News

British novelist Fay Weldon, best known for her popular fiction works The Life And Loves Of A She-Devil and Praxis has died aged 91.

A family statement shared on Twitter by Weldon’s agent announced the news.

“It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Fay Weldon (Cbe), author, essayist, and playwright,” the statement read. “She died peacefully this morning 4th January 2023.”

Fay Weldon – Family Announcement.

It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Fay Weldon (Cbe), author, essayist and playwright. She died peacefully this morning 4th January 2023. pic.twitter.com/1nsp4qHlHv

— Georgina Capel Assoc (@GeorginaCapel) January 4, 2023

Born in Worcester, England, in 1931, Weldon wrote over 30 novels, including Splitting, the Booker prize-shortlisted Praxis, and The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, which was adapted by the BBC in 1986. The novel is Weldon’s most celebrated and follows a married woman who goes to extreme lengths...

British author Fay Weldon, best known for “The Life and Loves of a She-Devil” and “The Cloning of Joanna May,” has died. She was 91.

Weldon’s agent tweeted a family statement on Wednesday. “It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Fay Weldon (Cbe), author, essayist and playwright. She died peacefully this morning 4th January 2023.” A cause of death was not revealed.

Fay Weldon – Family Announcement.

It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Fay Weldon (Cbe), author, essayist and playwright. She died peacefully this morning 4th January 2023. pic.twitter.com/1nsp4qHlHv

— Georgina Capel Assoc (@GeorginaCapel) January 4, 2023

Weldon’s works were adapted numerous times for the screen. “The Life and Loves of a She-Devil” (1983), where a woman who loses her husband to a romance novelist goes to extreme lengths to make their lives a misery, was adapted both as a multiple BAFTA-winning BBC...

Joan Collins in 'The Bitch': Sex tale based on younger sister Jackie Collins' novel. Author Jackie Collins dead at 77: Surprisingly few film and TV adaptations of her bestselling novels Jackie Collins, best known for a series of bestsellers about the dysfunctional sex lives of the rich and famous and for being the younger sister of film and TV star Joan Collins, died of breast cancer on Sept. 19, '15, in Los Angeles. The London-born (Oct. 4, 1937) Collins was 77. Collins' tawdry, female-centered novels – much like those of Danielle Steel and Judith Krantz – were/are immensely popular. According to her website, they have sold more than 500 million copies in 40 countries. And if the increasingly tabloidy BBC is to be believed (nowadays, Wikipedia has become a key source, apparently), every single one of them – 32 in all – appeared on the New York Times' bestseller list. (Collins' own site claims that a mere 30 were included.) Sex...

Writers often worry about the dangers of outside influence, but what about the non-literary inspirations they are far more comfortable admitting to? Andrew O'Hagan talks to six novelists about their passion for a second artform

The divine counsels decided, once upon a time, that influence is bad and that too much agency is the enemy of invention. Harold Bloom can't be blamed for that: he certainly pointed to the danse macabre of influence and anxiety, but to him the association was perfectly creative. Elsewhere, writers have always been blamed for being too much like other writers, or too much like themselves, and even now, in the crisis of late postmodernism, we find it hard to believe that writers might live happily in a state of influence and cross-reference. Yet anybody who knows anything about writers knows that they love their sweet influences.

What I've noticed, though, is that the influences...

When Barbara Broccoli claimed in 2008 that the early Bond Girls were “very progressive” - describing them as career women and sexual predators who gave as good as they got - her comments were met with derision in some quarters. Writer Kathy Lette retorted that Bond Girls were “little more than a life-support system to a pair of breasts”, while Fay Weldon maintained that the films were “attempts by men to keep women in their place and ensure they ironed their shirts”. Who was right? This week hands us a chance to reassess in the form of “Skyfall”, the new Bond film released in the 50th anniversary year of the franchise. With its two new Bond Girls, played by Naomie Harris and Berenice Marlohe, it proves that certain characteristics of Bond Girls remain unassailable. But how these relate to the question posed in this article’s title remains up for debate.

In the latest film in the franchise, James Bond is no longer the irredeemable misogynist of old. And much of the credit for his conversion goes to Judi Dench's M

Judi Dench started life as M, the fictional head of MI6, by calling James Bond a "sexist, misogynist dinosaur". Oh how we cheered, us feminists sick of a long-running multibillion-pound franchise that left a series of beautiful women as little more than roadkill in the path of the spy we never loved. Seventeen years later, the great Dame seems to have left us with a film, Skyfall, we can all cheer. Or at least a proper female hero.

This statement may cause offence both to other feminists and die-hard fans who have long maintained that us laydeez can just go and talk on the phone while they enjoy the ultimate in male fantasy. Feminist author Bidisha once said: "Ian...

