Sceptre to publish 'raw, uncompromising and intensely lyrical' Natasha Carthew’s new non-fiction ROUGH EDGES

Acclaimed writer, poet and activist Natasha Carthew’s fierce and powerful new non-fiction title, ROUGH EDGES: WHERE LAND MEETS WATER, THE UNTOLD STORIES OF COASTLINE COMMUNITIES has been acquired by Sceptre. Editorial Director at Sceptre, Charlotte Humphery will publish the book after Hannah Black acquired UK and Commonwealth rights (exc. Canada) from Juliet Pickering. ROUGH EDGES will be available in in hardback, export trade paperback, ebook and audio digital download on 4 June 2026.

Following on from Natasha’s Nero Prize shortlisted memoir, UNDERCURRENT, ROUGH EDGES is a rallying cry for the beauty and importance of our coast and its people. Beyond the picture postcards, Britain’s coastal communities are suffering. Crowds flood the beaches during summer heatwaves, but quickly vanish again, leaving behind litter and unstable seasonal jobs. Seaside property is in high demand but affordable only for landlords and gentrifiers. The cost-of-living crisis and the ongoing pains of austerity trap those at the vulnerable edges of our nation in poverty.

Having grown up in rural Cornwall, Natasha Carthew leaves the county in search of a new home. Travelling the country and exploring the villages, towns and cities of our coast, she meets the people fighting to keep these places alive. With fierce compassion, she shares their voices and their stories.

Charlotte Humphery says: ‘Natasha is a remarkable force on the page and in the world, and I’m proud to be working with her on this vital new book. Whether exploring coastal cities or walking country paths, she traces economic shifts, the cost of austerity and considers the past and the future of these places under threat by climate change, gentrification and political expediency. Journeying across the country, she gives voice to those often ignored and finds hope in the persistence of coastal communities and those who live on our nation’s edges.’

Natasha Carthew says: ‘I’m delighted to be able to call Sceptre the home for my new non-fiction ROUGH EDGES, and I couldn’t wish for anyone better to guide me along the urban edges of our coastline than Charlotte, an editor who is a compassionate, considerate and curious, ensuring that the voices of our nation, especially those of the working-class, are heard loud and clear.’

About Natasha Carthew

Natasha Carthew is a Cornish working-class writer, poet and activist. She is the author of ten books, most recently UNDERCURRENT: A CORNISH MEMOIR OF POVERTY, NATURE AND RESILIENCE (2023), which was shortlisted for the non-fiction prize at the inaugural Nero Book Awards. She has also contributed to HAG: FORGOTTEN TALES (2020) and WOMEN ON NATURE: 100+ VOICES ON PLACE, LANDSCAPE & THE NATURAL WORLD (2021) and BOG PEOPLE: A WORKING-CLASS ANTHOLOGY OF FOLK HORROR (2025).

Natasha has written extensively on nature and socio-economics, and frequently discusses how authentic rural working-class writing is represented, for several publications and programmes including BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, The Guardian, The Bookseller, Book Brunch, The Big Issue and The Economist.

Natasha is also the Founder and Director of The Working Class Writers Festival and Common Ground Nature Prize for Working Class Writers.

Praise for Natasha Carthew

‘Natasha writes with a vivid, imagistic language’ – The Financial Times

‘Carthew is an elegantly lyrical writer’ – The Independent

‘Gripping stuff, Carthew’s prose has a startling ferocity’ – The Telegraph

‘Carthew’s is a different voice: sinewy and inventive’ – Patrick Gale

‘The rhythm of the language is hypnotic, and the powerful imagery of Natasha’s prose takes over. The raw energy and beauty of the landscapes are particularly well-evoked’ – Daily Mail

‘A real thing of beauty. The innovative structure and striking illustrations combine to create a verbal and visual feast. The reader feels like they are down in the darkness of mine and eavesdropping on the past’ – Cathy Rentzenbrink

‘Carthew’s writing is raw, uncompromising and intensely lyrical’ – Bookanista

‘Rough and taciturn and frank and, at times, utterly shocking. But Natasha’s writing is also deeply, deeply intimate’ – The Bookbag

Follow Natasha on X (previously Twitter) and Instagram.

