Client details
Andrew Motion
| Simon Trewin | Associate Agent: Ariella Feiner |
Sir Andrew Motion was born in 1952. He read English at University College, Oxford and subsequently spent two years writing about the poetry of Edward Thomas for an M. Lit. From 1976 to 1980 he taught English at the University of Hull; from 1980 to 1982 he edited the Poetry Review and from 1982 to 1989 he was Editorial Director and Poetry Editor at Chatto & Windus. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in London. His work has received the Arvon/Observer Prize, the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize and the Dylan Thomas Prize. In 1994 his biography of Philip Larkin was awarded the Whitbread Prize for Biography, and shortlisted for the NCR Award. THE LAMBERTS won the Somerset Maugham Award. Andrew Motion was appointed as Poet Laureate in May 1999 until May 2009. Current Publication: SILVER: RETURN TO TREASURE ISLAND, Jonathan Cape, (15th March 2012): July, 1802. In the marshy eastern reaches of the Thames lies the Hispaniola, an inn kept by Jim Hawkins and his son. Young Jim spends his days roaming the mist-shrouded estuaries, running errands for his father and listening to his stories in the taproom; tales of adventures on the high seas, of curses, murder and revenge, black spots and buried treasure - and of a man with a wooden leg. Late one night, a mysterious girl named Natty arrives on the river with a request for Jim from her father - Long John Silver. Aged and weak, but still possessing a strange power, the pirate proposes that Jim and Natty sail to Treasure Island in search of Captain Flint's hidden bounty, the 'beautiful bar silver' left behind many years before. Silver has chartered a ship and a hardy crew for this purpose, whose captain is waiting only for the map, now locked away at the Hispaniola. Making haste from London, Jim and Natty set off in the footsteps of their fathers, their tentative friendship growing stronger day by day. But the thrill of the ocean odyssey gives way to terror as the Nightingale reaches its destination, for it seems that Treasure Island is not as uninhabited as it once was... Featuring a cast of noble seamen, murderous pirates, and stories of love, valour and terrible cruelty, Silver is a worthy sequel to Treasure Island - one of the greatest adventure stories ever told - and a work of extraordinary authenticity and imaginative power from one of England's greatest writers. Reviews: "Motion has achieved that very difficult thing: a children's novel that works even better for adults. Look to your laurels, Rowling." The Times "Motion utilises a smooth and formal style that complements Stevenson's own but never descends into pastiche. . . I think he [Stevenson] would approve of this rich and thrilling narrative which so ingeniously complements his own." The Independent "Motion has stiched his and Stevenson's novels together beautifully. . . Sentence by sentence, SILVER is beautifully written." The Telegraph "The book begins magnificently, with Jim and Nat meeting and preparing for their journey together, and Long John Silver making a spine-tingling guest appearance. . . A deeply pleasing and convivial book." The Guardian "Elegant, thrilling. The plot is gripping. . . Motion's prose, vivid and glowingly poetic, is a brilliant counterpoint to the fascinating action." Daily Mail "The writing is airy, almost carefree, rapidly drawing the reader in. . . when a writer has written as much poetry as Motion it bestows upon his prose a certain elegance." ***** The Express "Motion writes beautifully. His character depictions. . . may evoke for the reader something of Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS or Golding's LORD OF THE FLIES." The Irish Independent
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| Publication Details | Notes |
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| THE INVENTION OF DR. CAKE 2003 Faber | A mystery story, a detective story and a love story, The Invention of Dr. Cake is a rich and tantalising new novel from the Poet Laureate. Dr Cake is an unexceptional man. After a period of study and practice in London and several years spent travelling in Europe, he has chosen the life of a village doctor and lives quietly and alone. Why then, on the brass plate so ostentatiously screwed into his coffin-lid, is there no name? |
| Publication Details | Notes |
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| IN THE BLOOD 2006 Faber | This is a wonderful picture of a vanishing England, a remarkable insight into a poet's mind, and a deeply moving portrait of the bond between a mother and her son. |
