February 2, 2013
LITERARY FESTIVAL TALKS
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Paula is booked to talk about THE REAL JANE AUSTEN:
Bath Festival: 8 March
Chagford Festival: 17 March
Oxford Festival: 21 March
Topping Books Bath: 9 April
National Portrait Gallery: 11 April
Cambridge Festival: 14 April
Chipping Campden Festival: 1 May
Charleston Festival: 17 May
Hay Festival: 28 May
Salisbury Festival: 4 June
Harrogate & Edinburgh Festivals: dates tbc
check out festival websites for more details
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January 30, 2013
UPCOMING EVENTS
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Wednesday 30 January, 7pm: Talk and signing, Blackwell's Oxford.
Thursday 31 January, 7pm: Paula in conversation with John Mullan at the London Review Bookshop (just opposite the British Museum).
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December 20, 2012
Radio 4 Book of the Week
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BBC RADIO 4
Monday 14 January to Friday 18 January
Book Of The Week: The Real Jane Austen
To mark the bicentenary of Pride and
Prejudice, in this new biography, author Paula Byrne explores the
forces that shaped the interior life of one of Britain's most beloved
novelists, Jane Austen.
From her father's
religious faith, her mother's aristocratic pedigree, her elder
brother's adoption, her other brothers' naval and military experiences,
her relatives in the East and West Indies, her cousin who lived through
the trauma of the French Revolution, the family's amateur theatricals,
the female novelists she admired, her residence in Bath, her love of the
seaside to her travels around England and her long struggle to become a
published author.
The woman who emerges in this biography is far
tougher, more socially and politically aware, and altogether more modern
than the conventional picture of 'dear Aunt Jane' would allow. Written
by Paula Byrne and abridged by Elizabeth Reeder.
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December 5, 2011
Jane Austen Twitter
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Twitter feed for THE REAL JANE AUSTEN, the portrait debate and all other Austen matters
is now live
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September 23, 2010
The Real Jane Austen
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| HarperCollins are pleased to announce that they have commissioned THE REAL JANE AUSTEN, a major new biography by Paula Byrne, for worldwide publication in 2013. This will be the first substantial Austen biography of the twenty-first century, and will contain a wealth of new research by the best-selling author of Mad World and Perdita. Paula Byrne's first book, a study of Jane Austen and the Theatre, was described by Paul Johnson in The Spectator as "the best book on Austen I have ever read."
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May 30, 2010
Mad World Paperback
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| The UK paperback edition of Mad World has now been published and is being widely reviewed. It includes a "P.S." section with additional materials about Paula and the book.
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January 20, 2010
Vanity Fair Serialization
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| An extract from Mad World will appear in the April edition of Vanity Fair in the USA (and other territories outside Europe), prior to the book's New York publication on 30 March.
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December 12, 2009
American Edition of MAD WORLD
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| Publication of the American edition of MAD WORLD will be slightly delayed, in order to allow for pre-publication serialisation in a major magazine. Watch this space for further information!
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October 2, 2009
American Edition of Mad World
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| The publication date of the American edition of Mad World (HarperCollins New York) has now been announced: 9 March 2010.
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September 26, 2009
Upcoming Event
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| Paula will be talking about Mad World at the Warwick Words festival on Friday 2 October at 10am at the Rose & Crown in Warwick.
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September 14, 2009
Upcoming Events
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| On Thursday 24 September Paula will be talking about Mad World at a literary lunch at the lovely Cotswold House Hotel in Chipping Campden. And on Friday 25 September at 7pm, she will be talking (and signing copies) at Brendon Books, Bath Place, Taunton.
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August 16, 2009
Evelyn Waugh at Oxford
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| Several papers have run stories on the back of Mad World suggesting that the book’s claim that Evelyn Waugh had three gay lovers at Oxford is startling news. All publicity is good publicity, but it is worth setting the record straight. As I say in the book, Evelyn’s friend and first biographer Christopher Sykes wrote of his ‘acute homosexual phase’ back in 1975 and the following year another of his Oxford friends, Christopher Hollis, identified Richard Pares and Alastair Graham as two of Evelyn’s lovers. My new claim is that Hugh Lygon was also his lover, a possibility that previous biographers have skirted around. The evidence comes not only, as has been reported, from the Oxford don A. L. Rowse, but also from a female Oxford contemporary of Waugh’s called Tamara Talbot Rice. My argument is that although Waugh talked about Alastair Graham as ‘the friend of my heart’ in his autobiography and told Nancy Mitford that Pares was ‘my first homosexual love’, he was reticent in talking about Hugh Lygon because of the sensitivities surrounding the scandal of Earl Beauchamp. The way that he paid tribute to this very special relationship was indirect: through the creation of Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead and the ‘naughtiness high in the catalogue of grave sins’ which Sebastian and Charles share.
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August 15, 2009
Stella Article
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| An article by Paula about Evelyn Waugh's friendship with the Lygon sisters, and its influence on Brideshead Revisited is in the Sunday Telegraph Stella Magazine on Sunday 16 August.
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