Hermione Eyre

Shortlisted for the 2015 Walter Scott Prize At Whitehall Palace in 1632, the ladies at the court of Charles I are beginning to look suspiciously alike. Plump cheeks, dilated pupils, and a heightened sense of pleasure are the first signs that they have been drinking a potent new beauty tonic, Viper Wine, distilled and discreetly dispensed by the physician Lancelot Choice. Famed beauty Venetia Stanley is so extravagantly dazzling she has inspired Ben Jonson to poetry and Van Dyck to painting, provoking adoration and emulation from the masses. But now she is married and her "mid-climacteric" approaches, all that adoration has curdled to scrutiny, and she fears her powers are waning. Her devoted husband, Sir Kenelm Digby - alchemist, explorer, philosopher, courtier, and time-traveller - believes he has the means to cure wounds from a distance, but he so loves his wife that he will not make her a beauty tonic, convinced she has no need of it. From the whispering court at Whitehall, to the charlatan physicians of Eastcheap, here is a marriage in crisis, and a country on the brink of civil war. The novel takes us backstage at a glittering Inigo Jones court masque, inside a dour Puritan community, and into the Countess of Arundel's snail closet. We see a lost Rubens altarpiece and peer into Venetia's black-wet obsidian scrying mirror. Based on real events, Viper Wine is 1632 rendered in Pop Art prose; a place to find alchemy, David Bowie, recipes for seventeenth-century beauty potions, a Borgesian unfinished library and a submarine that sails beneath the Thames.

Viper Wine

"Venetia Stanley was the great beauty of her day, so dazzling she inspired Ben Jonson to poetry and Van Dyck to painting. But now she is married, the adoration to which she has become accustomed has curdled to scrutiny, and she fears her powers are waning. Her devoted husband, Sir Kenelm Digby--explorer, diplomat, philosopher, alchemist-- refuses to prepare a beauty tonic for her, insisting on her continued perfection. Venetia, growing desperate, secretly engages an apothecary to sell her "viper wine"--a strange potion said to bolster the blood and invigorate the skin. The results are instant, glorious, and addictive, and soon the ladies of the court of Charles I are looking unnaturally youthful. But there is a terrible price to be paid, as science clashes with magic, puritans rebel against the decadent monarchy, and England slides into civil war. Based on real events and written with anachronistic verve, Viper Wine is an intoxicating brew of love, longing and vanity, where the 17th and 21st centuries mix and mingle in the most enchanting and mind-bending ways" --

a novel

Viper wine

Willie Donaldson

As Miles Kington recently complained in his Independent column, newspapers are increasingly full of unfamiliar names: ¿Ant and Dec, Carol Smillie, Jordan, Simon Cowell, Nasty Nick, the Coughing Major, Davina McCall. ¿Who are these horrible people?¿ asked Mr Kington. ¿There should be a Dictionary of National Celebrity to keep us informed.¿ Indeed. For those who have no idea as to the true identity of, say, Maureen from Driving School, Charlotte the Harlot or Foxy Coxy, help is at hand! The Dictionary of National Celebrity consists of some 300 A to Z entries, running the gamut of today's celebrity culture from Jade Goody to Simon Cowell, from Lord Brocket to Emma Bunton, from Vanessa Feltz to Michael Flatley, from Christine Hamilton to Lady Victoria Hervey, from James Hewitt to Paris Hilton, and from Ricardo the Queer Barber to Richard and Judy. The volume will also include entries for a small number of seminal historical figures ¿ Icarus, Boudicca, Lady Godiva ¿ who may fairly be said to have blazed a trail for today¿s celebrities. In addition to these biographical articles, there will also be short articles on some key words and phrases in the celebrity lexicon, some key issues for the today¿s Celebrities (¿celebrity handholding¿, ¿cracking the American market¿), and on some fascinating Celebrity phenomena (including ¿Celebrity air rage¿). Furthermore, special feature entries detailing Celebrity faux pas, will be accompanied by Celebrity ¿top ten¿ charts displaying the ups and downs in popularity of various household names.

Hermione Eyre

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