| PHILIP LARKIN: A WRITER'S LIFE 1994 Faber | Winner of the Whitbread Prize for Biography 1994 Philip Larkin, known to many through his poems, contrived to present a picture of himself to the world which kept many facets of his complicated personality hidden. In this biography Andrew Motion, Larkin's literary executor and close friend, reveals the full man. Granted access to private documents and assisted by the men and women most intimately connected with the poet, this book tells the story of how Larkin, to the cost of his own happiness and that of others, achieved "a writer's life". The author has won the Somerset Maugham Award for poetry and biography. |
| Publication Details | Notes |
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| THE CINDER PATH 2009 Faber | Andrew Motion's new collection offers a ground-breaking variety of lyrics, love poems and elegies, in which private domains of feeling infer other lives and a shared humanity - exploring how people cope with threats to and in the world around them, as soldiers, lovers, artists, writers and citizens. The conversational tone and formal variety of these poems both shapes and diversifies their response to loss and its inevitabilities. Here are poems about the last surviving veteran of the trenches; poems which work with found materials drawn from the contiguous worlds of prose; poems which elicit the parallel lives glimpsed in paintings, or the other lives of birds, trees and weather (as of an ordinariness just out of reach). An unemphatic evenness of handling, in the detailing of ordinary destinies, alternates with capacious panoramas of longing and summation, and the collection ends with a remarkable group of directly autobiographical poems about the life and times of the poet's father |
| WILLIAM BARNES SELECTED POEMS (EDITOR) 2007 Faber | Selection of poetry by William Barnes |
| FIRST WORLD WAR POEMS 2003 Faber | The First World War produced some of the most haunting and memorable poetry of our age. In this compelling anthology, the Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion guides us through both the horror and the pity of that conflict, from the trenches of the Western Front to reflections from our own age. With a generous selection of our best-loved war poets, FIRST WORLD WAR POEMS also returns lesser known pieces to the light, and extends the selection right through to the present day so that poems produced by the war give way historically to poems about the war. This mesmerizing book reminds us how the poetry of that time has, more than any art form, come to stand testament to the grief and outrage occasioned by World War I. |
| PUBLIC PROPERTY 2002 Faber | Andrew Motion's new collection moves between private and public realms. In a series of elegiac idylls he conjures expeditionary narratives of a rural childhood - and reconsiders moments of the Victorian past. There are poems for vanished friends and public figures alike, provoking that most sensitive of concerns: what should we make public, what should be made public of us? |
| HERE TO ETERNITY 2001 Faber | A splendid anthology offering a perfect introduction to new readers and a delight for the converted. |
| JOHN KEATS SELECTED POEMS 2000 Faber | John Keats (1795-1821) abandoned a career in medicine to write poetry, until his life was cut tragically short from tuberculosis at the age of twenty-five. By that time, he had published three volumes of verse to an unreceptive critical response. But as the nineteenth century wore on Keats's reputation would build, and today he is recognised as one of the greatest of the Romantic poets. |
| THE SELECTED POEMS 1976 - 1997 1998 Faber | The collection of poems that marked Andrew Motion's first publication for over ten years. |
| THE PRICE OF EVERYTHING 1994 Faber | This book consists of two long poems. LINES OF DESIRE tells the story of an individual in crisis, under cruel pressure both from past and present events. JOE SOAP combines narrative and lyric forms to trace a historical pattern reaching from the First World War to contemporary apocalypse. Andrew Motion has won the Somerset Maugham Award for achievements both as a poet and a biographer. |
| LOVE IN A LIFE 1991 Faber | Andrew Motion's sixth volume of poetry, marks a conspicuous development in the work of the founder of the modern Narrative School. Directness and a new colloquialism are wedded to Motion's distinctive obliquities in a volume where the idea of marriage governs the architecture of each poem and the book as a whole. The stories of two marriages gradually emerge, like chapters in a narrative, and are themselves bound to more public material, so that each lends profound resonances to the other. |
| Charles Walker | +44 (0) 20 3214 0874 |
| For any enquiries about film and television rights, please contact Charles Walker at United Agents. |
