BBC entertainment commissioning editor Alan Tyler has been appointed acting
controller of entertainment commissioning following Mark Linsey’s move to cover
the director of television role.
Tyler will take up the position for up to six months from Monday 2 November
following the departure of Danny Cohen.
He currently oversees entertainment commissioning for nations and regions
across all BBC channels and has been working under Linsey for a year.
Tyler’s credits include The Sarah Millican Television Programme, Only
Connect, Win Your Wish List, Now You See It and Room 101 as well as upcoming
series with Michael McIntyre and new physical gameshow Can’t Touch This.
Linsey said: “Whilst I’m doing the director of TV job, I’m really grateful to
Alan for stepping up to run entertainment commissioning and I know he’ll do it
brilliantly.”
“Entertainment is a hugely important genre for the BBC,” said Tyler “It is an
absolute privilege to work in this area. I’m looking forward to doing just that
with the best on screen and off screen talent in the UK.”
The Atlanta Braves' "Kiss Cam" entertainment at Turner Field featured a
famous couple Thursday night: former President Jimmy Carter and wife
Rosalynn.
The two were in their usual seats near the Braves dugout during a 5-0 loss to
Toronto, and they received a loud cheer when shown on the video board. Carter
kissed his wife and then gave a big smile as the cheers continued.
The Carters stayed around for all nine innings of the game.
Former President Carter, 90, announced last month he has cancer that spread
to his brain.
Multi Screen Media's digital video entertainment brand Sony Liv is launching
"#LoveBytes", a show exclusively for the digital platform on Monday.
Kushal shared that it is the first time that he is doing something on the
web, and he is excited about it.
“It is really exciting, and I see it as the future of entertainment on all
levels, even for the 'saas and bahus'... they will be watching cooking shows and
entertainment shows at midnight if they want to (on the internet),” Kushal told
IANS over phone.
The beauty of this platform, as Kushal believes, is that people can have
access to the show anytime and anywhere.
“You are not dominated by a television set and you don't have to reach home
early to catch your favourite program anymore. You can watch it repeatedly if
you want,” he said.
Pointing out another advantage of the platform, the actor shared one does not
have to "wait for an entire week for a feedback. The moment it releases, there
are people commenting what they are feeling about it".
The first season of "#LoveBytes" will go on for 26 episodes.
“Our show is episodic, but once the episodes are over, you can easily sit for
an hour and watch all of the 26 episodes together in one go," Kushal said, and
added that the content is identifiable.
The 33-year-old especially pointed out that viewers will not see characters
who will wake up in the morning with cakes of make-up in place on their
face.
With lots on his platter, Kushal is also gearing up for the release of his
Indo-French film “Love is Everywhere” in November. He is also planning to run in
a marathon this year, and to make a video documentary on his training
process.
What are the talent requirements for next-generation leaders who will shape
the future of the media, entertainment, and communications industry?
This was the topic of a keynote and panel conversation at WICT Southern
California Leadership Luncheon at Fogo De Chao in Beverly Hills. The Dean of
USC's Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, Ernest Wilson III,
spoke about a significant problem in the entertainment industry- a one-trillion
dollar global talent gap. He said that we can't find enough good talent with
necessary competencies. He also mentioned that these "soft skills" are the most
critical to learn and the entertainment industry is mainly unaware of this
problem or how to fix it. He encouraged the audience to dedicate more time to
resolving this issue.
USC completed research that explores the talent requirements needed for media
and entertainment jobs in the 21st century. The University created a white paper
in which they present unique strategic communication competencies in a new area
that they coined the "third space."
These critical competencies have been identified as: adaptability,
flexibility, comfort with ambiguity, curiosity, creativity, willingness to
experiment, cultural competency, empathy, effective listening, collaboration,
360 degree thinking and pattern recognition.
From reading their white paper, and having been a VP of a movie studio, and a
speaker on the WICT luncheon panel, I created my own top five talents that I
believe are necessary to be a strong values-based leader:
1. MENTORSHIP: Find a strong and inspiring mentor, role model, or coach that
can help you develop authentic leadership skills as there are no rule books.
Look for someone who has embodied wisdom so they walk their talk. Offer
mentorship to your employees if you are in a leadership position.
