ESCAPE TO THE EMPIRE THEATRE WITH THE NEW NOVEL FROM MUSICAL THEATRE LEGEND, MICHAEL BALL.

GLAMOUR. DECEIT. SECRETS. SCANDAL. THE THEATRE MAY SEEM GLAMOROUS, BUT SECRETS WAIT BEHIND THE CURTAIN.

1926. Running a theatre may appear to be all about the showbiz, but times are hard at The Empire. Following a turbulent period Jack Treadwell, erstwhile proprietor, his mother Lillian, and his playwright wife Grace, know they need to get things back on track – and how better than with the annual pantomime, a new venture, and an all-singing all-dancing talent contest, showcasing the best performers around.

But could Lillian’s new admirer, Grand Duke Nikolai Kuznetsov, be bringing disaster in his wake? Will The Empire be caught up in the scandal surrounding West End star, Stella Stanmore? And what are their enemies in Highbridge planning?

While Jack and Grace fight to ensure the show does go on, a royal visitor raises the stakes and a young widow, Sally Blow, dares to dream that the talent contest might be her big break.

As the talent contest draws closer, tragedy strikes. Amid the glitz and glamour there are strange goings on and a plot afoot. Is everything Jack and Grace have worked so hard for about to come crashing down? And could this be curtains for The Empire?

In this perfect Christmas gift for theatre lovers, Michael Ball transports readers to the roaring twenties as he works his magic in this second Empire Theatre novel.


Readers are loving A BACKSTAGE BETRAYAL

‘A beautifully described evocative piece of the era with wonderful characters. Loved it’ *****

‘A lovely cosy read with a lot of excitement’ *****

‘Wonderful characters, great plot and a perfect setting’ *****

‘The second brilliant instalment in what I hope will be a long-running series’ *****

‘A wonderful book. A love letter to the theatre‘ Rev. Richard Coles

‘A fantastic book. Brilliant’ Don Black OBE

‘A wonderful read’ Jeffrey Archer

‘A golden debut – charming, funny and romantic’ Cameron Mackintosh

‘Takes you to the magical world of theatre‘ Rosie Goodwin

‘Jeannette’s knowledge is astonishing’ Derren Brown
‘There is no one better’ Rory Kinnear
‘A true gift for us all’ Indhu Rubasingham

Every time you deliver a speech, give a presentation, or simply tell a good story, you are taking centre stage. Here, one of the world’s leading voice coaches introduces the simple exercises that great actors use to hold people’s attention – and reveals how anyone speaking in public can use them.

Drawing on 25 years working at the National Theatre in London, Jeannette Nelson explains:

• How to warm up your voice and body before a big speech.
• How learning to breathe deeply can improve your clarity and pace
• How to divide a script into individual ‘thoughts’ so it flows more naturally.
• How to adapt your delivery to suit any environment, be it a 1,000-seater auditorium or an intimate Zoom meeting.

Along the way, she recounts stories from leading actors that pull back the curtain on how they learnt to own the room, and how you can too. If all the world’s a stage, this book will turn you into its lead actor.

This book charts the personal and professional journey of Greg Doran, Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 2012 until 2022 and “one of the great Shakespearians of his generation” (Sunday Times).

During his illustrious career, Doran has directed or produced all of the plays within Shakespeare’s First Folio — a milestone reached in the same year that the world celebrates the 400th anniversary of its original publication.

Each chapter looks at a different play, considering the choices made and weaving in both autobiographical detail and background on the RSC, as well as giving insights into key collaborations, including those with actors such as Judi Dench, David Tennant, Harriet Walter, Patrick Stewart, Simon Russell Beale, Paterson Joseph and Doran’s husband, the late Antony Sher, as well as seminal practitioners such as Cicely Berry, John Barton and Terry Hands. The book also includes 16 striking pages with stills from some of the RSC plays.

Through Doran’s account of this extraordinary journey, we see how Henry VIII, initially regarded as a poisoned chalice, became his lucky break; how the tragedy of 9/11 unfolded during a matinee of King John and how the language of the play went some way in helping to articulate the unfathomable; how a RSC supporter bequeathed their skull to the company to be used as Yorick in Hamlet; how meeting Nelson Mandela inspired the production of Julius Caesar; how Falstaff was introduced to China for the very first time; and how arachnophobia informed the production of Macbeth.

