Fay Weldon CBE was an award-winning author and self-declared feminist. Weldon's work features what she described as "overweight, plain women" – as she deliberately sought, she said, to write about and give a voice to women who are often overlooked or not featured in the media. She said there were many reasons why she became a feminist, including "appalling" lack of equal opportunities and the myth that women were supported by male relatives.This co...

The Night of the Hunter (1955) was Charles Laughton's only film as director. Part expressionist horror movie, part luminous fairy tale, it contains some of the most haunting images in cinema. Willa (Shelley Winters) her throat cut and hair streaming out like seaweed, sitting upright in a submerged Model-T Ford. Her children, framed by looming animals, in a downriver flight from Preacher (Robert Mitchum). Preacher on horseback, a silhouetted threat on the horizon. Rachel Cooper (Li...

Bloomsbury Presents The Night of the Hunter, read and written by Simon CallowThe Night of the Hunter (1955) was Charles Laughton's only film as director. Part expressionist horror movie, part luminous fairy tale, it contains some of the most haunting images in cinema. Willa (Shelley Winters) her throat cut and hair streaming out like seaweed, sitting upright in a submerged Model-T Ford. Her children, framed by looming animals, in a downriver flight from Preacher (...

How are great turning points in history experienced by individuals?As Britain pulls away from Europe great British writers come together to give voice to their innermost feelings. These writers include novelists, writers of books for children, of comic books, humourists, historians, biographers, nature writers, film writers, travel writers, writers young and old and from an extraordinary range of backgrounds. Most are famous perhaps because they have won the Booker or other literar...

This is an examination of 'The Night of the Hunter', Charles Laughton's only outing as a film director. It looks at the symbolism of the piece, at Willa, her throat cut sitting in the Model-T Ford, and the Preacher, a silhouetted threat on the horizon.

Imagined by Oscar Wilde's own grandson, this fictionalised conversation presents the essential biography of the poet, playwright and gay martyr.Renowned for his endlessly quotable pronouncements, Oscar Wilde cut a dashing figure in late Victorian London ... until his tragic downfall resulting from an ill-judged libel action. We remember him not only for his famous trial and imprisonment, but also for a "devil's dictionary" of timeless aphorisms and for the enduring brilliance of pl...

When Simon Callow met the Yugoslav film director Dusan Makavejev to discuss his new film Manifesto, they both greatly looked forward to working together. Only months later the two were barely speaking.A companion volume to Being An Actor, Shooting the Actor is a funny and disastrous account of a film made in the former Yugoslavia, together with new essays on film and film acting including Callow's work in Amadeus and Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Simon Callow, the celebrated author of Orson Welles, delivers a dazzling, swift, and accessible biography of the musical titan Richard Wagner and his profoundly problematic legacy--a fresh take for seasoned acolytes and the perfect introduction for new fans.Richard Wagner's music dramas have never been more popular or more divisive. His ten masterpieces, created against the backdrop of a continent in severe political and cultural upheaval, constitute an un...

Simon Callow's candid and moving memoir of his passionate friendship with legendary literary agent Peggy Ramsay.' Exquisite... Perhaps the best theatrical memoir of our day' David Hare

The perfect introduction to the Master.Over a century after his death, Richard Wagner’s music dramas stand at the centre of the culture of classical music. He was a walking contradiction: aggressive, flirtatious, disciplined, capricious, heroic, visionary and poisonously anti-Semitic. His ten great mature masterpieces constitute an unmatched body of work, created against a backdrop of poverty, revolution, violent controversy, critical contempt and hysterical hero-worship.In...

**• A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice •The third volume of Simon Callow’s acclaimed Orson Welles biography, covering the period of his exile from America (1947–1964), when he produced some of his greatest works, including Touch of Evil**In One-Man Band, the third volume in his epic and all-inclusive survey of Orson Welles’s life and work, the celebrated British actor Simon Callow again probes in comprehensive and penetrating detail into...

A revised and expanded edition of the classic book for actors starting their careers."The most honest book written about us all." —Sir Ian McKellanFew actors have ever been more eloquent, more honest, or more entertaining about their life and their profession than Simon Callow, one of the finest actors of his time and increasingly one of the most admired writers about the theater.Beginning with the letter to Laurence Olivier that pr...