2. INNOVATION: Innovate or become irrelevant. Continuously learn and work on
cultivating creativity and solutions that work. Look into the future and see the
big picture of an extremely inter-connected world. Create stories and technology
that helps humanity evolve and thrive.
3. COMPASSION: Establish respect and rapport quickly with colleagues and
employees so collaboration is easy and fun. Be transparent and authentic when
you share with collaborative partners so trust can be developed and be willing
to see their perspectives with an open heart and mind.
4. EXPERIMENTATION: Be willing to test things out and take smart risks so you
become the change-agent in your company. This may require you to develop a new
training program for your leaders. As with all good experiments, you want to set
specific goals and measure the results.
5. SYNERGY: Work/life balance is crucial for employee well-being, happiness
and productivity. Finding ways to reduce stress and encourage well-rounded
employees who have hobbies and interests outside of work is necessary. Create
synergistic systems and remind all teams that they are part of a whole organism
that needs to function together for ultimate efficiency.
I believe that we all have the "third space" skills inside and we just need
coaching, education, and encouragement to live into our highest potential.
The good news is that there are different places where you can learn and
receive training to embody these skills. Here are a few of my favorite
places:
1. USM: A 10-month certificate program in Spiritual Psychology that teaches
over twenty different communication competencies that help you be your best in
business and life.
2. Synergy TV: A curated online video channel that showcases empowering role
models, life and career coaches, solution-driven films, and inspirational
thought-leaders who mirror a better world.
3. TrueSpark: A non-profit that pairs educational curriculum with
inspirational movies to teach youth aged 11 - 18 about 24 different positive
character traits.
4. Equine Rockstar: An equine coaching program that works with corporate and
entrepreneur groups at a ranch in Malibu partnering with horses in team building
and goal-setting exercises to improve leadership and communications skills.
5. USC: USC is starting an Institute for Diversity & Empowerment to
provide education and help link talent strategy with corporate strategy, as well
as train students on how to be great mentees as part of their Third Space
initiative.
6. WICT: Women in Telecommunications offers mentorship programs to women in
entertainment and media. Through various events, they are preparing, encouraging
and rewarding women to step into their inner power and become leaders.
I encourage you to start the conversation in your organization about what
your employees and colleagues need and how they can best be served. These skills
are important to our collective future, not just in entertainment but as a
society. The investment your company makes in coaching, training and educational
programs will differentiate you in the industry. As one of the luncheon
panelists mentioned, our careers are more like walking a labyrinth rather than
climbing a ladder. Growth can happen at any turn, so enjoy the journey!
Are they or aren't they? Though officially remaining coy, members of the
Spice Girls are hinting at a potential reunion tour next year, timed to the 20th
anniversary of their first hit, Wannabe.
Fans worldwide buzzed after a report in The Sun newspaper said that four of
the five original bandmembers – all but Victoria Beckham – have planned to
reunite for an international tour, with an official announcement to come later
in the year.
On Friday, Emma Bunton, nicknamed Baby Spice, initially seemed to splash cold
water on that notion.
"Nothing's happening, at the moment," she noted on her Heart FM radio show.
"If anything happens and it's concrete, and we decide on something, I will let
you know."
That said, she and fellow singer Melanie Chisolm (Sporty Spice) teased fans
online with an exchange of tweets hinting the opposite.
When my editor caught the run dates for Theatre at the Center's new
production of "All Shook Up," the Elvis Presley inspired stage musical, she drew
my attention to the closing show date — Aug. 16.
As she pointed out, it's the same fateful date of the anniversary of
Presley's death at age 42 in 1977.
Even for those who are not a fan of The King, there's no denying his lasting
impact and impression on others.
Actor David Sajewich gives Elvis his due, and then some, starring as the lead
for this polished run of "All Shook Up," which is the perfect example of summer
stage musical fun.
It runs just slightly more than two hours, including one intermission and
Sajewich is cast as the Elvis-tribute lead character "Chad," a musical rebel
with likeable qualities who manages to cast a spell over an entire small
town.
All of the greatest hits from the Presley music library are showcased, woven
with nostalgic rock n' roll highlights, romance and silly mix-ups with Theatre
at the Center Artistic Director Bill Pullinsi and Jeff Award-winning
choreographer Danny Herman co-directing. The musical features the book by Tony
Award-winning Joe DiPietro.
