andrew lownie literary agency

News

  • Ninth week in top ten for Cathy Glass

    08 Nov 2017

    Cathy Glass’s Cruel to be Kind is at Number 8 in the paperback charts this week – its ninth week in the Top 10.

  • Story of musical genius optioned

    03 Nov 2017

    Adam Ockelford’s In the Key of Genius: The Extraordinary Life of Derek Paravicini has been optioned by producer and writer team Daniel Persitz and Devon Kliger.

  • Book on Nazi sympathisers optioned

    03 Nov 2017

    At Land Productions Ltd have optioned Tim Tate’s Spies, Saboteurs & Traitors: The Secret History of Hitler’s British Fifth Column recently sold to John Blake.

  • Cathy Glass remains in bestseller list

    01 Nov 2017

    Cathy Glass’s Cruel to Be Kind is at Number 6 this week in the Sunday Times paperback bestsellers .

  • Starred Kirkus review for Renoir's Dancer

    31 Oct 2017

    A starred Kirkus review for Catherine Hewitt’s Renoir’s Dancer published this week in UK and in US in February.

    Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938) may not be a name most people mention when they discuss great artists. This biography should change that.One might wonder how Valadon, whom Hewitt (The Mistress of Paris: The 19th-Century Courtesan Who Built an Empire on a Secret, 2015) describes in this excellent biography as having “revolutionized the art world and irreversibly altered the place of women within that world,” hasn’t received more widespread recognition. One reason is that Valadon adhered to no school of painting; another is that she was “a victim of the company she kept.” Some may think of her only as the mother of cityscape painter Maurice Utrillo or the model who inspired Renoir’s Dance at Bougival and The Large Bathers or the muse of Toulouse-Lautrec. Born in rural France to a linen maid and a father she never knew, Valadon moved to Montmartre with her mother and sister after her father died. When she was older, she frequented clubs like Le Chat Noir, where young artists discussed their desire to depict “contemporary life, the sweat and odour of real men and women.” A self-taught artist, she started as a nude model. But when Edgar Degas saw her secret drawings, he said, “you are one of us,” and helped her become the first woman painter to have works accepted into the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Hewitt chronicles Valadon’s romances and her difficulties in raising Maurice, whose childhood fits led to his lifelong battle with alcoholism. More importantly, the author demonstrates that Valadon’s works were revolutionary not just because of her style—”sharp, almost crude contours,” with the use of single lines for profiles—but because of the subject matter, such as children who, far from looking like the cosseted offspring of impressionist works, were naked, awkward, and “lonely, so incredibly lonely.” Hewitt sums up Valadon’s achievement perfectly: “Other artists showed what viewers wanted to see. Suzanne showed them what was true.” A well-researched tribute to and resurrection of a master of fin de siècle art.

  • Recent Foreign Rights sales

    26 Oct 2017

    Turkish rights in Sir Steven Runciman’s The Fall of Constantinople 1453

    Macedonian rights in Sir Steven Runciman’s The Great Church in Captivity.

    Chinese rights in Desmond Seward’s The Wars of the Roses and The Bourbon Kings of France.

  • Two cricket titles to Pitch Publishing

    26 Oct 2017

    Pitch Publishing have bought World English rights in Mark Peel’s Playing the Game? : The Ethics of Cricket from Bodyline to the Present and Ambassadors of Goodwill: On tour with the MCC 1946-71.

  • Sixth week in the Sunday Times Top 10 for Cruel to be Kind.

    26 Oct 2017

    Cathy Glass’s Cruel to be Kind is at Number 8 in the paperback bestsellers this week, its sixth week in the Sunday Times Top 10 .

  • The Medici is London bestseller for second week running

    26 Oct 2017

    Mary Hollingsworth’s The Medici is a top five bestseller for the second week running in the Evening Standard.

  • US deal for Winston Churchill letter collection

    23 Oct 2017

    North American rights in David Lough’s Darling Winston, Dearest Mamma, a selection of letters between Winston Churchill and his mother, have been bought by Pegasus.