ITV’s GRACE third series success

ITV hit crime drama, GRACE, returned to screens on Sunday 19th March for a third season, garnering high praise and strong viewing figures. DEAD LIKE YOU (Series 3, Episode 1) drew in 5.6 million viewers on its seven-day consolidated figures – up a massive 700,000 on Season 2. The last episode of the season, NOT DEAD YET, airs on Sunday 2nd April at 8pm. Tune in then, and if you watch closely, in the first moments, you will be able to spot Peter James and his wife, Lara, walking down Brighton Palace Pier towards the camera!

GRACE stars acclaimed actor John Simm as tenacious detective Roy Grace, Richie Campbell as Glenn Branson and Zoë Tapper as Cleo Morley. The series is adapted from the bestselling Roy Grace book series by Peter James, which has delivered nineteen consecutive Sunday Times Number Ones for Peter James and his publisher Pan Macmillan. The third season of GRACE has received wonderful praise in the press and Season 4, with four episodes, starts shooting on April 11th.

‘For fans still coming to terms with the end of Endeavour, the third series of Grace has arrived just in time to fill the Brit detective void… a world-weary detective; a younger sidekick; and plenty of knotty cases to be solved.’ – Poppie Platt, The Sunday Telegraph

‘Simm plays the lead with elegant understatement’ – Mail On Sunday

‘John Simm is very good as gentle DS Roy Grace’ – Carol Midgley, The Times

‘John Simm is perfectly cast as our morose hero.’ – The Sunday Times

‘Darkly compelling’ – Tim Oglethorpe, The Daily Mail

‘A stirring return’ – TV Times, 5-star review

GRACE aired around the world for the first time in March 2021, with the first episode based on the first Roy Grace book DEAD SIMPLE. It has since aired in many countries including the USA, Canada, Japan, Norway and Finland. In April 2022, GRACE returned to screens with LOOKING GOOD DEAD and NOT DEAD ENOUGH, both of which topped the charts as most-watched UK TV show of the night. DEAD MAN’S FOOTSTEPS and DEAD TOMORROW followed. You can catch up on previous episodes of GRACE on BritBox and ITVX.

GRACE is produced by Tall Story Pictures (part of ITV Studios) and Vaudeville Productions. Along with Patrick Schweitzer (Tall Story Pictures), Andrew O’Connor (Vaudeville Productions) and Paul Sandler (Vaudeville Productions), author Peter James also acted as executive producer on the new films. ITV Drama Commissioner, Huw Kennair-Jones, oversaw production from ITV’s perspective.

March also saw a return to the stage for the Roy Grace series as the adaptation of WISH YOU WERE DEAD premiered. The nationwide stage play tour included a successful Gala Night at Brighton’s Theatre Royal. An all-star cast includes George Rainsford, who returns to the stage after eight years as Ethan Hardy in BBC One’s Casualty, Clive Mantle, much loved for many roles including Casualty, Game of Thrones and the iconic ‘puddle’ scene in Vicar of Dibley and the multi-talented actress, novelist, podcaster and winner of I’m A Celebrity, Giovanna Fletcher (until 29th April 2023). See more information on tour dates here.

The paperback edition of the most recent bestselling Roy Grace title, PICTURE YOU DEAD, will be out in the UK on 11 May and the nineteenth book in the series, STOP THEM DEAD, will be published in hardback in by Pan Macmillan on 28 September 2023.

Further praise for GRACE

‘A very effective appetite-whetter… The unpretentious storytelling makes this an easy watch, helmed by the always watchable Simm.’ – The Mail on Sunday, Pick of the Day

‘It’s a good’un... John Simm was pleasingly understated as Detective Superintendent Roy Grace and the adaptation was well done by Russell Lewis, creator of ENDEAVOUR. Richie Campbell was great as Roy’s colleague, DS Branson, bringing just the right amount of energy to proceedings... If ITV can find room in the schedules, another Grace instalment would go down nicely.’ – Anita Singh, The Telegraph

‘Roy Grace doesn’t have any obvious gimmick to mark him out, but he swiftly establishes himself as a solid addition to the Sunday-night pack… Chilling.’ – James Jackson, The Times, Critic’s Choice

‘Grace and Branson’s race to find Michael made for truly nail-biting TV and there were great performances, with Simm as watchable as ever as the shrewd, yet vulnerable Grace… With more to come later this year… I’ll certainly be tuning in.’ – Gwendolyn Smith, The i

‘There is a reason why Peter James’s novels have sold all over the world, and one of the main ones is that… Detective Superintendent Roy Grace is a well-written and believable character… Simm makes for a likeable lead and the atmospheric Brighton setting is well used.’ – Sarah Hughes, The Sunday Telegraph, The Very Best of the Week Ahead