What makes this musical so charming is it doesn't attempt to be serious or
life-changing. Instead, it embraces an almost cartoon quality to entertain and
leave audiences smiling.
Set in the summer of 1955 in a conservative Midwestern town, "All Shook Up"
is described as the modern musical take on William Shakespeare's romantic
comedy, "Twelfth Night." It follows the story of Natalie, played by talented,
eye-twinkling Callie Johnson, who is a small town girl with big dreams for a
life of adventure.
The answer to her prayers comes in the form of black leather jacket adorned
musical Adonis, Chad, the role captured so ideally by Sajewich with his comic
timing, velvety voice and bravado.
Mayor Matilda Hyde believes Chad's musical free-spirit ways are a corrupt
influence on the youth of today and actress Iris Lieberman captures all of the
kooky qualities of madam mayor and adds an element of eccentric excitement to
her character.
The production highlights 24 classic Elvis hits in the musical comedy,
including "Heartbreak Hotel," "Burning Love," "Jailhouse Rock," "Blue Suede
Shoes," "It's Now or Never," "Don’t Be Cruel," "Hound Dog," "Can't Help Falling
In Love" and "Fools Rush In."
Other fun moments come courtesy of Matthias Austin as Natalie's age-defying
father Jim;Justin Brill for a very funny turn as sidekick Dennis; Sharriese
Hamilton who sparkles as Lorraine; Allison Sill brings her own clever spin to
straight-laced museum curator Miss Sandra; and Bethany Thomas belts out her
every tune with fire and passion as cafe owner Sylvia.Patrick Tierney is fun as
the mayor's son Dean, and Steve Silver claims his own moment near the conclusion
as Sheriff Earl. The ensemble includes Annelise Baker, Julie Baird, Caitlin
Borek, Johnson Brock, Brian Duncan, Reneisha Jenkins, Kayla Kennedy, Eric Lewis,
John Marshall and Henry McGinniss.
Jeff Award-winning scenic designers Jackie Penrod and Richard Penrod creative
an inventive landscape with lighting and projection design from Guy Rhodes added
to the talents of sound designer Barry Funderburg and dazzling costume designs
from Brenda Winstead with wig designer Kevin Barthel.
Five years after the food-truck boom in St. Louis began in earnest, new
trucks keep arriving. There’s always, it seems, another niche to fill.
Smoothies?
JuiceMasters serves them from a truck.
Not just coffee, but fancy pour-over coffee?
The Grove coffee shop Rise serves it from a truck.
Nutrition-focused food from the Cardinals team chef?
Revel Kitchen serves it from a truck.
Kevin Baker and Eddie Bohn spotted a market for hot Italian beef sandwiches
and other fare from Bohn’s native Chicago, so the duo launched 22 August, one of
the newest additions to the St. Louis food-truck fleet.
(The truck’s name references Bohn’s mother’s birthday. “She passed away a
couple years ago and left him a little money,” Baker said. “Just enough to get a
food truck up and running.”)
The crowded food-truck field didn’t dissuade them. At 22 August’s three main
stops — the established city food-truck haunts at Citygarden downtown, the Wells
Fargo campus in midtown and the Barnes-Jewish campus in the Central West End —
Baker reports that the truck has already gained a set of regular customers.
St. Louis’ proximity to Chicago “has gotten us a lot of attention,” Baker
said. “We’ll show up, and there will be five or six other trucks, and we’ll get
a little concerned, but we’re doing all right.”
When Go! Magazine cataloged St. Louis’ food trucks in December 2013, we
counted 45 mobile vendors. This summer, we counted 60, give or take. (A couple
of trucks have announced, but not begun, their operations.)
What’s more, of 2013’s roster, only five trucks have ceased operations or
taken an extended hiatus. A sixth, Burger Ink, shut down in favor of a
brick-and-mortar restaurant, the Tattooed Dog, in Wentzville.
Several other trucks have added, or are about to add, brick-and-mortar
restaurants, includingGuerrilla Street Food, Lulu’s Local Eatery and Taco Truck
STL.
My Big Fat Greek Truck opened its restaurant, the Little Greek Corner, just
last week in Fenton. Owner Danny Botonis said the restaurant will help address
one major issue that will always concern St. Louis food trucks.
