Peter Nichols

A tale set around a popular Mediterranean seaside resort follows the story of two honeymooners who abruptly split in 1948 and live separately for decades until children from their rivaling families fall in love.

The Rocks

In 1968, nine sailors set off on the most daring race ever held: to single-handedly circumnavigate the globe nonstop. It was a feat that had never been accomplished and one that would forever change the face of sailing. Ten months later, only one of the nine men would cross the finish line and earn fame, wealth, and glory. For the others, the reward was madness, failure, and death. In this extraordinary book, Peter Nichols chronicles a contest of the individual against the sea, waged at a time before cell phones, satellite dishes, and electronic positioning systems. A Voyage for Madmen is a tale of sailors driven by their own dreams and demons, of horrific storms in the Southern Ocean, and of those riveting moments when a split-second decision means the difference between life and death.

A Voyage for Madmen

"Set in small-town Maine, an English novelist-turned-detective investigates a serial killer preying on the historic town."--

A Novel

Granite Harbor

“Irresistibly sunny… Set in the brightly lit Mediterranean amid old olive trees and sexual intrigue, music and wine and beautiful women... Propulsive.” –The New York Times Book Review “The perfect book for pretending it's already beach season.” –O, The Oprah Magazine A romantic page-turner propelled by the sixty-year secret that has shaped two families, four lovers, and one seaside resort community. Set against dramatic Mediterranean Sea views and lush olive groves, The Rocks opens with a confrontation and a secret: What was the mysterious, catastrophic event that drove two honeymooners apart so suddenly and absolutely in 1948 that they never spoke again despite living on the same island for sixty more years? And how did their history shape the Romeo and Juliet–like romance of their (unrelated) children decades later? Centered around a popular seaside resort club and its community, The Rocks is a double love story that begins with a mystery, then moves backward in time, era by era, to unravel what really happened decades earlier. Peter Nichols writes with a pervading, soulful wisdom and self-knowing humor, and captures perfectly this world of glamorous, complicated, misbehaving types with all their sophisticated flaws and genuine longing. The result is a bittersweet, intelligent, and romantic novel about how powerful the perceived truth can be—as a bond, and as a barrier—even if it’s not really the whole story; and how one misunderstanding can echo irreparably through decades.

Set on the island of Mallorca, The Rocks is a double love story told in reverse. Opening in 2005 with a dramatic event that seems to seal the mystery of two lives, the story moves backwards in time, unravelling over sixty years, amid the olive groves and bars, the boats and poolside parties, the lives and relationships of two intertwined families within an expat community of endearing and flawed characters. As one story is revealed, another, sweeter one, a love story of a couple from the younger generation, arises in the wake of their elder's failures. The Rocks is a darkly comic, bittersweet, finally heartbreaking novel, that slips back in time to reveal the shocking incident that marked and altered these lives for ever.

Evolution's Captain is the story of a visionary but now forgotten English naval officer but for whom the "Darwinian Revolution" would never have occurred. When Captain Robert FitzRoy, the twenty-six-year-old captain of the H.M.S. Beagle, set out for Tierra del Fuego in the fall of 1831, he invited a young naturalist to accompany him. That twenty-two-year-old gentleman was Charles Darwin, and perhaps no single voyage in history had a greater impact on how we would come to understand the world -- in both religious and scientific terms. When the Beagle's first captain committed suicide while at sea in 1828, he was replaced by a young naval officer of a new mold. Robert FitzRoy was the most brilliant and scientific sea captain of his age. He used the Beagle, a survey vessel, as a laboratory for the new field of the natural sciences. But his plan to bring four "savages" home to England to civilize them as Christian gentlefolk backfired when scandal loomed over their sexual misbehavior at the Walthamstow Infants School. FitzRoy needed to get them out of England fast, and thus was born the second and most famous voyage of the Beagle. FitzRoy feared the loneliness of another long voyage -- with madness in his own family, he was haunted by the fate of the Beagle's previous captain -- so for company he took with him the young amateur naturalist Charles Darwin. Like FitzRoy, Darwin believed, at the beginning of the voyage, in the absolute word of the Bible and the story of man's creation. The two men spent five years circling the globe together, but by the end of their voyage they had reached startlingly different conclusions about the origins of the natural world. In naval terms, the voyage was a stunning scientific success. But FitzRoy, a fanatical Christian, was horrified by the heretical theories Darwin began to develop. As these began to influence the profoundest levels of religious and scientific thinking in the nineteenth century, FitzRoy's knowledge that he had provided Darwin with the vehicle for his sacrilegious ideas propelled him down an irrevocable path to suicide. This true story -- part biography, part sea drama, and a subtle study of one of the defining moments in the history of science -- reads like the finest historical fiction. It is a chronicle of the remarkable chain of events without which Darwin would most likely have lived and died an obscure English country parson with a fondness for collecting beetles.