‘Simm gives [Roy Grace] a winning sense of humour beneath all the grit… Campbell is smooth foil, playing Branson quietly enough that Simm doesn’t have to be enormous to stand out. Brighton’s mix of pretty shoreline, faded glamour, criminal past and contemporary hipsterism makes it a ripe spot for some murder. The action feels rooted in its setting…It’s almost inconceivable Simm hasn’t already been in a long running franchise… and I expect the wait’s over.’ – Ed Cumming, The Independent

‘Few people do moody, angst-ridden men better than John Simm, who takes on the role of Grace. With so many books in hand, this series could run and run.’ — The best television shows in the UK this April, Prospect Magazine

About Peter James

Credit: James Clarke

Peter James is the international bestselling author of many award-winning novels, translated into thirty-seven languages with worldwide sales of over twenty-one million copies. His Brighton-set Detective Superintendent Roy Grace series has given him nineteenth consecutive Sunday Times Number Ones. In 2015 WH Smith customers voted him the Greatest Crime Author of All Time and in 2016 he was awarded the coveted CWA Diamond Dagger, a lifetime achievement award for sustained excellence. In 2018 he received a Specsavers Honorary Platinum Bestseller Award.

In addition to his career as a novelist, he has produced several films, including The Merchant of Venice, starring Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons and Joseph Fiennes. He also co-created the hit Channel 4 series Bedsitcom, which was nominated for a Rose d'Or.

Successful nationwide tours of the stage plays of THE PERFECT MURDER (2014) and DEAD SIMPLE (2015) have packed theatres in dozens of British cities, and garnered magnificent reviews and NOT DEAD ENOUGH opened to full houses and acclaim in 2017. January 2019 saw the opening of the stage tour of THE HOUSE ON COLD HILL, with the sequel THE SECRET OF COLD HILL published in October 2019. The stage play of LOOKING GOOD DEAD toured the UK in 2021. The WISH YOU WERE DEAD stage play is currently touring the UK.

Visit Peter’s website

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Avon signs three more books with ‘Queen Of Feelgood Novels’ Sue Moorcroft

Credit: Silvia Rosado Photography

Avon Books (HarperCollins) has bought three more novels from award-winning romance novelist Sue Moorcroft. Helen Huthwaite, Publisher at Avon, struck the deal for World English Language rights with Juliet Pickering at Blake Friedmann Literary Agency. The new contract will take Sue’s publishing up until the end of 2024, covering three seasonal romances: two Christmas novels, and one for Summer.

Publisher Helen Huthwaite said: ‘It is the most tremendous privilege to work with Sue, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to see our happy publishing partnership continue to flourish with this new deal. I can’t sing Sue’s praises highly enough and I know her readers feel the same way too. I am so looking forward to getting these new books into their hands!’

Sue Moorcroft said: ‘The Avon team is such a joy to work with, and their knowledge of the commercial fiction market so thorough, I know that my books are in good hands. With Helen Huthwaite as my editor, I can only go from strength to strength. It was a happy day when my agent Juliet Pickering found me a home at Avon.’

Agent Juliet Pickering said: ‘Sue’s novels only get more compelling, absorbing, and romantic! I’m delighted to have this new deal with Avon in place as we work together to grow Sue’s wonderful successes and enthusiastic readership’.

About Sue Moorcroft

Sue Moorcroft is a Sunday Times bestselling author, and her books have been #1 on Kindle UK and Top 100 on Kindle US, Canada and Italy. She has won the Goldsboro Books Contemporary Novel of the Year, Readers’ Best Romantic Novel award and the Katie Fforde Bursary. She’s a vice president of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and past vice-chair.

Praise for Sue Moorcroft

‘Evocative, Engaging and gloriously romantic.’ – Cathy Bramley

‘Sue Moorcroft delivers great stories time after time.’ – Milly Johnson

‘Sue’s novels are the perfect escape. You’re guaranteed a warm and sunny read whatever the weather.’ – Bella Osborne

‘Sue’s writing sparkles like the summer sun..’ – Sheila O’Flanagan

‘Sue Moorcroft is the Queen of Christmas feelgood novels.’ – Rachel Howdle, The Independent

Visit Sue’s website

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Lyndall Gordon to deliver the T.S. Eliot Lecture 2023

Photo by Nina Hollington

The Annual T.S. Eliot Lecture 2023 will be delivered by celebrated Eliot scholar and author Lyndall Gordon. Based on the recently unsealed Hale letters, Lyndall Gordon’s subject will be ‘T.S. Eliot’s Secrecy: Disguise and the Hidden Drama of Emily Hale’. The Lecture has been brought forward this year, and will be the first time that Lyndall Gordon has lectured on the Emily Hale letters since they were made publicly available.

The Lecture will be given on Thursday 27th April, at 5.30pm, in the T.S. Eliot Theatre at Merton College, Oxford. Merton was the College where Eliot spent his postgraduate year in 1914. Admission to the lecture is free but seats must be reserved here.

