Lee Hall

Billy Elliot

Melvin Burgess

Billy Elliot's tough, funny and heart-warming story is given new depth by best-selling author, Melvin Burgess. Billy's mother is dead, and his father and brother are fiercely involved in a bitter miners' fight that has split the local community. Billy's father wants his son to learn boxing, like he did and his father before him. But Billy is fascinated by the grace and magic of ballet and is determined to dance his way to a different future. Told from the differing viewpoints of Billy, his father and brother and his friend Michael, Melvin Burgess has captured the spirit of the original film screenplay while demonstrating the skill and inspiration he showed in his award-winning novel, Junk.

Capers in the Churchyard: Animal Rights Advocacy in the Age of Terror discusses current advocacy trends, tracing one campaign across the Atlantic to a family dairy farm in central England which, for a number of years, has bred animals for commercial toxicity tests. When activists decide to target the farm for closure, their campaign suddenly becomes part of the daily experience of an entire village. Militants have celebrated the sabotage as a victory. A dairy farmer said it “shows what sort of world we are forced to live in.” And what has unfolded between those poles, more clearly than ever before, is the conflict within animal activism itself, a conflict between militants and peacekeepers. Morris Dees, co-founder, Southern Poverty Law Center, calls Capers in the Churchyard "a beautifully written book that lays out an ethical animal rights activist's vision of a world without violence ­and offers a comprehensive critique of the 'eco-terrorism' of recent years." Steve F. Sapontzis, author of Morals, Reason, and Animals, calls Hall's critique of using violence to save animals "especially thought-provoking today, in America, when the fear card of 'Terrorism!' is constantly played to obstruct all sorts of social progress." Anyone who cares about animals or who is even just curious about 'all this talk of rights for animals' will profit from reading Capers in the Churchyard.

Animal Rights Advocacy in the Age of Terror

Capers in the Churchyard

bringing animal-rights philosophy down to earth

On their own terms

Network

Shakespeare in love

Sometimes you don't get to choose where you are placed in the collective ecosystem of a high school. Luke Hartford spends his days on the fringes of social inadequacy. A normal day at his small town American High School can be described as horrific. That is until events take a turn for the worse. After a vision, Luke realises there is something other than the horror of trying to fit in lurking just under the surface. A mysterious stranger arrives in town and the teachers are acting weirder than normal. Soon enough Luke and an unlikely team of allies must fight their way towards survival, even if they don't really know who to trust. The question is, who will survive the Open Evening? "If I can see you, they can see you."

Open Evening

An insider's intimate account of the marriage of American postwar art icons Willem and Elaine de Kooning offers readers a true tale of love, sex, obsession, and artistic genius. By the author of Betty Parsons. 15,000 first printing. National ad/promo.

The Lives of Willem and Elaine de Kooning

Elaine and Bill, Portrait of a Marriage

In 1934, a group of Ashington miners and a dental mechanic hired a professor from Newcastle University to teach an Art Appreciation evening class. Unable to understand one another, they embarked on one of the most unusual experiments in British art as the pitmen learned to become painters. Within a few years, the most avant-garde artists became their friends, their work was taken for prestigious collections and they were celebrated throughout the British art world; but everyday they worked, as before, down the mine. Their story is here brought to life by the writer of Billy Elliot.

The Pitmen Painters

Lee Hall's extraordinary award-winning play about faith, love and the meaning of life was first broadcast on Radio 4 in 1997 to unprecedented acclaim. A monologue by an exceptional autistic child, it is at turns funny, intensely moving and profound.

Spoonface Steinberg

Billy Elliot's not like his Dad. He doesn't want to learn boxing or be a miner. Instead, he is fascinated by the grace and magic of ballet and is determined to dance. Set at the time of the miner's strike, the story traces Billy's fight against the prejudice of a northern community and family.

A Novel

Screenplay

Billy Elliot vit dans une ville minière d'Angleterre. Dans la famille Elliot, on est mineur de père en fils, et depuis de longues semaines, on se bat pour que le gouvernement ne ferme pas les mines. Dans la famille Elliot, on fait de la boxe de père en fils mais, sur le ring, Billy esquive les coups, fait des pirouettes. On dirait qu'il danse. Et c'est ce qu'il aime Billy, danser. Et il est doué. Si doué qu'il pourrait un jour devenir danseur étoile. Mais pour ça, il va devoir se battre.Pour la famille Elliot commence alors un nouveau combat, un combat plein d'espoir...

Tom Stoppard

Declan Donnellan

Marc Norman

Young Will Shakespeare has writers block... the deadline for his new play is fast approaching but hes in desperate need of inspiration. That is, until he finds his muse – Viola. This beautiful young woman is Will’s greatest admirer and will stop at nothing (including breaking the law) to appear in his next play. Against a bustling background of mistaken identity, ruthless scheming and backstage theatrics, Will’s love for Viola quickly blossoms and inspires him to write his greatest masterpiece.

Shakespeare in Love

"Even in the deepest darkest of voids one can find something truly worth having in life, or death..."The paranormal is a subject that E. Neville holds with the utmost content. Being an introvert by choice, he leads a lonely existence full of torment and anxiety for his affliction of preferred solitude. In this diary account Neville shares much of his woes and while settling into a new living space he begins to encounter a series of night-time disturbances like no other. Soon after he faces a battle of self-doubt and belief that something could be reaching out. Is this all a dream? Or is a soul of the 'departed' persuasion trying to make contact for a reason? Eventually they make an acquaintance which becomes much more as the barrier of life and death is broken by the power of love.*Includes a free sample of The Teleporter.

The Ghost Beside Me

I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore. Howard Beale, news anchorman, isn't pulling in the viewers. In his final broadcast he unravels live on screen. But when the ratings soar, the network seize on their newfound populist prophet, and Howard becomes the biggest thing on TV. Adapted for the stage by Lee Hall from the Paddy Chayefsky film, Network premiered at the National Theatre, London, in November 2017.

based on the Paddy Chayefsky film

Listen, girls, if we stick together there's no ways we'll even get to the second round... Young, lost and out of control, a bunch of Catholic schoolgirls go wild for a day in the big city, the singing competition a mere obstacle in the way of sex, sambuca and a night back home with the submarine crew in Mantrap. Funny, sad and raucously rude, Lee Hall's musical play Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour, adapted from Alan Warner's novel The Sopranos, premiered at the Traverse Theatre in August 2015, in a production by the National Theatre of Scotland and Live Theatre. Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour won the Olivier Award for Best New Comedy 2017.

Lee Hall

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