Over the decades, gay cinema has reflected the community's journey from persecution to emancipation to acceptance. Politicised dramas like Victim in the 60s, The Naked Civil Servant in the 70s, and the AIDS cinema of the 80s have given way in recent years to films which celebrate a vast array of gay life-styles. Gay films have undergone a major shift, from the fringe to the mainstream and 2005's Academy Awards were dubbed ''the Gay Oscars'' with gongs going to Brokeba...

En route to make their fortunes, the passengers of the Golden Mary suffer a terrifying ordeal when their vessel collides with an iceberg. Now the helpless victims of shipwreck, they turn to the restorative powers of storytelling in a desperate attempt to raise morale. As each takes their turn, from the captain (whose tale is masterfully recounted by Dickens himself ) to the first mate (as told by Wilkie Collins), the Dickensian figures of miser and murderer, orphan and ghost, are brought o...

Over the decades, gay cinema has reflected the community's journey from persecution to emancipation to acceptance. Politicised dramas like Victim in the 60s, The Naked Civil Servant in the 70s, and the AIDS cinema of the 80s have given way in recent years to films which celebrate a vast array of gay life-styles. Gay films have undergone a major shift, from the fringe to the mainstream and the 2005 Academy Awards were dubbed ' the Gay Oscars' with gongs going to Brokeback Mountain, Capote a...

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

An entertaining biography of Dickens by one of our finest actorsAcclaimed actor and writer Simon Callow captures the essence of Charles Dickens in a sparkling biography that explores the central importance of the theatre to the life of the greatest storyteller in the English language.From his early years as a child entertainer in Portsmouth to his reluctant retirement from ‘these garish lights’ just before his death, Dickens was obsessed with the stage. Not only was he a da...

An alternative autobiography of the well-loved actor and man of the theatre, winner of the Sheridan Morley Prize for Theatre Biography.In My Life in Pieces Simon Callow retraces his life through the multifarious performers, writers, productions and events which have left their indelible mark on him.The story begins with Peter Pan – his first ever visit to the theatre – before transporting us to southern Africa and South London, where Callow spent much of h...

From the Booker Prize-winner of ‘Offshore’ comes this entertaining tale of a chaotic stage school and its singular headmistress. With a new introduction by Simon Callow.It is the 1960s, in London’s West End, and Freddie is the formidable proprietress of the Temple Stage School. Of unknown age and provenance, Freddie is a skirt-swathed enigma – a woman who by sheer force of character and single-minded thrust has turned herself and her school into a national institution. Anyone who i...

In One-Man Band, the third volume in his epic survey of Orson Welles’ life and work, Simon Callow again probes in comprehensive and penetrating detail into one of the most complex artists of the twentieth century, looking closely at the triumphs and failures of an ambitious one-man assault on one medium after another – theatre, radio, film, television, even, at one point, ballet – in each of which his radical and original approach opened up new directions and hitherto unglimpsed p...

The reason for the decline of Orson Welles's career is a hotly debated issue, but decline it certainly did. When Citizen Kane, his first film, opened in 1941, Welles was universally acclaimed as the most audacious filmmaker alive. But instead of marking the beginning of a triumphant career in Hollywood, the film still regularly voted the greatest ever made proved to be an exception in Welles's life and work.In 1947 Welles left America for Europe and lived for the best part...

A companion volume to Being an Actor, Callow's classic text about the experience of acting in the theatre, Shooting the Actor reveals the truth about film acting. The book describes his film work, from Amadeus to Four Weddings and a Funeral, from Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls to Shakespeare in Love.Its centrepiece is a hilarious and sometimes agonising account of the making of Manifesto, shot in the former Yugoslavia. When Callow first met the film's director Duš...

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...

From government ministers and spies to activists, drag queens and celebrities, Odd men out charts the tumultuous history of gay men in 1950s and 60s Britain. It takes us from the earliest tentative steps towards decriminalisation to the liberation movement of the early 1970s. Along the way, it catalogues shocking repression, including laws against homosexual activity and the use of brutal medical ‘treatments’. Odd men out draws on medical data and opinion polls, broadcast...