In October 2022, Virago Books published the hardback edition of THE HYACINTH GIRL: T.S. Eliot’s Hidden Muse in the UK. It has received enormous acclaim – from fellow biographers as well as readers and critics – and was highlighted by many publications as being one of the best non-fiction titles of the year. The UK paperback edition will be published in August 2023. THE HYACINTH GIRL was published by W. W. Norton in the US, and was longlisted for the 2023 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography.

Drawing on the dramatic new material of the only recently unsealed 1,131 letters Eliot wrote to Hale, Lyndall Gordon reveals how Emily Hale becomes the first and consistently important woman of Eliot’s life—and his art. Gordon also offers new insight into the other spirited women who shaped him: Vivienne, the flamboyant wife with whom he shared a private wasteland; Mary Trevelyan, his companion in prayer; and Valerie Fletcher, the young disciple to whom he proposed when his relationship with Emily foundered. Eliot kept his women apart as each ignited his transformations as poet, expatriate, convert, and, finally, in his latter years, a man `made for love.'

Lyndall Gordon is also author of an earlier T.S. Eliot biography, AN IMPERFECT LIFE.

In 2022 Lyndall appeared in a BBC documentary about Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’, part of programming across BBC television and radio celebrating the centenary of the publication of the celebrated poem. You can read more about the documentary here. Lyndall is one of the luminaries appearing at the T.S. Eliot Summer School in the UK, 8-16 July 2023.

About Lyndall Gordon

A much-celebrated biographer, Lyndall Gordon lives in Oxford. Her ability to make the subjects of her biographies come vividly to life has won her many literary awards, including the Cheltenham Prize and the James Tait Black prize. She has also been longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize and the Comisso Prize in Italy for her Emily Dickinson biography LIVE LIKE LOADED GUNS. Fazi in Italy also published her biography of Charlotte Bronte A PASSIONATE LIFE and have acquired Italian rights to OUTSIDERS.

Her previous biographical work on T. S. Eliot – two biographies, ELIOT’S EARLY YEARS and ELIOT’S NEW LIFE, incorporated into an updated edition, THE IMPERFECT LIFE OF T. S. ELIOT – won the British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay Prize and Southern Arts prize. THE IMPERFECT LIFE OF T. S. Eliot was also selected by the New York Public Library as one of 25 ‘Books to Remember’ from 2000 and by the Independent on Sunday as one of the ‘30 best biographies of the twentieth century’. Translator Xu Xiaofan won the Lu Xun Literary Prize for her translation of THE IMPERFECT LIFE OF T. S. ELIOT, published in China by Shanghai Literature and Art.

Praise for THE HYACINTH GIRL

‘Exemplary… revealed that the great man’s poetry was a lot less impersonal than he led us to believe.’ – Lucasta Miller, The Spectator, ‘Books of the Year’

‘A number of good books have marked the centenary of “The Waste Land”… but, for me, the most brilliant and incisive new book on Eliot is Lyndall Gordon’s The Hyacinth Girl: T.S. Eliot’s Hidden Muse, which looks at Eliot’s poetry in the light of his recently opened correspondence with Emily Hale.’ – Colm Tóibín, Irish Times, ‘Best Books of the Year’

‘Lyndall Gordon’s sensitive study of Emily Hale, Eliot’s childhood sweetheart in America’ – Iona McLaren, The Telegraph, ‘Best Biographies of 2022’

‘Gordon does an admirable job navigating the ambiguities of the tangled situations she chronicles; she is respectful of complications, of emotional messiness, of unusual attachments. She patiently evokes the intricacy and singularity of each intimate relationship. There is a human richness to Eliot’s cerebral poetry that we can appreciate more in the context of his knotted emotional life, and Gordon’s art is in drawing this out. She is also adept at mapping Eliot’s well-known religious and spiritual yearnings onto the sexual and emotional struggles that fed his beliefs. This is delicate and tricky work, if one is not overly reductive, and Gordon allows the reader to live with Eliot’s conflicts and contradictions. She is not interested in reducing or bludgeoning the mystery of his words, but in exploring layers and resonances.’ – Katie Roiphe, The New York Times

‘Exquisitely nuanced’ – Kathryn Hughes, Sunday Times

‘Lyndall Gordon is the first biographer to uncover the life of T.S. Eliot’s hidden muse, the inspiration of one of his greatest works of poetry …This is a work that will change the way that Eliot is seen.’ – Miranda Seymour, author of I USED TO LIVE HERE ONCE: THE HAUNTED LIFE OF JEAN RHYS

‘There is no finer guide into the mind of T.S. Eliot than Lyndall Gordon. Drawing upon Eliot’s newly unsealed letters to Emily Hale, THE HYACINTH GIRL reimagines one of the great literary love stories of the twentieth century… Thanks to Gordon’s meticulous research and inspired storytelling, we will never read these poems the same way again: It turns out that the great poet of ‘impersonality’ was baring his soul all along. Emily Hale, too, finally gets her due in this brilliant and revelatory work from one of our greatest biographers.’ – Heather Clark, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist RED COMET: THE SHORT LIFE AND BLAZING ART OF SYLVIA PLATH

Visit Lyndall’s website.