“I always wanted to have a restaurant,” co-owner Danny Botonis said. “We
happened to start with the food truck four years ago. (The truck) is great, but
it’s seasonal.”
Glastonbury 2015 interview: Emily Eavis on 'selling out' and a trio of
secretive 'baby spiders'
Emily Eavis has been running the Glastonbury festival with her father Michael
since 1999. She talks to Jamie Merrill about running the biggest music event in
the world and why it has lost none of its soul
With only a few days before the gates open on the Glastonbury festival, Emily
Eavis is pleased to see that the fields and hedgerows of her little corner of
Somerset have been bathing in sunshine. The sky is deep, clear blue and the
woman who holds the power at Worthy Farm can feel the excitement building. But
with most of the setting up on the vast 1,000-acre site complete, Worthy Farm
looks oddly naked. The 1,300 eco-friendly composting lavatories and the dozens
of temporary stages are all in place, but the Vale of Avalon is still awaiting
the sea of tents and 135,000 soon-to-be sunburned (or mud-caked) ticket holders,
who will descend upon it from tomorrow morning.
"I certainly wouldn't call this moment the calm before the storm or anything
like that," says Eavis, who has run the world-famous festival with her father,
Michael, since 1999. "But we are nearly there with it. It's just the finishing
touches now." Those finishing touches mean that a fleet of Land Rovers is
constantly scurrying back and forth across the site and an army of workers are
painting the last of the festival's trademark decorated bins and erecting the
banners. On Friday, it also meant that Eavis, along with her husband, Nick
Dewey, who helps her to run the day-to-day business of booking bands and
supervise the construction of a temporary city the size of Oxford, had some
last-minute "rejigging" of the Friday night line-up to oversee.
The Independent arrived at Worthy Farm – now complete with offices for 20
full-time staff – just as Eavis and Dewey were discussing the changes they need
to make now that Florence and the Machine have stepped up to the headline slot,
replacing the Foo Fighters after frontman Dave Grohl broke his leg. "We are
probably just going to do a rejigging of what we've already got," she says, as
Dewey leaves the room, phone in hand. "But it's going to be great. I'm so
excited about Florence. The fact is that when we sell our tickets in October
people don't know who is playing as we don't announce it until the spring. They
had a window to return their tickets [in April], but this year very fewer people
than last year took us up on that, which was amazing."
There's also the fact, she is quick to add, that "Florence is massive" and
well deserving of her new headliner slot. "I think personally that when she
walks on the stage she'll be the biggest star in the world. She's amazing live.
She has all the right ingredients."
"We book bands here on those reasons, on the ingredients of a great
performance, not on their record sales. But as it happens, Florence has been
number one across the Atlantic and here. She's an amazing star and a massive
performer. We've had much more risky headliners." Florence is also a female
headliner, a species that is in short supply this summer as Britain's festivals
have been attacked for failing to represent the female domination of the charts.
"It's definitely a positive by-product," adds Eavis. "It's true that there are
very few women headlining festivals this summer, and this helps that, I suppose.
It's great."
For Eavis, though, Glastonbury is about more than the "headliners and band,
bands, bands, bands". It has a turnover of more than £35m and a seasonal crew of
50,000, enabling her and her father to donate £2m to charity each year. Then
there's the farm itself, which this year was voted Britain's best dairy farm by
the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers. In fact, the team around Emily
and Michael still insist that Steve Kearle, the long-serving farm manager, not
Michael or Emily, is the most important person on the site.
"I obviously get excited about the bands, because we work on those all year
and we have fantastic headliners. But in all honesty, I get just as excited
about the other performers and fantastic visual installations and sculpture by
artists like Joe Rush," she says. "To me, the music is part of a massive
picture, and that picture involves amazing circus, ballet, theatre, comedy and
visual art. The artistic side is amazing here. You could go easily the entire
festival without seeing a band."
This year, that less mainstream side of Glastonbury has grown even stronger.
There are 1,500 performances in the Theatre and Circus field alone, says Eavis
and a trio of secretive "baby spiders" will join the giant fire-breathing
mechanical spider in the late-night area Arcadia. Arcadia is already loved by
festival goers who flock to its dystopian avenues in the early hours of the
morning, but she is coy about the spiders, only saying the "triplet" will be
part of a "phenomenal" new nightly show.
