All posts by Bob Fowke
Kington, Book Reading at the Border Bean Café
Joanne McShane will be reading from her new novel, Honora and Arthur, the last Plantagenets, at the Border Bean café, in Kington on the mid-Wales border, on Wednesday 20th November at 3.00 pm. The book is a meticulously researched, fictionalised account of the life of Honora Grenville who married Arthur Plantagent during the reign of Henry VIII.
Catherine Grand
In 1774 Directors of the East India Company who were hostile to the then Governor of Bengal, Warren Hastings, sent three new councillors, General Clavering, Colonel George Monson and Philip Francis, to Calcutta, with instructions to undermine Hastings’s authority. Joseph Fowke (1716-1800) sailed down the Hooghly to greet them before they could reach Calcutta. Joseph had a plan to ensnare Hastings in a prosecution for corruption. Philip Francis, the youngest and brightest of the triumphirate, became Joseph’s closest associate in this conspiracy – which failed. The following year, Joseph Fowke and Maharajah Nuncomar, a wealthy Hindu banker, were tried for conspiracy and Nuncomar was hanged.
Philip Francis stayed on in Calcutta, as did Joseph Fowke. One evening in 1777 Francis was caught red-handed with a ladder up against the window of the beautiful wife of a young company employee, George François Grand. A duel was narrowly avoided and Catherine Grand ended up as the mistress of Francis, kept in style in a house up the Hooghly River for the next three years. She eventually returned to London, then became a courtesan in pre-revolutionary France, fleeing back to England when the revolution started in 1789. In 1794 she returned yet again to Paris where she married Prince Talleyrand, Napoleon’s famous foreign minister.
‘La Belle Indolente’ was not stupid or she would never have snaredTalleyrand, but she was notorious for her naïve repartee. Once Tallyrand was a giving a dinner for a M, Denon, recently returned from Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt, and Tallyrand had encouraged his wife to read a chapter from Denon’s account so as to be able to converse about his travels. She picked up Robinson Crusoe by mistake. During the dinner she remarked to Denon what a pleasure it had been to read about his trip – in particular his encounter with Man Friday.
Catherine’s portrait is by Vigée le Brun, 1755-1842, herself a very remarkable woman, painted at a time when Vigée was much patronised by Mairie Antoinette and while Catherine was a courtisan in Paris .
YouCaxton will be at the Knighton Literary Festival
2nd November 2019
Bob Fowke, Managing Editor at YouCaxton, will be chairing a workshop at the Knighton Literary Festival on Saturday 2 November at the Public Library. The workshop will provide a brief introduction to the pleasures and pitfalls of self-publishing and there will be plenty of time for further discussion and questions over coffee afterwards.
Details: from 10.00-10.45 am, Saturday 2 November, at Knighton Public Library.
Wolverhampton Self-Publishing
YouCaxton are conducting a self-publishing workshop on Saturday 2 February 11 am to 1 pm at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery as part of the Wolverhampton Literature Festival. Admission is free and all are welcome. The workshop will provide an opportunity to learn about all aspects of self-publishing from completing the manuscript, to decisions about design and layout, through to the final print-ready files and publication. There will be plenty of opportunity for questions.
Richard Hawkins joins the YouCaxton Team
Screenwriting
Writer Richard Hawkins has joined YouCaxton to provide a new service of advice and editing for screenplays. The service includes an honest and objective professional critique of the work, editorial support, script development and formatting, so that presentations are up to a professional standard and maximise their chance of going forward to production.
Richard has worked as a writer and producer since the late 1980s with several critically acclaimed productions to his name, including on Broadway. His first screenplay, the internationally successful The Theory of Flight, was co-produced by both the BBC and Miramax and directed by Paul Greengrass (Bourne Ultimatum, Captain Philips). It starred Kenneth Branagh and Helena Bonham Carter. Richard has also worked closely alongside the acclaimed Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski (My Summer of Love, Aida).
His own directorial debut came with the enormously well received Everything, starring Ray Winstone, which quickly became a cause celebre on the festival circuit, heralded by the Sydney Film festival as ‘The perfect model for budget feature making’ – and went on to win several international awards and a prestigious BAFTA nomination for Richard himself.
‘Everything is boldly conceived and executed, the kind of film British cinema needs more of.’ The Daily Telegraph
‘A highly promising feature debut … truthful, perceptive and moving.’ The Observer
Richard has worked recently as a creative adviser for China’s emerging film industry, playing a critical role in the establishment of several on-going, long-term relationships between American and Chinese studios. He also gives support as a specialist acting coach, taking both new and established stars and working them through various castings and/or preparing them for particular film roles. Actors worked with include Benedict Cumberbatch, Naomi Harris, Domonic Cooper, Stephen Mangan, Gugu Mbatha Raw, Ed Skrein, Danny Dyer, to name but a few.
Dianne Carrington, talk
26th January 2019
Dianne Carrington will be speaking in Pulverbatch Village Hall on the evening of Saturday 26 January about her new book Atlantic Lady, published by YouCaxton, the story of her record-breaking row across the Atlantic. She is the oldest woman ever to undertake this extraordinary feat.
Ludlow Book Launch
Fran Norton will be launching her new book, Isolde, Lady de Audley, published by YouCaxton, at the Castle Bookshop, Ludlow, betweeen 5.00 and 7.00 pm on Friday 23rd November. The image is of Isolde’s tomb in St Bartholomew’s churchyard, Much Marcle, Herefordshire.