Alert! In South Africa, we have a lot of book launches – and BOOK SA does its darnedest to bring you all the action. In the UK, they have a lot of book launches, too – but when did one ever see action quite like this? The Independent on Sunday’s Katy Guest remembers Britain’s top launches of 2009, which range from Chippendales-esque to diaphanously literary:
A year that was supposed to mark the start of austerity book launches, as the publishing industry shivered out the recession, was, happily, book-ended by two of the more memorable launches for some time. In January, at Twickenham, Mills & Boon celebrated its new series of “Rugby Romances” with champagne, long-stemmed roses and waiters in bow ties, teeny tiny rugby shorts and, um, nothing else; while December kicked off at the higher-brow end of the market, with the launch of Sir Frank Kermode’s Concerning EM Forster at the jaw-dropping apartment on Chelsea Embankment belonging to his publisher, Lord Weidenfeld. Guests ate potato latkes and admired the Klimt etchings in the hallway. Our hosts, who both turned 90 this year, know a thing or two about throwing a party.
As does Her Majesty, who kindly loaned the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace for the launch of William Shawcross’s official biography of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. “I am not so nice as I seem,” the Queen Mother apparently used to insist. If she had a mean side, the smitten author was clearly at pains not to notice it.
Book details
Please register or log in to comment
» View comments as a forum thread and add tags in BOOK Chat
December 20th, 2009 @10:28 #
Rugby romances??? *pause while blinding flash of light strikes* What about Cricket Romances? Now there's an idea -- wonder if Mills & Boon will go for it? Which reminds me, I must click over the the Guardian OBO and find out if our lads are about to put the Poms to the sword.