Elsewhere on the site, Eavis says she is looking forward to performances from
the Danza de los Voladores, a troupe of Mexican dancers who will help open the
festival at King's Meadow tomorrow night. From the top of their 30ft poles they
will perform a Mexican ritual ceremony that Eavis says will "wow" festival
goers. There is also a new Tor View Lookout by the circus tent, and a new Temple
in the Park viewing platform and real ale bar on the site's highest point above
the Park Stage.
For Eavis these new sites are a reward for the festival's hardcore and most
loyal fans who return every year to a new discovery. In recent years they have
"embraced" the festival like never before, she says. By Thursday lunchtime, as
many as 90 per cent of ticket holders will have already arrived, a full day
before the music actually starts. This loyalty doesn't stop the yearly
controversies, though, including a tax protest against U2 in 2011. This year the
inevitable saga has been a 130,000-signature petition to prevent rapper Kanye
West from performing at the festival. "We try not to feed the [online] frenzy,"
she says carefully. "That petition was started by a guy called Neil who had
never been to Glastonbury. He's coming now. I'm not going to meet him, but he's
very welcome and he can make a decision after the show. I think Kanye is going
to be fantastic."
It's clear Eavis is somewhat bored of the faux outrage every time she and
Dewey book a group that isn't four white men with guitars. "Complaining about
Kanye at Glastonbury is like going to London as saying you are appalled that
Miss Saigon is playing," she says. "In that case, go to Les Misérables instead…
or the thousands of other shows."
There's also the question of Kanye West's lyrics, which are hardly what you'd
describe as feminist-friendly. "Oh God," says Eavis. "If we censored the lyrics
and views of people who performed we wouldn't have anyone. We wouldn't have had
the Rolling Stones, or pretty much any of the headliners from the last 20
years." Not everyone will agree, but Eavis says she and her husband don't take a
band's politics or lyrics into account. "It's rock and roll," she says. "The
important thing is that they deliver the goods by making the crowd feel like
they are part of something really spectacularly special."
Glastonbury is certainly a special experience, but each year some complain
that with its vast security fence, celebrities in Hunter wellies and colonies of
expensive yurts, it has lost some of its soul, the so-called Glastonbury spirit.
This year the latest (unofficial) wheeze is a private jet service offering rides
to the festival for £600, a development that Eavis says she would find funny if
it didn't threaten to drown out Glastonbury's real message.
"I hadn't even heard about that," she responds. "It's like that hammering
board game my boys have got. Things like this are popping up all the time, they
have nothing to do with us and we try to knock them down. Corporations and
business people keep coming up with these things, but we are not interested in
them in the slightest."
In truth, the festival does have corporate tie-ins with the BBC, The Guardian
and mobile firm EE, which provides 4G data coverage and charging facilities
across the site, but Eavis says deals only get the "go ahead" if they help fund
Glastonbury's donations to Water Aid, Oxfam and Greenpeace. "We give as close to
£2m to charity as we can every year. That is our upmost priority," she says.
Eavis has been helping her father run the festival since she came home from
university when her mother died in 1999. In reality, though, she's had "full
control" of the reins for a decade and her father, Michael, is taking an
increasingly small role. "Dad leaves Nick and I to handle most things now, so it
doesn't feel like there is going to be dramatic handover moment or anything like
that, because in a way it has already happened," she says. "A lot has changed
for him. He didn't have these constant corporate approaches to deal with 20
years ago, or even 10 years ago, where we have media and corporate brands trying
to cling on. He just doesn't understand it."
Earlier this year, Michael said his daughter was "cunning" in how she runs
the festival, and keeps it true to its founding ethos. She laughs at this, but
as if to prove her father's take on her, she quickly confirms that all three
headliners for Glastonbury 2016 are already booked.
Are they guitar bands? "I can't answer that. It would give it away," she
laughs. "Everybody has a band or guitars anyway, or nearly everybody." She's
right to be secretive; the last thing she wants this weekend is another online
petition on her hands.
Frédéric Tcheng is the director of Dior
& I, a documentary about creative director Raf Simons’ first collection for
the storied Parisian house, which is in cinemas 27 March. Here is what he
learned about the rarefied world of couture during filming.
