Simon Worrall

The Steal

sworrall — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 08:36:16 +0000

Just back from Bournemouth, on England’s Riviera ( aka the south coast) after a very exciting & productive four days plotting out a political/crime thriller with the brilliant Lorrie Sheehy, aka Callie Lane, who is concurrently writing the screenplay for The Poet and the Murderer. After spending 25 years mostly writing on my own it is fantastic to collaborate, inventing scenes and dialogue at warp speed. Two minds are definitely better than one. We are following the Grisham method, plotting out the entire story in 40 chapters and I came back from Bournemouth with almost 2/3 of it mapped out. The weather was mostly great and from the terrace of my hotel I could look across the blue, blue English Channel with the white cliffs of The Isle of White in one direction and Weymouth in the other. Lots of Londoners on holiday, of all races and ages. The work was intense and incredibly rewarding. Lorrie Sheehy is a force of nature: when she wasn’t working with me she was busy sending texts to Madonna’s producer, on board a yacht in the Med, about another project, a brilliantly inventive film about Charles Dickens called The Chimes. She comes from a theatre background ( was a rising young star at The Royal Court in London, where I worked briefly in the late 70’s, so there’s loads of synergy. Our next project will be a play about about Katharine Hepburn, which I am equally excited about.

The Very White of Love

sworrall — Fri, 28 May 2010 01:54:37 +0000

This weekend marks the 70th. anniversary of the epic withdrawal from Dunkirk, in which 330,000 allied troops were plucked from the beaches after the collapse of the British Expeditionary Force’s campaign in France and Belgium. Many British soldiers did not make it home. One of them was my mother’s fiance, Martin Preston, nephew of the poet Robert Graves and an aspiring poet himself. He was killed in action on May 28th – the day before the evacuation – in Hazebrouck, on the French-Belgian border, as his regiment attempted to hold back the Germans so that his fellow British troops could be rescued. In 2004, as I was going through my mother’s effects after her death, I found a cardboard chocolate box full of his letters to her; and a handful from her that were returned after Martin disappeared. These extraordinary, and moving, letters will form the basis of my next book, The Very White of Love ( the title is a line from a poem by Wrey Gardner that they refer to several times in their correspondence). So, here’s remembering all those who fell in that fateful year, 1940.

Journey to Ki ( Kindle Edition)

sworrall — Sat, 15 May 2010 21:13:45 +0000

I am pleased to announce that Journey to Ki, the story of my Himalayan odyssey to the highest monastery in the world, has just been published on Kindle ( http://tinyurl.com/2cogfly )

Ki lies behind the Inner Line, a militarised buffer zone between India and Chinese Tibet, in the formidable Spiti Valley. As a result of its seclusion, the ancient Tibetan way of life and culture has been preserved in a way it has not even in Tibet itself. Here is the description of the story on Kindle:

Acclaimed author, Simon Worrall, travels to the remote Himalayan monastery of Ki. Situated behind The Inner Line on the India-Tibet border, at 15,400 ft., it is the highest monastery in the world. There, he discovers a ‘Lost World’ of pure Tibetan Buddhist culture that no longer exists in Tibet itself. On the way, he encounters a colorful cast of characters and some of the most majestic, and unexplored, landscapes in the world. Worrall’s journey to Ki is also a spiritual odyssey. And when things go catastrophically wrong, his own certainties and beliefs are called into question. Beautifully written, full of gentle humor and affectionate portraits of the people he encounters, Journey to Ki is sure to take its place alongside The Snow Leopard or Three Cups of Tea as one of the classics of adventure literature.

Dead Man Provenance/Journey to Ki

sworrall — Mon, 10 May 2010 13:56:39 +0000

I have just uploaded to Kindle a new, revised and updated e-version of Dead Man Provenance ( http://tinyurl.com/24p88yg), the magazine story first published in The Paris Review, which formed the basis of my book, The Poet & The Murderer. It tells the story of a forged Emily Dickinson poem that turns up mysteriously at Sotheby’s. As I investigate its provenance, I stumble on a story stranger than fiction – a story of forged Mormon documents, deception and murder. At the centre of the story is the brilliant, amoral Mark Hofmann, a disgruntled Mormon, who tries to do what no one has ever done before: bring down a major world religion using forgery. And ends up killing two innocent people with bomb bombs.

The next story I will publish on Kindle is called Journey to Ki. It, too, concerns religion and spirituality – but in a completely different sense. It is the story of my journey up the Spiti Valley in India’s Himachel Pradesh province, to the ancient monastery of Ki, which at well over 15,000 ft. is the highest in the world. Ki lies behind The Inner Line, a militarised buffer zone on the a remote India-Tibet border. As a result of this, the ancient, Tibetan Buddhist culture that has existed there for a thousand years has been preserved, like a bee in amber, in a way that it has not been in Tibet itself, thanks to the predations of the Beijing government. Journey to Ki is also a journey inwards, as I encounter the philosophy and practices of Tibetan Buddhism.