This book uniquely captures the excitement, energy, surprises, joys and agonies of working on these greatest of plays; sheds new light on these plays through Doran’s own research and discoveries made in the rehearsal room; and gives unprecedented access into the craft, life and loves of this exceptional director.

My Shakespeare is also available in audiobook format from audiobook retailers.

In 1989, a young Michael Ball landed the lead role in the musical Aspects of Love. It was a moment that changed his life forever. It was the first time he worked with legends of the stage like Andrew Lloyd Webber and Trevor Nunn; it was from that show that came his smash hit song, Love Changes Everything, which rode high in the charts for 15 weeks; it was then, also, that he first met his long-term partner Cathy McGowan and battled back against the stage fright that had threatened his career.

Over three decades later, Michael returns to a new production of the same show where he made his name, definitely older, possibly wiser, and with a lifetime’s worth of stories to tell. In Different Aspects, Michael takes us backstage inside the making of a West End hit, while diving back into memories to explore that moment in his twenties when the world was at his feet and his life changed beyond recognition.

Part exploration of the pitfalls and pratfalls of modern theatre and part exploration of his life, his career and his relationships, Different Aspects is the story of a life lived on the stage. There is laughter, there is tears, there is sweat and some blood, there is even some Roger Moore, although, famously, not quite enough. And through it all the show goes on.

Take your seats ladies and gentlemen, the lights are dimming, the performance is about to start.

‘Powerful and illuminating’  James Shapiro, author of  1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, winner of the Baillie Gifford ‘Winner of Winners’ 2023

Professor Farah Karim-Cooper grew up loving the Bard, perhaps because Romeo and Juliet felt Pakistani to her. But why was being white as a ‘snowy dove’ essential to Juliet’s beauty?

Combining piercing analysis of race, gender and otherness in beloved plays from Othello to The Tempest with a radical reappraisal of Elizabethan London, The Great White Bard entreats us neither to idealise nor to fossilise Shakespeare but instead to look him in the eye and reckon with the discomforts of his plays, playhouses and society.

If we persist in reading Shakespeare as representative of only one group, as the very pinnacle of the white Western canon, then he will truly be in peril. But if we dare to bring Shakespeare down from his plinth, we might unveil a playwright for the twenty-first century. We might expand and enrich his extraordinary legacy. We might even fall in love with him all over again.

***

A  TIME MAGAZINE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023

‘Insightful, passionate, piled with facts and has a warm, infectious love for theatre and Shakespeare running through every chapter.’  ADRIAN LESTER, CBE

‘Dive in and your whole cultural landscape will be refreshed and reframed… A challenging, riveting read, The Great White Bard reminds us how powerful the stories we tell can be on our lives.’ ADJOA ANDOH

‘Vivid? a thorough analysis but also a kind of love letter? Karim-Cooper sees Shakespeare as holding a mirror to this society, with his plays interrogating live issues around race, identity and the colonial enterprise? Her arguments come to feel essential and should be absorbed by every theatre director, writer, critic, interested in finding new ways into the work.’  GUARDIAN

‘There are plenty of books on Shakespeare: but this one is different. This is Shakespeare as we’ve (most of us) never been willing to see him – and the works emerge from the analysis as newly complicit, powerful and yet recuperative.’  EMMA SMITH, AUTHOR OF  PORTABLE MAGIC

‘Really funny. David is a great writer’
Paula Hawkins, Good Housekeeping

‘A riotously good novel, witty and earnest, brimming with sharply drawn characters and creeping suspense. David Thewlis is a fabulous writer’
Anna Bailey, Sunday Times bestselling author of Tall Bones

‘A deliciously smart, hilarious human drama with the pace and intrigue of a gripping thriller. One of the year’s most memorable novels’
B P Walter, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Dinner Guest

Celebrated director Jack Drake can’t get through his latest film (his most personal yet) without his wife Martha’s support.