TIEPOLO BLUE By James Cahill shortlisted for Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award

Picture: Authors’ Club

TIEPOLO BLUE, James Cahill’s electric debut, has advanced to the shortlist for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award.

The Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award was established in 1954, making it the longest-running UK prize for debut fiction and, overall, the third oldest literary prize in Britain. Past winners include Gail Honeyman, Jackie Kay and the late Gilbert Adair, also a Blake Friedmann client. This year’s winner will be revealed at dinner on 24 May, to be held at the National Liberal Club.

Also shortlisted alongside James are: THE DICTATOR’S WIFE by Freya Berry, MY NAME IS YIP by Paddy Crewe, WHEN WE WERE BIRDS by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, BLACK BUTTERFLIES by Priscilla Morris, and THE WHALEBONE THEATRE by Joanna Quinn.

Lucy Popescu, the chair of the judging panel, said: ‘We are proud to recommend six exceptional debuts. These dazzling novelists cover a range of subjects from art and privilege, love and loss, knowledge and selfhood, the pursuit of power and the devastating consequences of war. We travel with them through eastern Europe to the American Frontier, from England’s past to Trinidad today.’

TIEPOLO BLUE follows the unravelling of revered art historian Donald Lamb. Freed from the constraints of academia, it looks like the anarchic contemporary art scene of 1990s London might be his salvation, but he soon suffers an earth-shattering fall from grace that leaves him questioning everyone and everything.

TIEPOLO BLUE was published in hardback by Sceptre in June 2022 to great acclaim. It attracted widespread praise, including from Patrick Gale and Stephen Fry (the latter describing it as ‘The best novel I have read for ages’), and was also included in the BBC’s and Times Literary Supplement’s ‘Best of 2022’ lists. It will be published in paperback on 27 April 2023.

James is currently writing his second novel, THE VIOLET HOUR, a sweeping psychological drama and satire of the international art world, which will be published in hardback by Sceptre in summer 2024.

Praise for TIEPOLO BLUE

‘Startlingly impressive . . . a heavily perfumed, sexually tender, psychologically acute novel’ – Claire Allfree, Daily Mail

‘The story of Tiepolo Blue and its people have invaded my dreams . . . Don’s disintegration is painful to read, but 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

‘Not only an addictive pageturner, Cahill’s book taps into the tensions and suspicions between generations that feel incredibly relevant for our testy times’ – Jessie Thompson, Evening Standard

‘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’ – Edmund White

‘The plot is propulsive, though the crafted ambience of unease simultaneously destabilizes the reader at every turn . . . It’s a measure of Cahill’s sleight of hand that he manages to inject his plot with such page-turning momentum’ – Lucasta Miller, TLS

‘Tells a gripping tale of the worlds of traditional academia and art history pitted against those of contemporary art, each failing horribly to understand the other. As a result, all becomes infused with satirical comedy and ghastly tragedy’ – Norman Rosenthal

‘I just devoured Tiepolo Blue, I could not put it down. The longing, the beauty, the detail, the complexity, the art, the intellect and the emotion . . . What a triumph!’ – Paul Kindersley

‘Interrogating beauty and meaning in art, Tiepolo Blue rewards rereading . . . a stylish tale of love and long-game revenge’ – Rebecca Swirsky, Royal Academy Magazine

‘Dizzying and exciting and unsettling, and beautifully told’ – Reverend Richard Coles, ‘Big Writers on Their Best Reads of 2022’, Daily Mail

‘This is a novel full of suspense and surprise. It made me laugh and brought back memories of a time in my own life. I missed the characters as soon as I’d finished’ – Sarah Lucas

‘The musings of the book’s protagonist on the radical power of art to act as a catalyst for personal change make it an exhilarating, erudite read’ – Liam Hess, Vogue.com

‘I travelled on the exquisite vessel of James Cahill’s prose, unable to disembark. The journey is sensual, treacherous and elegiac. The final landing, breathtaking’ – Maggi Hambling

‘[An] arresting debut novel . . . a masterly attention to detail and an irresistibly propulsive, almost swaggering style’ – Michael Delgado, Literary Review

‘Wow. It is magnificent. 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

About James Cahill 

Picture: Darren Wheeler

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.

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. He is completing his second novel THE VIOLET HOUR (Sceptre, 2024).

He is currently a Research Fellow in Classics at King’s College London.

Follow James on Twitter and Instagram