Save Stonybrook Southampton: Axe the Fat Cats

sworrall — Mon, 03 May 2010 15:28:52 +0000

An issue that is galvanising the local community here on the East End of Long Island, where I spend part of the year, is the proposed closure of Stonybrook’s Southampton Campus. The main mover behind the scheme is the President of Stonybrook, Samuel L. Stanley, a technocrat who has betrayed all the promises made to the local community to ensure that the Southampton Campus has a long-term future. The rationale peddled by Samuel is that his hand has been forced by budget cuts. The real reason, however, seems to be Samuel’s wider ambitions to force through the privatisation of the entire SUNY system. This is a terrible, though fashionable, idea, which will put education beyond the means of all but the financially well-off and turn universities into corporations, whose bottom line becomes not the education of students but profitability. Rumours abound about what is planned for the campus further down the road, from a teaching hospital ( Stanley comes from a medical background) to a hotel and conference centre: concrete monstrosities that will be completely out of character with the local environment.
If money truly is at the heart of the closure then perhaps President Samuel should start by axing some of the managerial fat cats, whose bloated salaries are paid for by the state. Does Stonybrook University really need 22 – yes, that’s 22 – Presidents and Vice-Presidents ? The roster reads like the nomenklatura of a Soviet-era bureaucracy. As well as the President and a whole tier of Vice Presidents ( for Academic Affairs, Hospital Affairs, University Affairs etc.), there are numerous Associate Vice-Presidents, Assistant Vice Presidents and, even, Senior Assistant Vice Presidents. They all earn over $100,000 and in many cases $200,000-300,000. Their combined wage bill is a whopping $4, 626, 617 !! That’s two-thirds of the $6.7 million that, it is claimed, Stonybrook will save by shuttering the Southampton campus.
So, instead of reneging on its promises to hundreds of young people, and the community, why doesn’t Stonybrook cut the salaries of these overpaid pen-pushers and bureaucrats ?

For more information, go to: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/SAVE-STONY-BROOK-UNIVERSITY-SOUTHAMPTON-CAMPUS/106675082705901

Of Volcanos and Baldrick; Dojo Films; Beckett, Clegg and Coleridge.

sworrall — Mon, 03 May 2010 14:30:00 +0000

It’s a rainy day on Long Island, I got back here last week, after being stuck ” under the volcano ” in Britain for a week. It was irritating at the time. But, in fact, it worked out well. It gave me a few more days at home and enabled me to attend a meeting about a television documentary I am co-producing with my chum Stephen Hopkins, a man of wry humour and vast experience as far as TV is concerned, having been a producer at Granada in its heyday. TV looks a good bet at a time when the publishing/magazine industry is on its backside. And thankfully in Britain there is still a place for well-made, intelligent programming. As Steve is into Zen Buddhism we have chosen Dojo Films as our company name. At a meeting in London a few weeks, ” national treasure “, Tony Robinson, the actor formerly known as Baldrick ( from Blackadder) and now one of the UK’s top TV presenters, very graciously agreed to front the documentary we have created. I knew Tony way back when in Bristol, in the early pleistocene – I mean, the late 60’s – when he was working for a theatre company called Avon Touring and I, recently graduated from Bristol University, was trying to make it as a playwright ( If I tell you that the project I was working on at that time was a wildly obscure drama called Esteesee, about the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s scheme to found an Utopian communtiy, The Pantisocracy ( !), on the banks of the Susquehanna River, accompanied by William Wordsworth, Robert Southey and a motley crew of other young dreamers, male and female – Ah, the follies of youth ! – you will perhaps appreciate why my career in the theatre was short-lived). It’s nice to see the wheel turn full circle and that, after all these years, TR and I may end up working together again. If things go according to plan, we will go into production in the autumn. I will write & research the story and take a co-producer credit. A second production is already being planned.
Sadly, I will miss the British election – I will be voting by proxy in my local, Hereford constituency – but will be watching it here on BBC America. My points out of 10 for the three candidates at the last TV debate are: Cameron 8, Clegg 8, Brown 4. There was a very good piece in the Guardian today by Charlie Brooker about how disastrously awkward and ill at ease Gordon Brown is with real people – as opposed to Whitehall politicos and statistics. Which is just one reason why he is going to be punished by the electorate. People feel sorry for him – the loss of sight in one eye, the awkwardness etc. But everything I have read about him suggests he is a Whitehall Neanderthal of the worst sort: a nasty, ill-tempered, overbearing, bullying person who has been obsessed with gaining political power since he was a student at Edinburgh University in the late 60’s and will push anyone, friend or foe, under the bus if they get in his way. Personally, I think he belongs in a clinic not at No. 10 Downing Street. I simply don’t trust anyone who wants it that much. So it’s Nick Clegg for me. Anyone who says his hero is Samuel Becket gets my vote.
My own hero ? It’s another Samuel, the one I mentioned above: Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Save Stonybrook Southampton ( update)

sworrall — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 09:07:35 +0000

The battle to keep Stonybrook Southampton’s campus open continues with new fronts being opened daily. The latest coup is that Alec Baldwin, the actor and local resident, stepped into the fray and slammed the closure in Newsday ( http://bit.ly/9KVukd ). Other celebrity friends of the campaign, possibly including RFK Jr., are also being lined up. There will be a benefit at Stephen Talkhouse club in Amagansett later in the month. Finally, there is a site where you can make donations. They need to raise $50,000 by May 1st. to proceed with a class action lawsuit against Stonybrook. These funds are absolutely crucial for the students at the Southampton campus to continue their education, so please be generous: http://tinyurl.com/yymgqfu