TIEPOLO BLUE by James Cahill selected by Her Majesty Queen Camilla for Series Sixteen of The Queen’s Reading Room

We are delighted to announce that Her Majesty Queen Camilla has selected James Cahill’s debut novel TIEPOLO BLUE as one of her books for Season Sixteen of The Queen’s Reading Room, a charity and online book club that works ‘to celebrate and promote the power and benefits of reading and is on a mission to help more people find and connect with books which enrich their lives.’

The Queen’s Reading Room will be sharing James’ insights into the book, exclusive content and Queen Camilla’s own personal words of recommendation for the book on their Instagram page and on their website from 22 November until the 5 of December. TIEPOLO BLUE follows recent selections including Robert Harris’ ARCHANGEL, THE HOUSE OF DOORS by Tan Twan Eng and the E.F. Benson classic MAPP AND LUCIA, as well as fellow Blake Friedmann author Peter James, featured for his GRACE series of novels in December 2021, and later described by Queen Camilla as the writer of her favourite fictional detective. Alongside TIEPOLO BLUE, Season 16 will also include YOU ARE HERE by David Nicholls, LES MISÉRABLES by Victor Hugo and THE HARE WITH AMBER EYES by Edmund de Waal.

James Cahill’s debut novel TIEPOLO BLUE was published by Sceptre in Summer 2022 and shortlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award. It was later named one of the Best Books of 2022 by the BBC, and was widely acclaimed by readers and critics alike. The Evening Standard wrote: ‘This divine debut from art critic and academic James Cahill is the smart, sexy read you need in 2022… Not only an addictive page-turner, Cahill’s book taps into the tensions and suspicions between generations that feels incredibly relevant for our testy times.’

James Cahill’s second novel, THE VIOLET HOUR, will be published by Sceptre in February 2025.

Set in Cambridge, 1994, TIEPOLO BLUE follows Professor Don Lamb, a revered art historian at the height of his powers, consumed by the book he is writing about the skies of the Venetian master Tiepolo. However, Don’s academic brilliance belies a deep inexperience of life and love.

When an explosive piece of contemporary art is installed on the lawn of his college, it sets in motion Don’s abrupt departure from Cambridge to take up a role at a south London museum. There he befriends Ben, a young artist who draws him into the anarchic 1990s British art scene and the nightlife of Soho.

Over the course of one long, hot summer, Don glimpses a liberating new existence. But his epiphany is also a moment of self-reckoning, as his oldest friendship – and his own unexamined past – are revealed to him in a devastating new light. As Don’s life unravels, he suffers a fall from grace that that shatters his world into pieces.

Image: Darren Wheeler

About James Cahill

James Cahill was born in London. Over the past decade, he has worked in the art world and academia, combining writing and research with a role at a leading contemporary art gallery. He is currently a Research Fellow in Classics at King’s College London. His writing on art has appeared in publications including The Burlington Magazine, The Times Literary Supplement, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The London Review of Books. He was the lead author and consulting editor of FLYING TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN (Phaidon, 2018), a survey of classical myth in art from antiquity to the present day. He was the co-curator of ‘The Classical Now’, an exhibition at King’s College London (March-April 2018), examining the relationships between ancient, modern and contemporary art.

Praise for TIEPOLO BLUE

‘Beautifully captures disorientation, tenderness and heat without tipping into excess…an electric new novel written by an author skilled in the evocation of vertiginous, heightened emotion.’ – Michael Donkor, The Guardian, ‘Book of the Day’

‘[An] arresting debut novel… [the prose] has a masterly attention to (especially visual) detail and in an irresistibly propulsive, almost swaggering style.’ – Literary Review

‘Simply magnificent…TIEPOLO BLUE really has blown me away: the gorgeous phrase-making; the sure-footed pacing; the (re-)immersion in a world I know, or knew, in a way that is both hard-edged with historical detail and almost hallucinatory.’ – Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, author and former Man Booker judge

‘The spirit of E.M. Forster is alive and well in James Cahill.’ – Edmund White

‘This is the best novel I have read for ages. It is so beautifully written, not a false note in any sentence. [Cahill’s] presentation of the agonising clash of aesthetics, of culture, of generations… it’s just masterly… It all grips you like a thriller. My heart was constantly in my throat as I read… [There is] so much to enjoy, to contemplate, to wonder at, and to be lost in.’ – Stephen Fry

Follow James on X (previously Twitter).

