the Christian principles that she had learned as a girl in the last years of the nineteenth century. Dominic Sandbrook: Let Us Entertain You III: Modern Victorians, BBC 2015
Southern Italy has inspired a wealth of amazing authors … Elena Ferrante: My Brilliant Friend [Naples] … Charles Dickens: Pictures from Italy … Robert Harris: Pompeii … Patricia Highsmith: The Talented Mr Ripley … Carlo Levi: Christ Stopped at Eboli. Write Around the World with Richard E Grant, BBC 2021
150 years ago Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of Kidnapped and Treasure Island, travelled 120 miles across this region [southern France] on foot with only a donkey for company. Write Around the World with Richard E Grant II: Southern France
Umberto Eco: The Count of Monte Cristo … F Scott Fitzgerald … Carol Drinkwater: The Olive Farm … Elizabeth David … Patrick Suskind: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer … ibid.
Granada: The city that inspired one of Spain’s most acclaimed figures … It’s most famous playwright and poet, Federico Garcia Lorca, who was born just outside the city. Write Around the World with Richard E Grant III