Bail out colleges – not banks ! Save Stonybrook Southampton !

sworrall — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:45:17 +0000

http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/savesbs/ Last week it was announced that as part of its cost cutting plans Stonybrook University is to close its Southampton L.I campus. The news came like a bolt out of the blue, leaving students, staff and the local community shocked and upset. I don’t directly have a dog in this fight but my partner, Heather Dune Macadam, is a professor at the campus. She now faces the loss of not only her job but possibly her house. It seems incredible that while banks can be bailed out with taxpayers money, colleges are allowed to be put to the sword in this way. It is an act of extremely bad faith on the part of Stonybrook, who only took over the campus three years ago – and made all sorts of guarantees to the staff and community about their long-term commitment. It’s particularly sad because the Southampton campus is the centre for environmental studies, educating a new generation of young people to care for the planet. Rumours abound about Stonybrook’s future plans, one of which is that it may become a teaching hospital. This would fit with the ambitions of the President, Dr. Samuel L. Stanley, who comes from a medical/ scientific background ( as opposed to the previous incumbent, who came from a humanities background). It is worth noting that Dr. Stanley has a salary of $650,000 p.a. Perhaps he could take a voluntary pay cut and contribute some of that money to keeping the campus open. Better still, he should resign immediately for betraying not only the staff and students of the Southampton Campus, but the local community as well. The good news is that the fight to keep the campus open is not over yet. Local politicians, staff and students are all working hard to do what they can to reverse the decision, which may, in fact, prove to be illegal. YOU can help by signing this petition and spreading the word to your friends and colleagues: http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/savesbs/

Venceremos!

Happy Easter

sworrall — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 16:31:41 +0000

I am back in England for three weeks. It’s terrible weather ( as usual): rain, snow, wind, with the occasional blast of bright sun. I have a heavy sweater on and an open fire in the grate. The river outside my door is a swollen vein of mango-coloured water. It’s a hard time to be born for the lambs, struggling to their feet in the fields. I live on the English-Welsh border, smack under the Black Mountains, which Bruce Chatwin made famous in Under The Black Hill. It’s marginal land, mostly only good for sheep. My neighbour, Richard ” Dick ” Prosser and his wife, Doris, are busy day and night, going back and forth to the barn on a quad bike, armed with bottles of milk, towels and syringes. When I walked over yesterday, I found Dick standing outside the tin-roofed barn in a blue, plastic anorak with the hood up. He was soaked to the skin ( and he is not a young man) but as cheerful as ever, with that quick wit and teasing humour typical of the area. About twelve lambs were housed in makeshift pens with their mothers. It smelled of hay and sheep shit.

” They should be outside by now “, said Dick, shaking his head. ” Eating grass. They get sick if they stay in here too long. ” He pointed to a cardboard box.” I’m running out of room, too. ”

In the bottom of the box was what looked like a dirty rag.

” Is it alive ? “, I asked, worried.

” I hope it is. ” Dick bent down and tickled the lamb’s neck. It was barely able to raise its head from its pillow of dirty straw.

The lamb’s mother, a heavy-set ewe with a fleece of wool the colour of dirty snow, came over to the box and sniffed the lamb.

” Thinks the world of him, she does “, said Dick,with a wink.

Happy Birthday, Heather ( & Luce Acres)

sworrall — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:36:12 +0000

On Saturday night we celebrated the 50th. birthday of a wonderfully talented writer, Heather Dune Macadam, author of one of the classic accounts of Auschwitz, Rena’s Promise, and my partner. There were about 30 of us at Indian Cove restaurant here in Hampton Bays, we had the most perfect evening, warm enough to stand outside on the deck and look at the sunset ( and the seals). Many of Heather’s dearest friends from far and wide had made the journey here, and it was a wonderful occasion in every way. Now it’s back to work. After many false starts and hesitations, I have begun work in earnest on the book formerly known as Luce Acres, a ” true story of love in a time of war”, which is based on a box of love letters I discovered at the bottom of my mother’s wardrobe after her death in 2005, from her wartime fiance, Martin Preston, nephew of Robert Graves and a poet himself, who died in a firefight at Hazebrouck, on the Franco-Belgium border in 1940. His letters are beautiful, haunting and tragic. I am very excited about this book. Watch this space.