Sceptre acquires James Cahill's second novel

We are delighted to announce that Juliet Brooke, Associate Publisher at Sceptre Books,  has acquired UK and Commonwealth (exc. Canada) rights for James Cahill’s second novel, THE VIOLET HOUR,  from Samuel Hodder at Blake Friedmann.

A sweeping psychological drama and razor-sharp satire of the international art world, THE VIOLET HOUR is a gripping and insightful glimpse into a maelstrom of glittering parties, titanic reputations and fatal rivalries.

A young man falls to his death from a tower block in London. Gradually, this apparently random tragedy is shown to be entwined with the lives, desires and regrets of the novel’s three protagonists as they grapple with their pasts and presents – and the ruthlessness of the international art world.

Assured, intelligent, laced with notes of violence and eroticism, THE VIOLET HOUR is a perfect follow up to TIEPOLO BLUE (which publishes today, 9 June 2022), a debut novel that already garnered praise and admiration from readers and reviewers alike. Like TIEPOLO BLUE, THE VIOLET HOUR  weaves sophisticated ideas about expression, authenticity and performance into an exquisitely written story you cannot put down.

James Cahill said: ‘I’m hugely excited to be publishing my second novel with Sceptre. THE VIOLET HOUR is a portrait of the contemporary art world – a world I’ve existed in for many years – but it’s also a story of loss, longing and redemption. I can’t wait for it to come to life as a book, and I’m looking forward to working again with Juliet Brooke, Charlotte Humphery and the whole team at Sceptre.’

Charlotte Humphery, senior commissioning editor at Sceptre, who is working with Brooke’s authors while Brooke is on parental leave, said: ‘TIEPOLO BLUE is a remarkable debut – confident, beautiful and thrilling to read – and we’re so excited to be publishing it this month. THE VIOLET HOUR confirms James Cahill as a vital voice in literary fiction – we’re thrilled to invest in his work. And I know that his new and future fans will love this gorgeous, sophisticated new novel.’

Sceptre will publish THE VIOLET HOUR in Spring 2024.

Praise for TIEPOLO BLUE:

‘The spirit of E.M. Forster is alive and well in James Cahill.  The same palpating of damaged moral tissue, the same psychological canniness, the same gently invoked erudition, the same exactitude and eloquence – except Cahill is able to explore forbidden themes that Forster feared to touch on except posthumously’ – Edmund White

‘This is the best novel I have read for ages. It is so beautifully written, not a false note in any sentence… it’s just masterly… My heart was constantly in my throat as I read… [There is] so much to enjoy, to contemplate, to wonder at, and to be lost in.’ – Stephen Fry

‘Imagine if Hollinghurst and Murdoch collaborated on a witty update of DEATH IN VENICE and you’ll see the appeal of James Cahill’s assured debut.’ – Patrick Gale

‘Sensual, treacherous and elegiac.’ – Maggi Hambling

‘[An] arresting debut novel… [the prose] has a masterly attention to (especially visual) detail and in an irresistibly propulsive, almost swaggering style…there are moments here and there that would make even Hollinghurst blush….’ – Literary Review

‘This divine debut from art critic and academic James Cahill is the smart, sexy read you need in 2022.’ – Evening Standard

About James Cahill:

James Cahill was born in London. Over the past decade, he has worked in the art world and academia, combining writing and research with a role at a leading contemporary art gallery. He is currently a Research Fellow in Classics at King’s College London. His writing on art has appeared in publications including The Burlington Magazine, The Times Literary Supplement, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The London Review of Books. He was the lead author and consulting editor of FLYING TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN (Phaidon, 2018), a survey of classical myth in art from antiquity to the present day. He was the co-curator of ‘The Classical Now’, an exhibition at King’s College London (March-April 2018), examining the relationships between ancient, modern and contemporary art.

Follow James on Twitter and Instagram.