Watch award-winning actress, Selma Blair live at Pin Drop Los Angeles from wherever you are in the world!
Selma reads Ms Featherstone and the Beast by Bethan Roberts, author of My Policeman, and winner of the RA & Pin Drop Short Story Award.
Stephen Fry presented the inaugural RA & Pin Drop Short Story Award to Bethan Roberts for Ms. Featherstone and The Beast. In June 2015, at a special awards ceremony at the Royal Academy of Arts, Stephen Fry narrated the winning story to a rapt audience, which you can listen to below, and commented:
“Pin Drop is a wonderfully innovative scheme that unites the written arts with the visual. I really believe in Pin Drop and felt immensely rewarded to be involved.”
From all of the superb entries received, we discovered a truly exceptional winner and our choice was unanimous. Bethan Robert’s evocative story Ms. Featherstone and The Beast, is both tender and poignant. It deals with big themes – love, war and loss of innocence – with a restrained lightness of touch. And, like all the best short stories, its impact lingered and continues to do so.
Bethan Roberts is an award-winning author. Her novel, My Policeman, the story of a 1950s policeman, his wife, and his male lover, is being made into a movie rumoured to be starring Harry Styles and Lily James. Bethan won the inaugural RA & Pin Drop Short Story Award 2015 – listen to the story being narrated in our Pindrop Podcast with Stephen Fry.
The celebrated author discusses his top five titles for Pin Drop.
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
This was the last novel Dickens completed before he died and it remains probably the greatest novel ever written about London. There’s an astonishing sweep of characters from every level of society and the language Dickens employs sees him at the very height of his literary powers. As well as comedy and satire there are also darker themes at work. A wonderfully rich and complex novel.
Collected Short Stories by Anton Chekhov
Chekhov’s mature short stories, written in the last 10 years of his life (he died in 1904 at the age of 44) are both extraordinary and revolutionary. Chekhov is one of those rare writers (Dickens and Kafka come to mind) who changed the way we see the world. In a sense we are all Chekhovians, now. His view of the human condition was astonishingly modern. He had no faith and saw the world as a place where vulgarity and mediocrity triumphed, where the best intentions went awry and our human affairs were governed by luck, good and bad, and sheer happenstance. His eye is magnificently true and clear.
The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
Roth, who died in 1939, is in a real sense the Austrian Chekhov. His masterpiece is The Radetzky March, a portrait of Austro-Hungary on the eve of the Great War. Haunting, poetic, funny and moving, it is a lament for a lost empire and way of life — one of the great 20th century European novels.
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
I happen to believe that Waugh’s best novels are his comedies and Scoop is a near perfect comic masterwork. It contains possibly the funniest chapter in English literature (Mr Salter’s visit to Boot Magna). The brilliant aspect of Waugh’s humour was its utter ruthlessness. He refused to console the reader and this is what makes his comedy so bracing and enduring.
A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark
It’s hard for me to choose a favourite Muriel Spark. This novel is actually loosely based on a period of her own life in the 1950s – Spark often wrote thinly disguised autobiography as fiction (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, for example) though she was also capable of writing her own brand of malignant allegory. Very funny, dry and very shrewd, her tone of voice is what makes Spark’s work unique. Interestingly, Evelyn Waugh was one of her earliest and greatest admirers.
Professor Richard Dawkins, famous for his critique of creationism, has sold more than three million copies of his book, The God Delusion worldwide.
Here are some of the highlights from the Q&A with Pin Drop Founder, Simon Oldfield, at our event with Dawkins at Soho House.
Given developments in bio-engineering and artificial intelligence, are we entering an age of evolution via artificial selection?
Artificial selection is something that’s been going on in agriculture and animal breeding for centuries. The weird thing is that we haven’t done it to ourselves, thankfully – our bodies are pretty much as nature left them. The question now is about artificial mutation; artificially engineering our genes to be different from the way they are. You also have artificial intelligence and the possible usurping of human function by machines. This is happening to an increasing extent because we all carry iPhones, which are capable of answering our questions. In 200 years, it could be an extraordinary world that our descendants inhabit.
