Back to Normal!

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Hi, Just to say I am back to posting my weekly news blogs. Sorry for the recent mess up but I have been having some work done on my site and also busy sorting out other project details and deadlines. So it has been pretty manic really. Anyway, with luck, I will be back to posting a weekly update.

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Looking forward to next week and recording my sections for the new BBC Radio 3 Composer of the Week programmes at Broadcasting House in London. I will let you have more details once this is complete and will of course let you know when the programmes are scheduled to go out. This is a very exciting project.

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Royal Palace Gardens

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Delighted with the new cover design – brilliant work by Ed at Deeper Blue Designs.

http://www.wearedeeperblue.co.uk/

Also the marvelous colourisation of a B&W image of the gardens undertaken by Tom Marshall at Fotografix

Tom Marshall (PhotograFix), Bluebell Cottage, 9 Queen Street, Much Wenlock, Shropshire, TF13 6BX
FIND US ON FACEBOOK HERE

A friend of mine, Peter, sent me some brilliant images of the Raikes Hall prior to its transformation into the Royal Palace Gardens in circa. 1860 and also one at a later date along with a very fragile guide from the 1890s. They will be unique additions to the book.

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Ken Dodd

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Delighted to see Ken Dodd again and still performing to a packed Grand Theatre at 88 years of age! I first saw him in a summer show at Blackpool Opera House when I was about 7 or 8 – that’s nearly 50 years ago. He was one of those artistes who drew me into the theatre and made it a passion for life.  He truly is the last of that great generation of 20th Century comedians who worked through the Music Hall and Variety traditions – we shall not see his like again and I urge you to see him while you still can. Travesty that he has not yet been given a Knighthood. He deserves it in spades for all the laughter and happiness he has given for decades and to millions!

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Romeo & Juliet

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Delighted to see Kenneth Branagh’s production of Romeo & Juliet at the Garrick Theatre. Wonderful cast and inspired 1950s Italian theme that also reflected film noir. Loved it and it has been a highlight of the season along with The Winters Tale.

The Mistletoe Haunting - Legend of Minster Lovell

The Mistletoe Haunting

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I am so pleased that The Mistletoe Haunting – Legend of Minster Lovell is gathering some excellent reviews. More delighted that the story has initiated such a response from readers – more than I could have hoped. The book is having a Christmas marketing campaign leading up to the holiday season. It has an obvious Christmas theme, so should go down well with readers who want a ghostly Christmas read!

The Mistletoe Haunting - Legend of Minster Lovell

I am currently working on a biography of Puccini – working title is Verisimo! Puccini, Elvira and Love – the book will be a companion to my new play Elvira & I – Puccini’s Scandalous Passions! that is currently in development for a future theatre production.

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Also in second draft stage is a book about Blackpool’s lost pleasure gardens titled The Royal Palace Gardens at Raikes Hall. I am working with local historian Alan Seddon on this project and it should be available later in the year.

RPG Book Cover advert

A.L. Rowse

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Have made some good research progress on my book based on Puccini titled Verisimo! Some interesting letters have come to my attention that Puccini wrote in the last months of his life to a German soprano many years his junior. Elvira was as ever on high alert! Elvira is such a misunderstood woman and I have to say she had much to put up with being Puccini’s wife. Certainly not the demon that opera historians have painted her.  Still a long way to go, but I have completed the opening section and am very pleased thus far.

Aside from that I am also reading a biography on A.L. Rowse by Richard Ollard. Rowse, a Fellow at All Souls, Oxford, and Elizabethan Historian, was a friend of my fathers so I am fascinated to know more about his life. My sister remembers toasting crumpets on his coal fire in his sitting room at All Souls when she visited his with our father. What a lovely image. Also visiting his home in Cornwall for a family holiday.

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