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Shuttlecock (novel)
''Shuttlecock'', described as a psychological thriller, was Graham Swift's second novel, published in 1981 by Allen Lane. It won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1983 and was Shuttlecock (film), released as a film in 1993. Plot Prentis, junior assistant in the 'dead crimes' department of the police archives in London, starts writing a personal memoir almost inadvertently. It is in response to his growing alienation from his wife and children; to regular visits to his estranged father, who has recently become catatonic and is in hospital; and to the confusing situation at work where he suspects his boss, Quinn, of suppressing crucial files in a case he is asked to investigate. Eventually it emerges that the files concern a friend that his father has betrayed and a blackmailer who claimed to have evidence that his father was not the World War II war-hero he claimed to be. Quinn is approaching retirement and has been grooming Prentis to see if he would make a suitably humane su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Graham Swift
Graham Colin Swift FRSL (born 4 May 1949) is an English writer. Born in London, England, he was educated at Dulwich College, London, Queens' College, Cambridge, and later the University of York. Career Some of Swift's books have been filmed, including ''Waterland'' (1992), '' Shuttlecock'' (1993), ''Last Orders'' (1996) and ''Mothering Sunday'' (2021). His novel ''Last Orders'' was joint-winner of the 1996 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction and a controversial winner of the 1996 Booker Prize, owing to the many similarities in plot and structure to William Faulkner's ''As I Lay Dying''. The prize-winning ''Waterland'' is set in The Fens. A novel of landscape, history and family, it is often cited as one of the outstanding post-war British novels and has been a set text on the English literature syllabus in British schools. Writer Patrick McGrath asked Swift about the "feeling for magic" in ''Waterland'' during an interview. Swift responded that "The phrase everybody ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allen Lane
Sir Allen Lane (born Allen Lane Williams; 21 September 1902 – 7 July 1970) was a British publisher who together with his brothers Richard and John Lane founded Penguin Books in 1935, bringing high-quality paperback fiction and non-fiction to the mass market. In 1967 he started a hardback imprint under his own name, Allen Lane. Early life and family Allen Lane Williams was born in Bristol, to Camilla (née Lane) and Samuel Williams, and studied at Bristol Grammar School. In 1919 he joined the publishing company Bodley Head as an apprentice to his uncle and founder of the company John Lane. In the process, he and the rest of his family changed their surname to Lane to retain the childless John Lane's company as a family firm. Lane married Letitia Lucy Orr, daughter of Sir Charles Orr, on 28 June 1941 and had three daughters: Clare, Christine, and Anna. He was knighted in 1952. Career as a publisher He rose quickly at Bodley Head, becoming managing editor in 1925 f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Washington Square Press
Atria Publishing Group is a general interest publisher and a division of Simon & Schuster. The publishing group launched as Atria Books in 2002. The Atria Publishing Group was later created internally at Simon & Schuster to house a number of imprints including Atria Books, Atria Trade Paperbacks, Atrai Books Espanol, Atria Unbound, Washington Square Press, Emily Bestler Books, Atria/Beyond Words, Cash Money Content, Howard Books, Marble Arch Press, Strebor Books, 37 Ink, Keywords Press and Enliven Books. Atria is also known for creating innovative imprints and co-publishing deals with African-American writers as well as known for experimenting with digital or non-traditional print formats and authors. As of 2021, Libby McGuire is the Publisher and Senior Vice President of the Atria Publishing Group. Early years The Atria Books imprint was launched in 2002 by Judith Curr. According to a ''Publishers Weekly'' interview with Curr marking the imprint's 10th anniversary, the name At ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize
The Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize is a British literary prize established in 1963 in tribute to Geoffrey Faber, founder and first Chairman of the publisher Faber & Faber. It recognises a single volume of poetry or fiction by a United Kingdom, Irish or Commonwealth author under 40 years of age on the date of publication, and is in alternating years awarded to poetry and fiction (including short stories). The prize is worth £1500. The prize jury, comprising three reviewers, is selected by literary editors of journals and newspapers that regularly publish reviews of poetry and fiction. In its first year, the prize was awarded to Christopher Middleton and George MacBeth for poetry. The first win by a short-story collection, ''The Quantity Theory of Insanity'' by Will Self William Woodard Self (born 26 September 1961) is an English author, journalist, political commentator and broadcaster. He has written 11 novels, five collections of shorter fiction, three novellas and nine coll ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shuttlecock (film)