Can we trust human morality without the constraints of religion?
It would be a pretty depressing if we couldn’t; that would mean the only reason we’re not immoral is because we’re frightened of God. Having said that, I was once on a radio talk show in America, and a man from Texas rang in and said, ‘if I didn’t believe in God I would go straight out and murder my neighbour.’ If somebody told me the only reason they don’t go out and murder, rape and pillage is because of God, I’d edge away quietly.
Some people argue that even with evolution, there is still space for God as ultimate creator…
Yes, but that doesn’t leave God an awful lot to do. Peter Atkins wrote a lovely book called Creation Revisited, basing his plot on the idea of a very lazy God, who wanted to do as little as possible in order to bring everything into existence. So all he had to do was to make life was to set up the initial conditions for evolution to get started – the right chemical environment for DNA to pop up. Peter takes it back to the bare minimum that this lazy god has to do – strips it down until he has to do nothing. Maybe he is still there but does nothing. But why would you postulate a God if he does nothing? It’s an uneconomical theory.
If you don’t believe in God, what happens when we die?
It’s hard to believe in a life after death if you’re not religious. My scientifically-based view is that our consciousness and personality is so deeply bound up in the brain, that the only way it can survive the death of the brain would be some sort of sci-fi idea, where you download your memory banks into a computer. Maybe that will happen one day but that’s the only way you’ll achieve immortality.
What is the difference between spirituality and religion?
I’m happy to use the word spiritual, so long as people understand that I don’t mean supernatural. Stare down a microscope and you can have a spiritual experience marvelling at the complexity of a single cell, or look up at the stars and contemplate that the light left that star when the dinosaurs became extinct. It’s astonishing, but the beauty of the scientific worldview is that we do understand it. The religious approach seems to me to be a cowardly copout because you’re saying, ‘Well this is all marvellous but I don’t want to understand it.’ I prefer to marvel and then understand it. There’s a big difference.
If you look into the future, do you see the world as atheist?
There’s a trajectory in the direction of atheism. If you look at the stats, belief in God is declining all the time in Western nations. The countries in Europe that have the most provision for social welfare, where people feel most secure, where there is a national health service of some kind, tend to be the least religious. It’s an interesting correlation.
Taken from a live transcript.
To mark the occasion of Sir Peter Blake’s appearance at Pin Drop Studio, he sat down with us in his studio for this exclusive interview.
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“I suppose that, in a sense, my work is all about storytelling,” says Sir Peter Blake.
The artist is alluding to his celebrated paintings of everyone, from Elvis and Ian Dury to boxers and tattooed strongmen, not forgetting, of course, his legendary collaged cover for The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album. “But I think this is the first time that I’ve actually sat down and told a story.”
Sir Peter is referring to his Pin Drop Studio event at Soho House, reading from a selection of his favourite books, including Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and James Joyce’s Ulysses. “I’m going to do the beginnings and endings, because those are my favourite bits of most books, and these have particularly good ones,” he says, settling himself on a sofa in his beautifully light and airy West London house. “They’re also books I’ve illustrated, or always wanted to illustrate. But trying to decide was a bit like choosing your Desert Island Discs. Just as many got left out.”
Many of those ones that got away – novels, biographies, art monographs – are arrayed around us on the living room’s groaning shelves, and downstairs in Sir Peter’s impressive library. It’s a far cry from when he was evacuated from London as a child during World War II, and had just one book to his name. “It was a boy’s adventure story called The Bush Ranger’s Secret,” he smiles, “and I’ve still got it. I remember when I first started at art school in Gravesend, just after the war, I went to a junk shop and bought a set of Shakespeare, calf-bound, along with a papier mache tray and a painting of the Queen Mary.”