Since January 27, Geoff Manaugh of the widely acclaimed Bldgblog has been hosting Breaking Out and Breaking In: A Distributed Film Fest of Prison Breaks and Bank Heists, "an exploration of the use and misuse of space in prison escapes and bank heists, where architecture is the obstacle between you and what you're looking for." The idea is to have anyone and everyone watch the films, wherever we may be, and then discuss them at Bldgblog: "It's a 'distributed' film fest; there is no central venue, just a curated list of films and a list of days on which to watch them. There's no set time, no geographic exclusion, and no limit to the food breaks or repeated scenes you might require. And it all leads up to a public discussion at Studio-x NYC on Tuesday, April 24." Discussions opened so far: Renoir's Grand Illusion (1937), Bresson's A Man Escaped (1956), John Sturges...

Film-maker with a 'faultless painter's eye' who won several awards, including the Prix Italia for Maids and Madams for Channel 4

Mira Hamermesh, who has died aged 88, was a film-maker of the first rank. Several women have made, or are making, superlative documentaries for British television. Hamermesh was of their number. The films were carefully constructed and beautifully composed – the writer Fay Weldon said she had "a faultless painter's eye". But they also dealt in ideas; Mira made us think.

She was born in Lodz, Poland's second city, the youngest of three children, to middle-class Jewish parents. Around the time of her birth, Lodz had just over 600,000 inhabitants; 200,000 of them Jews. In September 1939, the Wehrmacht arrived in Lodz. At once, they made it brutally clear that Jews would have no rights, no place there. In November, Mira decided to leave; she would try to reach an elder sister, a Zionist,...

Jason Reitman's Young Adult is only the latest in a long line of films which portray authors as helpless, or vindictive, or both

In Jason Reitman's film Young Adult, released last week, Mavis Geary (Charlize Theron) returns to her midwest hometown to stalk a high school boyfriend, prompted by an email, with a picture of a newborn daughter, that shows him to be happily married. Mistakenly convinced he must nevertheless be still in love with her, she suffers a series of humiliations. Deluded, washed-up, twisted, alcoholic, she is also – it almost goes without saying, given Hollywood's stereotypes – a blocked writer, the movie taking its title from the generic novels she produces.

Here we go again, connoisseurs of cinema's portraits of fictional novelists may say. Two Stephen King adaptations, The Shining and Misery, offer extreme versions of two recurring types of writer. In the former, Jack Nicholson gradually becomes psychotic,...

The man behind The Greatest Movie Ever Sold appears to adore his subjects – and why not? They're enabling him to posture, though it's not exactly clear as what

• Morgan Spurlock: 'I asked cigarette and gun companies for money to make a film'

That Morgan Spurlock – so much smarter than Michael Moore, isn't he? Really knows how to lay bare the overlooked evils that disfigure society. And few things could be more overlooked or sinister than product placement.

This at least is the premise underpinning Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. How wittily our hero skewers the greedy corporations that thrust their corrosive messages into the innocent entertainments of the people! How thankful we should be that such a tribune is peeling the scales from our eyes!

There's no doubt that the phenomenon being depicted is indeed rampant. Last year, Apple got its products featured in ten of America's 33 box-office chart-toppers.

The Brontës are often dismissed as up-market Mills & Boon. But with the release of two films this autumn, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, they look set to rival even Jane Austen in the public's affections

Ours is supposed to be the age of instantaneity, where books can be downloaded in a few seconds and reputations created overnight. But the Victorians could be speedy, too, and there's no more striking example of instant celebrity than Jane Eyre. Charlotte Brontë posted the manuscript to Messrs Smith and Elder on 24 August 1847, two weeks after the publisher had expressed an interest in seeing her new novel while turning down her first. Within a fortnight, a deal had been struck (Charlotte was paid £100) and proofs were being worked on. In the 21st century a first novel can wait two years between acceptance and publication. Jane Eyre was out in eight weeks, on 17 October, with Thackeray...

The decision to withhold certification for the horror flick The Human Centipede II in Britain won't stop people from getting hold of it. So does censorship mean anything these days?

The release of a sequel is rarely unalloyed good news in the film world. This rule has once again been demonstrated by The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence), a horror film by the Dutch director Tom Six, which was due to be released in the UK on DVD but refused a certificate by the British Board of Film Classification – not trimmed, not cut, but every single horrible minute found to be objectionable. The BBFC decision has startled many, with some even suggesting that in this new Conservative era, censorship has become politically fashionable once more.

In the first film, a sadistic surgeon kidnaps and drugs three young people and, detaching their entrails on the operating table, uses these to connect...

Tron/Tron: Legacy

Blu-ray, Walt Disney

The release of the belated sequel to Tron was greeted as open season to unfairly ridicule the original.