Simons is notoriously private – but Tcheng won him over in the end
“Raf said no [to the documentary] initially, which I can understand. He
didn’t want to engage in the image-driven world of publicity, and it’s not an
easy thing to have cameras pointed at you in one of the most challenging periods
of your career. But we convinced him to allow us in for a trial period of one
week, and once he appreciated that we were not going to focus on just him but on
the atelier, that seemed to reassure him.” Raf Simons takes inspiration from a 1950s gown from the
Christian Dior archive Photograph: Dior & I
Not everyone was so shy, however...
“One woman in the atelier, Lulu, who was in charge of sourcing buttons and
zippers and mannequins, really wanted to be on camera – so much so that she had
a fight with another seamstress about it.”
The Dior atelier is run on Coke Zero
“I have never seen people drink so much Coke Zero. They are literally
obsessed with it. One day I saw a crate of hundreds of cans that had been
delivered to the office, and the next day they had all gone, and another came.
Every day there were the same conversations: where are the cold cokes? People
would fetch them from different fridges.”
John Galliano ended up on the cutting room floor
“There was a version which included some of the news reports about Galliano,
[Simons’ predecessor at Dior, who left after he was caught an antisemitic rant
in a bar in Paris] but in the end I felt that didn’t make sense in the film.
Everything that happened before Raf arrived, with the Galliano scandal, had been
covered a lot and it felt as though it belonged to the news cycle, not in the
reality of the present. It also became clear that Raf was digging into the first
10 years of the house – that’s what he was having a dialogue with, so it made
sense to focus on that.”
Christian Dior played an important part in the film – from beyond the
grave
“While researching the film, I found a tiny little grey Christian Dior
autobiography, with such an emotional depiction of work as designer, with every
step described in such fascinating detail. I would read it at night, after a
long day shooting [at the atelier] and would feel I was reading what I had seen
that same day. There was a very interesting relationship between the past and
the present. A sense that history repeats itself but it’s a brand new journey
for the people going through it.” Simons’ assistant, Pieter Mulier, right, helps take up a
hem. Photograph: Dior & I
Simons’ assistant, Pieter Mulier, is the atelier’s unofficial boss
“Pieter is an incredible force to be reckoned with. He manages to get so much
done with a smile. He was pivotal – he held so many keys – he was our ‘go to’
person. He was always so charming. He charmed everyone.” Raf Simons meets his new team at Dior. Photograph: Dior
& I
Raf’s wardrobe was laden with meaning – particularly his shorts
“Raf has a uniform – his clothes are bordering on clerical, although with
completely outrageous shoes. I also loved his shorts. Psychologically, when he
showed up in shorts to the office, it marked a turning point in collection. The
sun is out and Raf feels comfortable enough to show up in shorts at Dior.”
Simons likes his music loud
“Raf is a fan of Plastikman and Nine Inch Nails, which he plays at volume,
which was kind of a nightmare for us as it meant we couldn’t use some of what we
were filming. He would turn the music up and sing the lyrics very loudly. His
team found it endearing but [it made it] hard [for them] to focus.” Hard work at the atelier. Photograph: Dior & I
Everyone in the atelier had creative input
“The seamstresses referred to the dresses they were making as their babies –
they put a lot of themselves into their work. They have an inner life and are
engaged and involved in their work. I hope that the film showed fashion in a
different light – that it’s a collaborative art form, not just a one man show,
as the media portrays it.” The atelier workers choose a dress from the collection to
sew. Photograph: Dior & I
Simons stayed away during the edit
“After the premier, Raf called me and explained that he had kept his distance
until then because he did not want to influence my decisions while making the
film. I thought it was remarkable that he would be thoughtful like that.”
It is five years since Polly Samson published a book, and she wrote her new
one, The Kindness, through what she calls “horrible times”. Two years
ago her father, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany who came to England on the
Kindertransport as a boy in 1938, died in hospital in “utterly miserable”
circumstances after a mistakenly prescribed double dose of antibiotics destroyed
his liver.
The year before that, Samson’s friend, the journalist Cassandra Jardine, died
of lung cancer. And the year before that, Samson’s eldest son Charlie went to
prison after admitting “violent disorder” for his part in an attack on Topshop
that followed the tuition fee protests of December 2010, during which he was
pictured on the bonnet of Prince Charles’s car and hanging from a flag on the
Cenotaph.