From that humble start, Sir Peter has amassed a vast collection of oddball memorabilia over the decades, including stuffed animal tableaux, Punch and Judy puppets, fairground paraphernalia, and marching toy elephants. “I think the collecting has fed into the work, and vice versa,” he says. “Right from the start, I painted the things I was interested in, from comics and music to film stars and fairground people, and that’s what led into pop art.”
Sir Peter is now 83, a white-bearded, avuncular, grandfatherly figure who walks with a stick (“the knees are going”). He insists that he’s not slowing down – “if anything, I’ve speeded up in the past year” – and has summer shows in Welbeck, Padstow, Paris and Sweden to prove it. He’s also designed a “pop art Bentley” – a GT V8 S convertible adorned with a big red heart on the bonnet – to be auctioned at the Goodwood Festival of Speed at the end of June; a further reminder that he originally trained as a graphic designer, and sees no distinction between commercial and fine art. “I’m a bastard painter/designer,” he declares with a grin. Perhaps for this reason, it sometimes feels like he’s been undervalued compared to peers like David Hockney and Richard Hamilton. “People can be sniffy,” he says. “I’ve never been asked to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale, for instance, and the Tate perhaps don’t take me as seriously as they might have done.”
Despite this, he says, he’s content with his lot: “I’m comfortable, I’m not chasing money, and I’m never jealous.” Least of all of his friend Damien Hirst, who’s “a millionaire for the things he’s made, and I admire those things.” It turns out, however, that Sir Peter Blake does have one lurking ambition left to realise, and, fittingly, it’s literature-related. “I’d love to paint an allegory,” he says. “Everything I’ve painted has been quite literal. I’ve got a big canvas in the studio which would be perfect for it. Yes, yes,” he concludes excitedly, sounding like Alice’s White Rabbit, “it’s time to get allegorical in my old age.”
– Words by Stuart Husband
Simon Oldfield is joined by Booker Prize-winning author, Ben Okri and artist Jessy Jetpacks to discuss A Short Affair, Pin Drop’s first anthology of original short fiction, for the Monocle 24 Radio weekly podcast hosted by Robert Bound.
Russell Tovey is best known for his roles in Being Human and BAFTA award-winning BBC sitcom, Him & Her, and has been a longstanding supporter of Pin Drop.
What’s been your favourite role to date and why?
I like meaty, dramatic stuff. I like to cry! Having said that, I also love to goof about. If I had to pick a favourite, I’d go with either Steve in Him and Her or John Chivery in Little Dorrit.
What was the book you read?
I just finished Lena Dunham’s Not That Kind of Girl. It lost me in the middle but by the end, I loved it. It’s funny and worth a read. Before that, I finished Michael Tolliver Lives, which is the seventh book in the Tales of the City series by San Francisco novelist Armistead Maupin. I’ve loved the series, especially as I’ve been lucky to be filming a TV show in San Francisco whilst reading them. I cannot recommend them highly enough.
When are you happiest?
With my dog and family. And when I’m warm.
Who or what inspires you?
Contemporary art is my obsession. The speed and magnitude with which art is progressing right now is incredibly exciting. I become obsessed with a new artist every couple of months. Currently it’s Will Boone. He’s a superstar. I can’t get enough.
Where’s your favourite place in the world?
New York.
What would your last meal be?
My nan’s roast dinner. No one made roast potatoes like her.
The writer, DJ and style icon talks taste with Charlie Porter
From the city’s Blitz Kids club scene to her sell-out show at The Glory in East London, Princess Julia will reveal all at her Pin Drop talk later this month at Soho House 76 Dean Street.
It’s just gone five on a Wednesday afternoon in Shoreditch, and Princess Julia has popped round for a cuppa. She’s in a typical daywear look: black knee-length fluid dress, fishnet tights and cream kitten-heel boots. Her lip colour is purple, her nail polish is nude with black stripes. She’s joined by her housemate’s dog Barney, who also responds to the names Bubbles and Brexit.
