04 April 2019
How To Fail by Elizabeth Day
Congratulations to our co-founder, Elizabeth Day, on the publication of her latest book, Magpie. Join the throng and get your copy here.
01 November 2017
FT Weekend: Hidden Cities – Interview with Pin Drop Founders
Read an interview in the FT Weekend with Pin Drop Founders, Simon Oldfield and Elizabeth Day, about their favourite places in London. Read more here.
13 September 2017
Portrayal for Burberry
Portrayal for Burberry; featured a series of live performances by Pin Drop Studio with Russell Tovey, Tuppence Middleton, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett and Ben Okri.
The programme, curated by Simon Oldfield for Burberry, featured literature specially selected in response to the inspirations behind Burberry’s September 2017 collection and the accompanying exhibition, Here We Are.
Award-winning British actor, Russell Tovey, opened the series on Monday 18th September with a series of readings.
Full performance schedule:
+ Russell Tovey: Monday, 18th September
+ Nathan Stewart-Jarrett: Thursday, 21st September
+ Ben Okri: Wednesday 27th September
+ Tuppence Middleton: Saturday 30th September
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Press: featured in Creative Review here.
19 March 2017
Pin Drop Masterclass at the Dickens Museum with A.L. Kennedy
Join the Pin Drop team on Saturday 23rd September 2017 at the Charles Dickens Museum for a masterclass with award-winning writer, A. L. Kennedy. In the space of one day, you will learn how to find your voice, hone your writing skills and construct a compelling storyline. Find out more here.
20 September 2016
Princess Julia Could Tell You Some Stories – Special Feature in iD Magazine
Matthew Whitehouse interviewed Princess Julia ahead of her special appearance at Pin Drop during London Fashion Week. Read more here.
07 September 2016
Pin Drop + Burberry
Pin Drop collaborated with Burberry and The New Craftsmen to curate a series of short readings drawn from the collection’s inspiration, Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando.
The series took place at Burberry Makers House between 20–27 September and included readers from major British actors including Juliet Stevenson, Dame Sian Phillips and Lisa Dwan to breakthrough talent including Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, Juliet Oldfield, Clara Paget and Jeremy Neumark Jones.
Read more abut the collaboration here.
11 May 2016
Lionel Shriver on her new novel The Mandibles – Pin Drop in the i
09 May 2016
House Highlight: Sir Peter Blake – Pin Drop in Soho House Magazine
The influential artist will read a short story before taking questions from the audience, moderated by Pin Drop founder Simon Oldfield. Blake is perhaps best known for his iconic sleeve design for The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, frequently voted the greatest album cover of all time. Other key works include Self-Portrait with Badges (1961) and The First Real Target (1961). Blake has gone on to influence numerous contemporary artists, and is recognised as a significant figure in the Pop Art movement.
Asked which piece of at he is most proud of, Peter answered, ‘I would say Self-Portrait with Badges (1961) because it won the John Moores Painting Prize in the Junior section, and was a very important picture for me to paint at the time.’
24 March 2015
Dawkins seeks out his inner Bertie – Pin Drop in the Evening Standard
At last night’s Pin Drop, Richard Dawkins regaled Soho House with his parodies of Jeeves & Wooster. The ES Londoner’s Diary reports, Dawkins seeks out his inner Bertie.
“The Londoner has been marvelling recently at the fact that Professor Richard Dawkins has been quiet of late, by his standards at least. Now the mystery may have been solved: he’s been busy with Jeeves & Wooster.
The atheist and academic was at Soho House for a talk hosted by short-story celebrants Pin Drop last night, where he read tales adapted from, and voiced in the style of, P G Wodehouse. Dawkins writes the stories for his clan gatherings so there are no plans for release, perhaps because, he joked, “the family are pretty litigious with the Wodehouse estate”.
06 November 2014
Salon Society: Highbrow Nights Out – Pin Drop in ES Magazine
We are delighted to be featured in the culture special issue of ES Magazine, in a piece by Alice-Azania Jarvis on the rise of literary salon. Read more here.
26 September 2013
Pin Drop at the London Design Festival
Pin Drop was recently invited by the Crafts Council of Ireland to stage a one-off narration in their fantastic space at Tent London in Brick Lane’s Old Truman Brewery. The exhibition, Vernacular, was being staged as part of London Design Festival and featured the work of over 20 designers including this amazing desk by Irish architects O’Donnell + Tuomey.
To fit in with the overall theme of the event, Pin Drop asked acclaimed Irish actress Lisa Dwyer Hogg (currently appearing at the National Theatre in Richard Eyre’s Liola – and yes, that is Lisa on the poster) to read a short story by one of Ireland’s foremost contemporary writers, Kevin Barry. Lisa read Atlantic City – a poignant, funny and telling short story that even included the opportunity for Lisa to launch into a pitch-perfect rendition of Stevie Wonder’s Happy Birthday. Lisa narrated while sitting in a particularly comfortable chair designed by O’Driscoll Furniture and upholstered in the finest Donegal tweed.
We had a fantastic night, enjoying free Jamesons whisky cocktails (absolutely lethal ones at that) and welcomed a whole host of new Pin Drop attendees, including the actor Stephen Rea and the designer Paul Costelloe. Thank you to Julia Ravenscroft and Ann Mulrooney and all her team at the Crafts Council of Ireland, our sponsors Audible UK and, most importantly, Lisa herself who was a really brilliant narrator.
29 July 2013
Pin Drop at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre
On 11 June, we hosted a wonderful evening at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, holding a Pin Drop narration overlooking the beautiful picnic lawn before a spellbinding production of To Kill A Mockingbird. Highly-acclaimed actress, Juliet Oldfield, read Bernice Bobs Her Hair, a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
28 July 2013
Pin Drop at the Houses of Parliament
On 20 June, we held a Pin Drop narration in the Houses of Parliament, offering our guests an exclusive and intimate look inside these iconic buildings. Our venue for the evening was the Jubilee Room, just off Westminster Hall, which came complete with the most fantastic wallpaper Pin Drop has ever seen.
Our first narrator that evening was the acclaimed young poet Owen Sheers, who read incredibly movingly from his prose poem Pink Mist, informed by the testimonies of soldiers who served in Afghanistan. We then welcomed the actress Lyndsey Marshal (Garrow’s Law, Poirot, The Hours, Rome) who took a break from appearing in Othello at the National Theatre to read the Hercule Poirot mystery, ‘The Kidnapped Prime Minister’ – complete with a fabulous Belgian accent.
Afterwards, we drank champagne and munched on delicious Propercorn popcorn – all in the shadow of Big Ben. The evening was a huge success and marked the start of our special programme of events sponsored by Audible, the UK’s largest provider of audiobooks. Thank you to the Houses of Parliament for being such generous hosts.