At times she found it difficult to focus on anything else. The first draft of
the story that grew into The Kindness was framed by an account of a
prison visit. Then there was a plan for an intriguing combination of novella and
linked short stories. But over the course of the miles-long walks she takes from
her house on a bustling corner of the sea front at Hove, Samson gathered
her material together and stitched it into the densely plotted, dynamic domestic
thriller – with an English idyll of ivy-covered house, meadow and hammock on the
cover – that is sitting on the coffee table in front of us.
“It’s the most gleeful sort of writing there is,” she says from the large
sofa where she is smoking roll-ups and looking out to sea. “For days I’d be
thinking, how does this happen? How do the characters not know this information
or how do we not know it? All those technical problems. That’s the thing about
walking – or sleeping, it’s the same – it just solves them and then you can’t
wait to get back to the top of the house.”
By coincidence, following the triumph of Helen Macdonald’s memoir H Is
for Hawk, The Kindness opens with a falconry scene, but swiftly
moves indoors to trace the contours of grief. Julian has lost both partner Julia
and daughter Mira, and is stuck in a country house with their ghosts, his
overbearing mum and needy former girlfriend.
From empty picture frames and beds the novel moves backwards, to the couple’s
ever-so-romantic beginnings, their grotty L-shaped flat, and the accidental
pregnancy and miscarriage that preceded Mira. On a whim, we learn, Julian moved
the family back to his picturesque childhood home, Firdaws. Then childhood
cancer struck: blood tests, scans, tubes, “pale, curdy sick”.
The novel is contemporary but deeply indebted to the past. Samson’s
grandmother used to say the family lost “just two aunts” in the Holocaust, but
since her father’s death, and aided by a trunk of papers she inherited, Samson
has become obsessed with piecing together the truth. In particular she is
interested in her great-uncle Heino, who killed himself in the 1970s and whose
black-and-white photograph of painter Mark Rothko sits behind her on a shelf.
The feelings of living people mean she must be careful what she reveals, but she
has drawn on family secrets in The Kindness and recently went to Paris
to meet the woman Heino loved in later life.
“My father was from Hamburg and most of his family got out, but like a lot of
people he didn’t want to talk about Germany, the war or the Holocaust,” she
says. “It was sealed off, and when we went to live in Cornwall” – in 1970 when
she was eight – “ties were pretty much severed with everyone except my
grandmother. I had no access to my Jewish family at all but they did all the
things I do – they wrote, they took pictures – and finding out about them has
given me a much stronger sense of who I am.”
Samson’s husband is David Gilmour, the musician, best known for being in Pink
Floyd, with whom she has two sons and a daughter. Gilmour, who is 16 years her
senior, has four adult children from his first marriage and Samson’s son Charlie
also comes from a previous relationship, though Gilmour adopted him. They are a
modern blended family, but what is striking about Samson’s background is that
this is nothing new. Second and third marriages and webs of siblings go back at
least two generations to her grandmother, an East End chambermaid of Jewish or
Romany origins who married the scion of a well-to-do Shanghai family but was
sent back to England following the 1937 Japanese invasion, leaving her husband
to start again.
Samson’s mother Esther was six at the time, and she and her brothers went
first to a children’s home and then to what Samson calls “pretty scary foster
parents”. She survived to fall in with a group of Spanish communist students,
marry a Chinese-American war hero and smuggle herself to China. There, she found
a set of half-siblings, though not her father, and stayed for 10 years, serving
in the Red Army and working as an interpreter for journalists including the
Daily Worker’s Alan Winnington, who became her second husband.
Samson’s parents met in East Berlin, when the British Communist party gave
her father the job of trying to get Winnington out of China, where he was stuck
without a passport. They fell in love and had Polly before marrying in 1969, but
Winnington remained a long-distance member of the family, with his son and
Esther’s child by her previous relationship brought up with Polly, who grew up
calling her biological father “Lance” and Winnington “Daddy”. Polly Samson with her husband David Gilmour.Photograph: Dave M Benett/Getty Images
Asked whether her first novel, Out of the Picture (2001), which she
dedicated to Charlie and is all about a young woman’s attempts to reconnect with
her absent artist-father, expressed the hope that Charlie might in some way
reconnect with his own lost parent, the poet Heathcote Williams, Samson says she
wonders if the book wasn’t more about herself. Contact with Winnington, the
second father of her early years, suddenly stopped: “No one thought I might have
a yearning and looking back now I think I did.” She later learned he had kept
one of her baby shoes all his life.