‘I’m not worried about whether things are good taste or bad taste,’ she says. ‘I tend to agree with the Diana Vreeland comment – it’s no taste that I’m against.’ It is this conviction that has defined Princess Julia’s life as a celebrant of and a participant in all that is radical. Julia has been a lynchpin of London club land since the late 1970s. She DJs. She writes. She performs monologues. She always looks extraordinary. She embodies the pleasure and satisfaction that can be derived from alternative ways of being.
‘When I was growing up, there were a lot of restrictions, especially as a young girl, a young woman,’ she says. ‘Restrictions on how you could behave, what you were expected to be like in your life, and what kind of life you would lead. Very quickly I decided to abandon all hope of anything like that. In a good way.’
Julia committed herself to clear-headed, decisive rebellion. ‘I set out to do exactly the opposite of whatever my parents told me, to not dress appropriately,’ she says. ‘It was my father who was most upset. My mother said, “If you’re happy, I’m happy too.” But then she’d also be like, “You’re not going out in those rubber stockings are you?” Yeah, actually, I am.’
It was in these formative years that Julia’s notions of style were first formed. ‘I don’t know what made me decide that my taste was the best taste for me. But it must have been the grounding of what was permissive or what you were allowed to be – something in myself drove me to be exactly the opposite.’
Julia has experienced a succession of counterculture movements that have each questioned taste, from punk and the new romantics to today’s east London drag scene. Challenging traditional concepts can be a deeply creative force, as seen in the work of director John Waters. ‘I am a disciple,’ says Julia. ‘His films are a whole cacophony of ideas. Once I discovered that John Waters was in our world, I gravitated towards that and all those fabulous characters. His work is life affirming.’
“I believe in the deepness of being shallow. The seriousness of having fun.”
But this does not mean Julia’s ideas are fixed or prescribed. ‘Rules are there to be broken,’ she says, ‘even ones about taste. If you make your own rules about something, you can backtrack and start again, or decide something you once had a predisposition towards is actually quite naff.’ What matters is a lively, inquisitive mind. ‘It’s about questioning,’ she says, ‘asserting yourself and going forward with conviction.’
Recently, Julia has been troubled by the way bad taste has been used as a negative attack. ‘We’ve regressed in some weird way in this decade we’re in,’ she says. ‘Look at the debacle with Madonna and her tits-and-bum outfit.’ She is referring to the Givenchy dress Madonna wore to this year’s Met Gala. ‘What a woman. She’s just having fun. I was amazed by the reaction of her fans and admirers, saying that the outfit was bad taste. It made me think that everyone has forgotten about the importance of this. We don’t want to live in a place where people are not free to express themselves in whatever way they like, whether it’s good or bad taste.’
We’ve been chatting for a while, and it’s almost time for Julia to go. ‘I believe in the deepness of being shallow. The seriousness of having fun. There’s nothing wrong with being superficial if you feel like it. I don’t know why everything has to be so serious all the time. People get so upset about it.’ She pauses. ‘But beware the shallowness of being deep. That’s one to ponder isn’t it?’
And with that, she puts Barney/Bubbles/Brexit on his lead, and heads off into the East London early evening.
This interview was originally published by Soho House in September 2016 to mark the event Princess Julia: Live at Pin Drop on Wednesday 21st September at Soho House Dean Street
The People v. O.J. Simpson actress on her Cruel Intentions fame, playing a Kardashian and the power of the short story
In Spring 2016, Pin Drop debuted in Los Angeles at Soho House West Hollywood, where Selma Blair read Bethan Roberts’ short story Ms. Featherstone and the Beast, followed by a Q&A with journalist Elizabeth Day and Pin Drop’s Simon Oldfield. Here are some highlights from the chat.
You’re a notable actress in film, theatre, TV — how did the experience of reading a short story compare?
Reading a short story is such a huge honor. I have such respect for the short story.
Were you read aloud to as a child?
