John paul flintoff biography of rory
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What If the Queen Should Die?
Windsor Castle. 1714. Queen Anne is nearing the end of a life filled with tragedy and grief: plagued by illness and cursed by her father to lose all 17 of her children, she now lies dying with no living heir.
The question of succession is thick in the air. Will it be James Stuart, the half-brother she has always refused to acknowledge? Or George of Hanover, the cousin who once turned her down for marriage?
Neither is ideal: she hates them both.
Over the course of one night at the Queen’s Elizabethan ball, courtiers, politicians and ladies’ maids alike seize the opportunity to steer the succession to their own advantage, changing the course of history forever. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to them, imperial spy Daniel Defoe creeps through the castle gathering intelligence on their every move for the Earl of Oxford.
Before the night is over, Queen Anne will finally have to face the past—for nothing can be resolved until she comes to terms with her children’s deaths and repairs the terrible wrong she committed many years before…
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picture by Rory Carnegie for the BBC
The National Theatre, London. I’ve come backstage to meet Mark Haddon, arguably Britain’s most versatile writer and artist, amid last minute preparations for a new play. I’m looking forward to meeting an an all-round genius who is also down to earth – Haddon once described himself as “a nice, easy-going person with a straightforward exterior” – but when I sit down with him he looks defensive.
I can only imagine he’s worried about being pigeonholed – wrongly pigeonholed. Because regardless of his many achievements – prizewinning writer of books for adults and for children, poetry, stage and TV dramas, and illustrator, abstract painter and portraitist – Haddon has frequently, since the publication a decade ago of his first book for adults, been mistaken for an expert on autism.
The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time tells the story of a young man with something like Asperger’s, confident in maths but struggling to make sense of his parents’ relationship, and mysterious events in his street. The book swept up 17 awards in 2004, including the Whitbread and the Commonwealth Prizes, and was translated into innumerable languages. It’s on the school curriculum, and now the National The
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