The Dark Fate of the Man Who Sailed Charles Darwin Around the World

Evolution's Captain

In the wake of the publication of his controversial book on adolescent sexuality, Dick and his wife, Liz, have retreated with their family to the French countryside. Joined by their friends Phil and Diana for a child-free weekend, they enjoy the sunshine and the cheap wine until certain unsavoury revelations come to light. At the worst moment possible, two reporters appear to interview Dick, causing great worry among the couples that all their secrets will be aired in the press. Nichols drew inspiration for 'Chez Nous' from time spent at his own family's home in France. This darkly comedic, and sometimes deeply shocking play was first produced in London in 1976.

Chez Nous

This is the story of the man without whom the name Charles Darwin might be unknown to us today. That man was Captain Robert FitzRoy, who invited the 22-year-old Darwin to be his companion on board the Beagle . This is the remarkable story of how a misguided decision by Robert FitzRoy, captain of HMS Beagle , precipitated his employment of a young naturalist named Charles Darwin, and how the clash between FitzRoy’s fundamentalist views and Darwin’s discoveries led to FitzRoy’s descent into the abyss. One of the great ironies of history is that the famous journey—wherein Charles Darwin consolidated the earth-rattling ‘origin of the species’ discoveries—was conceived by another man: Robert FitzRoy. It was FitzRoy who chose Darwin for the journey—not because of Darwin’s scientific expertise, but because he seemed a suitable companion to help FitzRoy fight back the mental illness that had plagued his family for generations. Darwin did not give FitzRoy solace; indeed, the clash between the two men’s opposing views, together with the ramifications of Darwin’s revelations, provided FitzRoy with the final unendurable torment that forced him to end his own life.

The Story of the Kidnapping That Led to Charles Darwin's Voyage Aboard the "Beagle"

An Autobiography

Feeling You're Behind

A rich selection from the best of Nichols' work up to and including his award-winning Privates on Parade This volume continues the stage plays of Peter Nichols, newly revised and introduced by the author. Chez Nous is about English couples who bring their emotional baggage with them on a holiday to France; Privates on Parade is a hit play inspired by the author's experience in Singapore after the war working for the Combined Services Entertainments where he met among others John Schlesinger and Kenneth Williams at a time when 'mixed' entertainment relied on men dressing up as women; Born in the Gardens is inspired by the author's native city Bristol while Passion Play is a play about passion among the elderly - won Best Play (Evening Standard) in 1981. Poppy (the musical that opened the RSC's residence at the Barbican) is set in the Victorian Far East. It takes a pop at imperial hypocrisy and wickedness and won the Best Musical award.

Chez Nous; Privates on Parade; Born in the Gardens; Passion Play; Poppy

Nichols Plays: 2

Show of Strength Theatre Company

Bristol, 1995. It is Alice's 85th birthday. An occasion for celebration. But like many family gatherings, it is also an occasion for parading long-held resentments, as her children attempt to persuade her to relinquish her independence and move to a home. But Alice has other plans...

So Long Life

A rich selection from the best of Nichols' work up to and including his award-winning Privates on Parade A Day in the Death of Joe Egg is based on the author's experience of having a mentally handicapped child and won the John Whiting Award; The National Health was commissioned by Kenneth Tynan for the National theatre and follows the story of a Labour MP who goes into a state hospital suffering from a nervous collapse. It won the Evening Standard Best Play Award; Forget-me-not Lane is a trip down memory lane from the author's own childhood growing up in the West Country; Hearts and Flowers is a TV play about the rivalry between two brothers, one a school teacher living in Bristol the other a successful news journalist and their shared interest in a woman; Freeway is set in a traffic jam and attempts to answer the question of why the automobile has come to be seen to represent liberty incarnate in the modern era.

Plays

A day in the death of Joe Egg ; The national health ; Forget-me-not lane ; Hearts and flowers ; The freeway

In 1871, an entire fleet of whaling ships was caught in an Arctic ice storm and destroyed. Though few lives were lost, the damage would forever shape one of America's most distinctive commodities: oil.

A Story of Arctic Disaster and One Fateful Whaling Season

Final Voyage

"Blue Murder is an absolute cracker, as ingenious as it is riotously funny" (Daily Telegraph) Blue Murder opens with Foreign Bodies, where Swinging London meets bourgeois Shrewsbury and the drinks are laced with cyanide. As the son of the household struggles to write his first play, a murder story is offered to him on a plate. The second half, A Game of Soldiers, is a Whitehall farce taking place in St James's Palace. The same dramatist has brought his complete play to be censored but The Lord Chamberlain's Men have a few shameful secrets of their own to hide, including a priapic guardsman.

Blue Murder

Passion Play

James Mitchell

Philip Callow

Richard Cottrell

Granada Plays

Rhys Adrian

Patrick Hughes

New Granada Plays. (The Protest. By Rhys Adrian. - The Honeymooners. By Philip Callow. - Marking Time. By Richard Cottrell. - A Place of My Own. By Patrick Hughes. - Soldier in the Snow. By James Mitchell. - Ben Spray. By Peter Nichols.).

1st American Ed

Italia, Italia

Bristol, 1940. Fifteen-year-old Theodore Light has ambitions to direct Hollywood films. He can only see them in the cinema if he is accompanied by an adult, so when Mrs. Hampton offers to take him, he can't refuse. But when an air raid strikes, their relationship becomes much more than they both expected.

Peter Nichols

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