My mother loved books but had severe emphysema, so reading out loud was a vocal chore for her. Now when I read aloud to my son, he always says ‘Mom, just read it in a normal mom voice!’ I always get too theatrical with it.
You’re known to many of us for your part in Cruel Intentions. Did you know at the time it was going to be such a huge cult hit?
It was my first big film and Reese Witherspoon was my idol growing up from Man on the Moon and Freeway. I really think people loved it because it’s based on such an amazing piece of literature, the 1782 novel Dangerous Liaisons. Good stories hold up over time.
Did you ever have a crush on one of your teachers growing up?
Yes. I had a crush on my English teacher, who ended up marrying another teacher, Ms. Reed. I couldn’t understand what he saw in her.
You’ve recently graced our screens as Kris Jenner in The People v. O.J. Simpson. What was it like to bring such a cultural phenomenon to the small screen?
I love being involved with anything [director] Ryan Murphy does. Everything about the show is stellar, even the soundtrack is amazing.
Did you watch any of Keeping up with the Kardashians beforehand in preparation for the role?
I definitely didn’t have to do any research. As a society, we’re all basically Kardashians by osmosis — they’re such a part of our culture. My mother barely even knows who I am and yet she knows who Kris Kardashian is.
In the 2008 film The Poker House, you played the mother of Jennifer Lawrence and Chloë Grace Moretz. Can you tell me about working with them so early in their careers?
It was a movie that Lori Petty wrote and directed, based on her own childhood. Apparently, growing up her mother was strung-out and now, she’s a lovely real estate agent in Florida. Anyway, it was Jennifer Lawrence’s first big job, and she’s grown into such an intelligent and talented woman.
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David Nicholls’s novels include One Day, which has sold over five million copies worldwide and has been translated into 40 languages. His latest book, Us, has received widespread praise and is, according to its author, his favourite work to date.
Nicholls also has numerous film credits to his name, including his adaptation of One Day and his screenplay for Far From the Madding Crowd starring Carey Mulligan. He adapted his first novel, Starter for Ten, for Tom Hanks’ production company and recently wrote the highly acclaimed BBC original drama, The 7:39.
I loved books, film and TV from a young age but it never seemed practical or attainable to be a writer as an actual job. For a long time I thought performing was the way to go, which is why I spent so much of my teens and twenties pursuing a career in which I had absolutely no ability. I didn’t start writing full-time until my early thirties, so there are no early manuscripts in the drawer and no abandoned screenplays from my youth. In retrospect I think this is probably just as well. I’m not sure I had anything to say before then.
I was working in a terrible restaurant with a lot of other waiters-cum-models, actors, writers and comedians, all of us desperate to escape. A good friend of mine, Claudia Lloyd, encouraged me to turn those anecdotes into a sit-com, a Friends-style thing called Waiting. The BBC’s Head of Comedy, a lovely man called Geoffrey Perkins, sadly no longer with us, read the first episode and commissioned a second. I remember getting a cheque for £300 and holding it in my hand thinking, ‘My God, I’ve just been paid to write.’
When fiction is going well and the words are flowing there’s nothing quite like it. Screenwriting can be like that, too, but it’s a team activity and therefore sometimes quite confrontational. I can think of many instances of projects that would’ve been improved if I’d stood my ground and also just as many that would have been improved if I’d given in and listened to others. With fiction there’s no one else to blame and no one else to take the praise and I love that power. Although I do love working with actors – seeing the words come to life is both thrilling and terrifying.
I got into publishing at the end of an era when writers could make a living. There was loyalty and less emphasis on this year’s hit. It’s a much tougher environment now and I’m extremely aware of how difficult it is for many authors to survive. On the other hand, it’s a fantastically lively environment too, with the rise of literary festivals and blogs and book groups. The e-book has also been a great innovation in making work available.
I’m very disciplined when I write. I go to the same desk, drink the same coffee, eat the same drab lunch and work 9am-5pm. It’s the only way for me. There’s something very romantic about the idea of the wild-eyed writer, scribbling away through the night with a glass of whisky and an ashtray full of cigarettes, but I can’t do it. If I try to write through the night I just fall asleep on my desk.
