News
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Two Thistle Books nominated for The People's Book Prize
07 Sep 2016
Two agency books published through Thistle Publishing have been nominated for The People’s Book Prize. If you have a moment, please do vote:
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Fascinating interview with Matt Wilven
07 Sep 2016
Matt Wilven, whose debut novel The Blackbird Singularity has been longlisted for the Not the Booker Prize, has given a fascinating interview on grief, writing, physics, and more, to Writerful Books.
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Patrick Garrett interviewed by Deutsche Welle
01 Sep 2016
There’s an interesting interview with author Patrick Garrett on his new biography of war reporter Clare Hollingworth in the Deutsche Welle this week.
We are in the midst of an age of upheaval, marked by international crises. Does Hollingworth continue to observe these developments, despite her advanced age, and if so, how does she view them in light of her experiences?
Clare is a few weeks away from her 105th birthday, and she is now quite frail. Long ago she researched many of the themes that are only now achieving major prominence. [Republican presidential candidate] Donald Trump is suggesting that the US should abandon its NATO allies: This was an angle that Clare followed up in the 1960s. Clare was in Israel when the state was founded and all over the Middle East during World War II.
Religion-focused terrorism was a subject she wrote about and in fact was attacked for by academics. Some of her remarks have proved sadly prescient. She wrote about how effective the foot soldier could be against a superpower using the simplest tactics: We see that, too, in the Middle East. Based in China, she wrote about potential tensions in the South China Sea and Pacific long before they were daily news fodder.
As for watching today - she still likes to feel that she is part of the news world and insists on keeping her passport by her bedside and her shoes beside her bed in case she is called out to cover a story. Obviously that isn’t going to happen anymore, but it was what gave her a sense of purpose, and is perhaps one reason for her longevity.
Full interview (in English)
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Great review for Of Fortunes and War
26 Aug 2016
Patrick Garrett’s terrific new biography of journalist Clare Hollingworth, Of Fortunes and War, has received a great review in the South China Morning Post.
‘A gripping account of a restless life that also illuminates profound social changes.’
Book review: the life of Clare Hollingworth, war correspondent
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Recent Foreign Rights Sales
26 Aug 2016
Chinese rights in The Black Door: Spies, Secret Intelligence and British Prime Ministers by Richard Aldrich and Rory Cormac.
Dutch rights in Cathy Glass’s I Miss Mummy.
American rights in Lawrence James’s Empires in the Sun: The Struggle for the Mastery of Africa, 1830-1980.
Chinese rights in A Very Dangerous Woman : The Lives,. Loves and Lies of Russia’s Most Seductive Spy by Deborah McDonald and Jeremy Dronfield.
Brazilian rights in Hitler’s Forgotten Children by Tim Tate and Ingrid von Oelhaven.
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Investing guide to Amacom
26 Aug 2016
Amacom have bought Gary Smith’s The Value Investing Option: Why It’s the one approach to beat the market and how to get started for publication next year.
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Long feature on Of Fortunes and War in the Telegraph
16 Aug 2016
Patrick Garrett has written a very interesting long piece in the Telegraph on his new book Of Fortunes and War, a biography of pioneering journalist Clare Hollingworth.
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Interesting piece on marriage and surnames by Matt Wilven
15 Aug 2016
Matt Wilven has written a thoughtful article for the Telegraph on how he and his wife chose to deal with the issues of marriage and surnames.
We don’t believe in marriage - so we’ve spliced our surnames instead
Matt’s exhilerating debut novel The Blackbird Singularity is out now, and has just been longlisted for the Not The Booker Prize.
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Patrick Garrett in The Courier
10 Aug 2016
There’s an interesting piece in The Courier today on Patrick Garrett’s new biography of journalist Clare Hollingworth.
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Early praise for Dr James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her Time
09 Aug 2016
Dr James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her Time by Dr. Michael du Preez and Jeremy Dronfield published by Oneworld on 25th August has already received glowing reviews.
“Jeremy Dronfield, using a novelist’s touch for contemporary detail, has produced an elegant and sensitive biography….Du Preez and Dronfield have done Margaret Buckley and her alter ego proud in this absorbing book”. Times, Book of the Week
“The life of Dr James Barry was and is by every measure so remarkable that at each turn of this quite gripping biography I found myself gasping in disbelief….The great pleasure of this book is its detail. It is one thing to re-create a life, but quite another to fill in the background as vividly as the authors have done, fleshing out the personalities of walk-on characters and giving colour and context to Barry’s world – or worlds. Wherever their subject goes, whether it is Margate or Mauritius, they make those places come alive with contemporary descriptions and reports. Their research is authoritative and prodigious, giving the reader glowing pictures of, for example, the rackety artistic circles of London in 1802, the horrors of a military hospital in wartime, travelling down a sheer South African gorge in a cart, visiting St Helena in the days of Napoleon, and being on a ship in which a smallpox infection breaks out. When you have all this to play with, the book’s occasional novelistic flourishes are surplus to requirements.” Literary Review