Samson’s parents stuck with the Communist party through the Soviet invasion
of Czechslovakia and gave up their membership quietly in the 1970s. Her father
went from the Daily Worker (now the Morning Star) to the Packet group of local
newspapers in Cornwall, where her half-Chinese mother became head of a village
school.
“My parents very much enjoyed each other’s company and didn’t really need
anyone else,” she says. “We lived in an old tin-mining village that even people
in the next town had never heard of. They didn’t have a lot of friends or
do much socialising. Maybe they just wanted a rest.”
Samson had virtually dropped out of school by 14, but at her grandmother’s
urging she moved to London and got a secretarial job in publishing, from where
she rose to become head publicist at Jonathan Cape. She began a relationship
with Williams, moved back to Cornwall and in 1989 had their son. When Williams
walked out, Samson returned to London in a “terrible state” and was offered
a place to stay by Jardine, a virtual stranger who became a close friend.
She married Gilmour five years later, only deciding she
believed in marriage as they arrived at Marylebone town hall. Today they preside
over their “huge tribe of children” and the vast German shepherd she got from a
rescue home at the height of her anxiety about Charlie’s incarceration. She has
taken up smoking again, suffers from stage fright so acute that she takes
beta-blockers before public appearances, and travels to London each week to
see a psychotherapist.
A “really, really secret writer” for many years, Samson wrote her first novel
in six weeks because she wanted it finished before her short stories came out
and bad reviews crushed her confidence. In the event critics were enthusiastic:
her new novel has received much advance praise and she has moved to a new
publisher after a prolonged courtship. At Gilmour’s urging she also revealed
herself as his lyricist, and lights up with excitement when she plays me rough
versions of a couple of tracks on his forthcoming album. One was inspired by
book two of Paradise
Lost; another by a painting on the wall above the fireplace.
Samson suffered a pang about her own lack of education when she delivered her
son Charlie to Cambridge. She struggled in her 20s, she says, when “everyone
else had a gang from university”. Reading Paradise Lost, which features
in her novel as well as Gilmour’s song, she thought: “I would love to be going
to lectures. I would love someone to set me an essay on this.” When stuck with
her writing she took to spending long days at the piano, having begun lessons to
help her children before deciding to take the exams herself.
Her last book of short stories had the ironic title Perfect Lives.
Since then Samson has had what she calls “about the most horrible experience of
my life”, visiting her son in prison: “They make it about as unpleasant as they
can. The glass is smeared with semen and you speak through a kind of box.
I had one or two of my younger children with me and it was terrible for them.”
She remains angry about what happened, and critical of legislation that meant
Charlie was convicted of “violent disorder” although he didn’t attack
anyone.
But as she sets out for her afternoon walk with songs to write rather than
a plot twist to resolve – she is where she wants to be: “I feel like I’ve hit my
lyrical stride,” she says. “I am so in the mood for this.”
Audrey Hepburn was a distinctive personality that has successfully charmed generation after generation. She won the Best Actress in a Leading Role Oscar for this picture and her popularity, along with her career, never looked back. During her film career she would receive four additional Best Actress nominations.
Funnyface, and Breakfast at Tiffany's. She was the every woman, beautiful, but not necessarily glamorous, sensual, but not overtly sexual, a woman whose naturalness appealed to both men and women. To say that Audrey Hepburn is a style icon is an understatement of epic proportions. For women that appreciate a classic look that will never fail, the look of Audrey Hepburn simply IS style.
In fact, to embody Audrey's style and make it ever so contemporary, you only need 7 signature wardrobe staples. But for many actresses back in the day, a pretty dress vis a vis Marilyn Monroe was simply that, just a pretty dress. Audrey's style on the other hand was one that showcased the importance of the investment pieces, the wardrobe staples, and the notion that less really is more. We remember Marilyn Monroe and the famous white dress, for Audrey, we remember style.
They stayed together until Tracy died, and although they would never admit their relationship publicly, the whole world appeared to know the truth. The occupation and lack of food during the latter part of the war left a lasting impression on the young Audrey. Her later involvement in humanitarian issues was partly inspired by her own experiences of suffering.