''Shuttlecock'' is a 1993 French-British thriller film directed by Andrew Piddington and starring Alan Bates, Lambert Wilson and Kenneth Haigh. It is based on the 1981 novel ''Shuttlecock'' by Graham Swift. Plot Major James Prentis ( Alan Bates) is a British spy of World War II and war hero who goes under the code name of "Shuttlecock". Alienated from his family and children, he ends up in a mental institution in Lisbon, Portugal, where he eventually decides to publish his memoirs 20 years after the war. His son, John (Lambert Wilson), becomes increasingly alarmed with the enigmatic Dr. Quinn (Kenneth Haigh), the director of the institution, and concludes after reading his father's memoirs that Quinn is responsible for his father's mental decline. Cast * Alan Bates as Major James Prentis VC * Lambert Wilson as John Prentis * Kenneth Haigh as Dr. Quinn * Jill Meager as Marian Prentis * John Cassady as Eddie * Arthur Cox as Fizz / Fox * David Ryall as Pound * Gregory Chishol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kirkus Reviews
''Kirkus Reviews'' (or ''Kirkus Media'') is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus (1893–1980). The magazine is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fiction, nonfiction, and young readers' literature. ''Kirkus Reviews'', published on the first and 15th of each month; previews books before their publication. ''Kirkus'' reviews over 10,000 titles per year. History Virginia Kirkus was hired by Harper & Brothers to establish a children's book department in 1926. The department was eliminated as an economic measure in 1932 (for about a year), so Kirkus left and soon established her own book review service. Initially, she arranged to get galley proofs of "20 or so" books in advance of their publication; almost 80 years later, the service was receiving hundreds of books weekly and reviewing about 100. Initially titled ''Bulletin'' by Kirkus' Bookshop Service from 1933 to 1954, the title was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Punch (magazine)
''Punch, or The London Charivari'' was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire established in 1841 by Henry Mayhew and wood-engraver Ebenezer Landells. Historically, it was most influential in the 1840s and 1850s, when it helped to coin the term " cartoon" in its modern sense as a humorous illustration. From 1850, John Tenniel was the chief cartoon artist at the magazine for over 50 years. After the 1940s, when its circulation peaked, it went into a long decline, closing in 1992. It was revived in 1996, but closed again in 2002. History ''Punch'' was founded on 17 July 1841 by Henry Mayhew and wood-engraver Ebenezer Landells, on an initial investment of £25. It was jointly edited by Mayhew and Mark Lemon. It was subtitled ''The London Charivari'' in homage to Charles Philipon's French satirical humour magazine ''Le Charivari''. Reflecting their satiric and humorous intent, the two editors took for their name and masthead the anarchic glove puppet, Mr. Punch, of Punc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of ''The Guardian'' in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of ''The Guardian'' free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for ''The Guardian'' the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. Since 2018, the paper's main news ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1981 British Novels
Events January * January 1 ** Greece enters the European Economic Community, predecessor of the European Union. ** Palau becomes a self-governing territory. * January 10 – Salvadoran Civil War: The FMLN launches its first major offensive, gaining control of most of Morazán and Chalatenango departments. * January 15 – Pope John Paul II receives a delegation led by Polish Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa at the Vatican. * January 20 – Iran releases the 52 Americans held for 444 days, minutes after Ronald Reagan is sworn in as the 40th President of the United States, ending the Iran hostage crisis. * January 21 – The first DeLorean automobile, a stainless steel sports car with gull-wing doors, rolls off the production line in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland. * January 24 – An earthquake of magnitude in Sichuan, China, kills 150 people. Japan suffers a less serious earthquake on the same day. * January 25 – In South Africa the largest part of the town La ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novels By Graham Swift
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the histori ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novels Set In London
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the historic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