It flopped at the box office, but remember, 1982 was the year of Et; everything not Et flopped that year, leaving Tron to keep company with Blade Runner, The Thing and Conan, and there's no shame in that. Tron was staggeringly ahead of its time – its makers had no idea if any of it was even possible to achieve – proving Disney to be a far more innovative and progressive studio than it gets credit for. With stunning Syd Mead and Moebius design and the mix of early CGI (often little more than lines of perspective and colour) and hand-augmented live action, it still looks unique. At least star Jeff Bridges recognised its worth, which is why his first film after his Oscar-winning turn in Crazy Heart was...

If you were part of the 90’s genre VHS and DVD collecting scene, you’ll likely recall a little UK label by the name of Redemption, which specialized in the more erotic and Gothic of continental horror offerings. A long time gone, the good news has now come through that the label is to be resurrected with an excellent line-up already waiting to rock your psyche. Dig it!

From the Press Release:

Get ready for Redemption’s resurrection. The renowned label, synonymous with utterly nefarious Euro cult horror, giallo and erotic thrillers, is relaunching with a host of brilliant new acquisitions that fit with the label’s ethos, along with a stunning new look for some of its classic titles.

The label will be rebranded with eye-catching new packaging that goes back to its original style with striking bespoke imagery.

Founded in 1993 by Nigel Wingrove, the label boasts a vast...

Architect Norman Foster and author Margaret Atwood to spearhead partial tie-up between festivals

Norman Foster and Margaret Atwood are to star in a collaboration between two of Edinburgh's largest festivals as part of a new initiative to expand the reach and audience of the city's international book festival.

In a joint project with the Edinburgh film festival this August – the first on this scale attempted by two of the city's 12 annual festivals – Foster and Atwood will be amongst a number of prominent guests exploring the different techniques film-makers and writers use for biographies.

The events will be staged at the Filmhouse cinema complex, where this year's film festival is now taking place, as part of plans by the new director of the city's international book festival, Nick Barley, to develop an event based for nearly 30 years in a "tented city" in the gardens of Charlotte Square in the city's Georgian New Town.

Stevie Wonder hits the UK, Toy Story goes 3D, and it's the last ever Big Brother – our critics pick the unmissable events of the season

Pop

Stevie Wonder

Anyone who can't face braving Glastonbury to see the Motown legend's Sunday-night set can head to London's Hyde Park for this headlining show. It's likely to be heavy on the hits, but a little too heavy on the audience participation, if complaints from disgruntled punters at Wonder's recent shows are anything to go by. And be warned: Jamiroquai seems to have been enticed out of retirement to provide support. Hyde Park, London W2, 26 June. Box office: 020-7009 3484.

T in the Park

This beloved Scottish festival is prized as much for its atmosphere as its lineup. And they're certainly wheeling out the big hitters this year: Eminem, Muse, Kasabian, Jay-z, Black Eyed Peas, Florence and the Machine, La Roux, Dizzee Rascal and Paolo Nutini,...

Fay Weldon has suggested that glamour model Katie Price empowers women. Speaking at the Richmond Book Now Festival, the author said that by the standards set by modern society, Price is a positive role model for women, the Evening Standard reports. Weldon said: "It depends what you think the function of women is. If it's to look good then she's fine. If it's (more)...

Gerald Corbiau, director of arthouse hit Farinelli, is set to direct Le Diable Au Corps, an opera film that's being written expressly for the screen, rather than adapted from an existing opera. It's a bold strategy, Cotton, let's see if it pays off for them.Fay Weldon is writing both opera libretto and screenplay, which is based on Raymond Radiguet's 1923 novel of the same name (roughly translated, that's "Devil In The Flesh"). The story is set in a quiet town outside Paris, on the eve of World War I, and sees a schoolboy, Raymond, and a 19 year-old woman, left behind when her husband heads off to the front, begin an affair. The leads have yet to be cast, but Raymond's parents will be voiced by Jose Van Dam and Frederica von Stade.The songs and music have been composed by France's Alain Jomy. Opera-lovers should keep an eye out for this in 2010, we're guessing.

LONDON -- A vintage British television classic, a former prime minister and an elderly man who joins a choir are central to three movie projects being developed by the triumvirate of BBC Films, Pathe and the U.K. Film Council as part of the trio's big-budget joint development slate, the parties said Monday.

The French-owned, U.K.-based Pathe, BBC Films and the Film Council are jointly developing a big-screen version of the classic 1970s BBC television series "Upstairs, Downstairs", from a script by acclaimed writer Fay Weldon.

Weldon penned the first episode of the original series, which revolves around an aristocratic Edwardian-era family that lives upstairs in a house with their servants below.

Mike Mansfield and Hilary McLaren Tipping will produce for Mike Mansfield Films.

The trio also are developing a movie that follows British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during the run-up to the 1982 Falklands War (HR 3/19). Brian Fillis wrote the script based on an original concept by himself and producer Damian Jones.