Client details
Blake Morrison
| Sarah Ballard | Assistant: Lara Hughes-Young |
Born in Skipton, Yorkshire, Blake Morrison is perhaps best known for his hugely acclaimed memoirs. He is also a critic, journalist, librettist and poet. He teaches Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College, and lives in South London with his family. THE LAST WEEKEND - CHATTO & WINDUS, MAY 2010
Blake Morrison’s new novel is a literary yet gripping, humorous yet intense, troubling yet beautiful tale of jealousy and revenge, featuring a classic unreliable and delusional narrator. It begins with a surprising phone call from Ian’s friend from uni, Ollie, inviting Ian and his wife, Em, to join Ollie and his longtime partner, Daisy, for a holiday weekend at the seaside. In precise and vivid prose that reads like a psychological thriller, Blake Morrison brilliantly conveys the stifling atmosphere of a remote cottage in the hottest days of summer. Rivalries between Ian and Ollie, and Ian’s lust Ian for Daisy – who he met first in university before Ollie seduced her away - simmer beneath congenial yet charged chit-chat over meals and wine, and Ian and Ollie resurrect a nearly forgotten bet they had made with each other as students. Each day becomes a series of challenges for higher and higher stakes at golf, tennis, cycling, and swimming. At the same time, Ian plots how to win the love of Daisy and sets in motion actions that will have irreversible and fatal consequences.
THE LAST WEEKEND is a perfectly crafted page-turner and a clever homage to Othello, which is also original and unpredictable. It is surprisingly different from Blake Morrison’s previous acclaimed fiction and non-fiction, and advances his reputation as one of Britain’s most intriguing and talented authors. “The Last Weekend messes with your head, refusing to clarify, delighting in its elisions and ambiguities.” |
The Last Weekend 
South of the River 
The Justification of Johann Gutenberg
| Publication Details | Notes |
|---|---|
| SOUTH OF THE RIVER 2007 CHATTO & WINDUS | Beneath the entertaining domestic canvas and the bright, familiar world of Blair's Britain, there is a dark undertow of public and personal disillusion, of mythologies and urban myths that circle round our apparently comfortable lives. A tale of five people, two rivers, and many Englands, metropolitan and rural, black and white, is gloriously readable and brimming with art and life. |
| THE JUSTIFICATION OF JOHANN GUTENBERG 2000 CHATTO & WINDUS | Blake Morrison's praised first novel is a historical fiction about the man who invented the printing press and thereby revolutionised the culture of the book in Christian Europe. Around 1400, in the city of Mainz, a man was born whose invention of moveable metal type was to change the written word for ever and alter the course of history itself. Johann Gutenberg died 60 years later, robbed of his business, his printing presses and, so he thought, of his immortality. |
| Publication Details | Notes |
|---|---|
| THINGS MY MOTHER NEVER TOLD ME 2002 CHATTO & WINDUS | This is the startling and touching story of Morrison's mother. She kept many things from him, not least the fact that she never told him that before becoming Kim Morrison, she had previously been Agnes O’Shea, daughter of sizeable Irish family. As he set out to find the facts behind this deceptively quiet Kerry girl who had worked as a doctor in 40s Dublin (and subsequently in British hospitals during the war), he discovered that she had totally reinvented her personality. But the seemingly conventional housewife and mother she had elected to become was only part of the story. We are told of an all-consuming love affair during the war; we are given a strong and vivid portrait of everyday life in the hospitals and RAF training camps of the period. Most of all, we are taken into the world of a remarkable woman. Kim Morrison is an unsung heroine of a time increasingly distant from our own world. |
| TOO TRUE 1998 GRANT | This is a collection of Blake Morrison's stories and journalism written from 1992 to 1997, examining childhood, relationships between men and women, the public and often fictitious accounts of writers' lives, and assorted aspects of English life and letters. Pieces include a look at the author's own dreams of becoming a football player and a profile of Ted Hughes. |
| AS IF 1997 GOLLANCZ | People have almost become desensitized to random murder. It is often explained away by madness, sexual fantasy or rejection. One murder in recent times reduced every person to silence: the abduction and beating to death of a helpless infant by two ten-year-old boys in the Jamie Bulger case. How and why did two innocent boys kill another? Is childhood innocence a myth? And what punishment could fit such a crime, assuming that children are fit to stand trial for murder? Blake Morrison went to the trial in Preston, and discovered a sad ritual of condemnation with two bewildered children at the centre. He looked for possible explanations in the boys' families, their dreary environment, their fantasies, their exposure to violent films. He evokes the worst feats of parents through candid and raw memories of his relations with his own children, and delves into his own childhood to reveal the worst thing he has ever done, to show how easy it is to go along with cruelty. |
| AND WHEN DID YOU LAST SEE YOUR FATHER? 1993 GRANTA | An extraordinary portrait of family life, father-son relationships and bereavement. Becoming a bestseller, it inspired a whole genre of confessional memoirs. |
| Publication Details | Notes |
|---|---|
| SELECTED POEMS 1999 CHATTO & WINDUS | This selection brings together new and previously unpublished poems by Blake Morrison. |
| BALLAD OF THE YORKSHIRE RIPPER 1987 CHATTO & WINDUS | |
| DARK GLASSES 1984 CHATTO & WINDUS | Morrison's first full-length poetry collection was a Poetry Book Society Choice and won the Somerset Maugham Prize. |
| Charles Walker | +44 (0) 20 3214 0874 |
| Production | Company | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| SHINGLE STREET | Vanson/ Channel 4 | |
| DR OX'S EXPERIMENT | Kudos/ BBC | |
| AND WHEN DID YOU LAST SEE YOUR FATHER? | ||
| BICYCLE THIEVES | Kudos/ Channel 4 | |
| BELONGINGS (2009) | BBC Northern Ireland | |
| WATER LENS (2009) | BBC Northern Ireland | |
| ELEPHANT & CASTLE | Aldeburgh Festival | |
| THE MAN WITH TWO GAFFERS | Northern Broadsides / Theatre Royal York | |
| CONTEMPORARY VERSION OF SOPHOCLES' TRAGEDY | Northern Broadsides | |
| OEDIPUS | Northern Broadsides | |
| DR OX'S EXPERIMENT | ENO | |
| KINDERTOTENLIEDER | Lyric Theatre Hammersmith | |
| THE CRACKED POT | West Yorkshire Playhouse / Northern - Broadsides |