The only problem is, she’s dead…

When Jack sees Betty Dean – actress, mother, trainwreck – playing the part of a crazed nun on stage in an indie production of The Devils, he is struck dumb by her resemblance to Martha. Desperate to find a way to complete his masterpiece, he hires her to go and stay in his house in France and resuscitate Martha in the role of ‘loving spouse’.

But as Betty spends her days roaming the large, sunlit rooms of Jack’s mansion – filled to the brim with odd treasures and the occasional crucifix – and her evenings playing the part of Martha over scripted video calls with Jack, she finds her method acting taking her to increasingly dark places.

And as Martha comes back to life, she carries with her the truth about her suicide – and the secret she guarded until the end.

A darkly funny novel set between a London film set and a villa in the south of France.
A mix of Vertigo and Jonathan Coe, written by a master storyteller.

PRAISE FOR DAVID THEWLIS’S FICTION

‘David Thewlis has written an extraordinarily good novel, which is not only brilliant in its own right, but stands proudly beside his work as an actor, no mean boast’ Billy Connolly
‘Hilarious and horror-filled’ Francesca Segal, Observer
‘A fine study in character disintegration… Very funny’ David Baddiel, The Times
‘Exquisitely written with a warm heart and a wry wit… Stunning’ Elle
‘Queasily entertaining’ Financial Times
‘A sharp ear for dialogue and a scabrously satiric prose style’ Daily Mail
‘Laugh-out-loud, darkly intelligent’ Publishers Weekly
‘This is far more than an actor’s vanity project: Thewlis has talent’ Kirkus

‘Really funny. David is a great writer’
Paula Hawkins, Good Housekeeping

‘A riotously good novel, witty and earnest, brimming with sharply drawn characters and creeping suspense. David Thewlis is a fabulous writer’
Anna Bailey, Sunday Times bestselling author of Tall Bones

‘A deliciously smart, hilarious human drama with the pace and intrigue of a gripping thriller. One of the year’s most memorable novels’
B P Walter, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Dinner Guest

Celebrated director Jack Drake can’t get through his latest film (his most personal yet) without his wife Martha’s support.

The only problem is, she’s dead…

When Jack sees Betty Dean – actress, mother, trainwreck – playing the part of a crazed nun on stage in an indie production of The Devils, he is struck dumb by her resemblance to Martha. Desperate to find a way to complete his masterpiece, he hires her to go and stay in his house in France and resuscitate Martha in the role of ‘loving spouse’.

But as Betty spends her days roaming the large, sunlit rooms of Jack’s mansion – filled to the brim with odd treasures and the occasional crucifix – and her evenings playing the part of Martha over scripted video calls with Jack, she finds her method acting taking her to increasingly dark places.

And as Martha comes back to life, she carries with her the truth about her suicide – and the secret she guarded until the end.

A darkly funny novel set between a London film set and a villa in the south of France.
A mix of Vertigo and Jonathan Coe, written by a master storyteller.

PRAISE FOR DAVID THEWLIS’S FICTION

‘David Thewlis has written an extraordinarily good novel, which is not only brilliant in its own right, but stands proudly beside his work as an actor, no mean boast’ Billy Connolly
‘Hilarious and horror-filled’ Francesca Segal, Observer
‘A fine study in character disintegration… Very funny’ David Baddiel, The Times
‘Exquisitely written with a warm heart and a wry wit… Stunning’ Elle
‘Queasily entertaining’ Financial Times
‘A sharp ear for dialogue and a scabrously satiric prose style’ Daily Mail
‘Laugh-out-loud, darkly intelligent’ Publishers Weekly
‘This is far more than an actor’s vanity project: Thewlis has talent’ Kirkus

This is the inside story of twelve years at the helm of Britain’s greatest theatre.

It is a story of lunatic failures and spectacular successes such as The History Boys, War Horse and One Man, Two Guvnors; of opening the doors of the National Theatre to a broader audience than ever before, and changing the public’s perception of what theatre is for. It is about probing Shakespeare from every angle and reinventing the classics. About fostering new talent and directing some of the most celebrated actors of our times. Its cast includes the likes of Alan Bennett, Maggie Smith, Mike Leigh, Daniel Day-Lewis, Michael Gambon and Helen Mirren.

Intimate, candid and insightful, Balancing Acts is a passionate exploration of the art and alchemy of making theatre.