At the risk of sounding banal, I’d advise aspiring writers to read and read and read. Read widely, critically and unsnobbishly and always ask: ‘how do they do that? Why are these particular words having this particular effect? What’s the difference between first- and third-person, past and present tense?’ Reading is the best way to learn to write. It’s also fuel and everything I’ve written has drawn on the books I’ve read. At the same time, it’s important to remember that reading is not the same as writing and you need to get the words down. Then, when they’re as good as they can be, take a deep breath and show them to someone.
I’m probably most proud of One Day, although my last novel, ‘Us’ is my favourite. I’m thrilled that both ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ and ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ brought a new audience – and readership – to an author I love. I’m also pleased that ‘The 7.39’ brought a prime time audience to a drama that was entirely free of maverick detectives and murdered women. But I still wish I could go back and fix them all – you never feel like a script is completely finished.
Best known for his work in The Mary Whitehouse Experience and his partnership with Frank Skinner, David Baddiel is also a successful novelist and a screenwriter who’s published four acclaimed novels. Pin Drop presented an evening with the comedian at Soho House London where he read one of his own short stories followed by a Q&A.
What was the last good thing you read?
The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis.
When are you happiest?
Watching films at home with my family and four cats. This is a slightly pathetic answer for this question, but sadly true.
Who or what inspires you?
The work of John Updike.
What’s the last thing that made you laugh?
Amy Poehler and Tina Fey’s opening monologue at the Golden Globes last night.
Where’s your favourite place in the world?
Coverack in Cornwall.
What would your last meal be?
An all you can eat buffet. When asked ‘So: have you eaten all you can?’ I would continually say ‘Hmmm…not quite.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
Don’t tell publications that are asking you personal questions absolutely everything.
Evie Wyld’s first novel, After the Fire, A Still Small Voice, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and a Betty Trask Award. Her second novel, All the Birds, Singing was published in 2013 and won the Miles Franklin Award, the Encore Award and the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize.
We persuaded Wyld to share her tips on how to write an award-winner.
1. Plot
Don’t get too preoccupied with what you’re writing about. Try and write 1000 words a day and you’ll discover whatever it is that you’re really interested in will float to the surface.
I never start my books at the beginning of the story, I just write around the place that interests me. Then at a later date you can work out how it all fits together. I also tend to write the first chapter last.
2. Characters
Treat these the same way as the plot. You might have a loose idea about a character but it’s only when you start writing that you discover what they’re like and how they respond to their surroundings, to other people and situations. Then their behaviour drives the plot. This is the real beauty of writing fiction, when you get to a point where you’re following cues from a character and developing a relationship with them.
3. Time
Give your book the time and space it needs. This, for me, can mean years. It’s a very overcrowded market so whatever you publish needs to be the best in order to compete. If you get stuck, take a couple of months off so you can return to your story with fresh eyes. I’d also advise not talking about your book to anyone. Once you’ve voiced something it can be hard to break away from it, which I find somehow deflates the writing.
4. Working hours
Find out how when work best. For me, it’s first thing in the morning before I speak to anyone. There’s the stereotypical image of an author writing late at night with a bottle of red wine – I‘d love to work like that but have never been able to. It’s equally important to understand that you can’t always sit down at your desk. You need to be able to write in hotel rooms and on trains.
5. Read
It sounds obvious, but keep reading. If you get stuck, read something by an author you admire and work out how they did it. Don’t worry that you might be influenced by another person’s work; we’re influenced by everything and better for it.
6. Edit aloud
When editing, read the whole book out loud. You’ll find yourself tripping over sentences that don’t work and you can hear the parts that don’t sound genuine.
7. Don’t worry about the end
Never fixate on the finished product. When I’m writing I never think about the book being a bestseller or winning awards. You have no control over how other people see your work, so just do your best and work hard.
