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Recent News
Congratulations to Cathy Glass whose fostering memoir Will You Love Me?: Lucy's Story has spent the last seven weeks in the paperback non-fiction list with five of them at no 1. The agency currently has two books in the top five paperback non-fiction list with Casey Watson’s A Last Kiss for Mummy at no 3 and Cathy Glass’s Will You Love Me?: Lucy's Story at no 5.
Jane Anson’s Liquid Legends: 1855 First Growths of Bordeaux has won the Gourmand Award for Best Wine Photography and OIV Special Jury Mention History and Literature Prize, and been short listed for a Roederer for Best International Wine Book.
Dominic Carman’s Heads Up , a series of interviews with Britain’s leading school heads, was serialised in theDaily Mail.
Jacky Donovan’s memoir Instant Whips and Dream Toppings was serialised in the Sun.
Eleanor Fitzsimons has been short-listed for the Tony Lothian Prize for A Want of Honour: The Short Life and Tragic Death of Harriet Shelley. The winner will be announced on 20th November.
Mark Higgitt’s Through Fire and Water recently reissued by Thistle Publishing, broke into the Amazon top ten bestseller list.
David Long’s Bizarre London was serialised in the Sunday Mirror.
Andrew Lownie was interviewed in The Harvard Square Edition: The brave new world of agenting according to Andrew Lownie, Literary Agent
Neil McKenna’s Fanny & Stella has been nominated for the prestigious Green Carnation Prize, in a list that includes the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2013 winner, and three novels long-listed for this year’s Man Booker Prize.
Paul Merrill’s Muddle Your Way Through Being a Grandparent : How to fool people into thinking you're a competent granny or gramps released for Grandparents Day, was extracted in the Sun.
The Daily Mail serialised Mark Peel’s semi-authorised biography Shirley Williams
Tom Pocock’s life of Nelson just published by Thistle went into the top ten on the Amazon Kindle best seller list.
Josephine Ross’s Jane Austen: A Companion , also reissued by Thistle, went into the Kindle Top 20.
Natalie Rowe’s Chief Whip: Memoirs of a Dominatrix was serialised in The Sunday People and generated media speculation about the identity of ‘Joe’ Guido Fawkes and The Spectator.
Recent Sales
Square Peg have bought world rights in Hugh Brazier and Jan McCann’s The Book of 365 a trivia book which consists of 365 entries, using every number from 1 to 365 as a starting point for a brief exploration of the world around us, taking in a broad sweep of science, history, art, literature, medicine, and popular culture.
Icon, who published Nessa Carey’s first book The Epigenetics Revolution have bought UK rights in Junk: A Journey Through the Dark Matter of the Genome which explores the exciting new developments in our understanding of human DNA. US rights have been sold to Columbia University Press.
World English rights in Jane Dismore’s Duchesses: Britain’s Duchesses in the twenty-first century a series of interviews with Britain’s premier duchesses, have been sold to Bonnier.
Icon have bought UK rights in Catherine Hewitt’s Valtesse de la Bigne: A Courtesan’s Conquest of Paris, which tells the incredible tale of the nineteenth century courtesan who clawed her way up from humble, impoverished origins to become one of the most sought-after and glamorous women in Paris.
Ebury have bought the memoirs of Marni Mulholland, Skank , a hard-hitting memoir of a young girl who was sexually abused by the Senior Social Worker in a children’s home in West London in the 1980s
World English rights in Natacha Tormey’s Ants are Bitter: a childhood born into a religious cult written with Nadene Ghouri , have been sold to Harper Collins.
Severn House have bought a new historical crime series by Mei Trow The Blue and the Grey - this time set in the 1860s – and the seventh in his crime series featuring Christopher Marlowe Girdled Earth
Desmond Seward continues his association with Pegasus in the US with the sale of his acclaimed Brief History of the Wars of the Roses
Skyhorse Publishing have bought US rights in Adrian Gilbert’s Voices of the Legion: The French Foreign Legion in its Own Words and David Long’s Bizarre London
Recent Foreign Rights
French rights in Coralie Colmez and Leila Schneps’s Maths on Trial
Romanian rights in Ian Graham’s The Ultimate Book of Impostors
Romanian rights in Roger Howard’s Operation Damocles
Brazilian rights in Peter Padfield’s Hess, Hitler and Churchill: The Real Turning Point of World War Two - A Secret History
Brazilian rights in Shed Simove’s blank book What Every Man Thinks About Apart From Sex
German rights in Natacha Tormey’s Ants are Bitter: a childhood born into a religious cult with Nadene Ghouri.
Portuguese rights in Adrian Weale’s The SS: A New History
Andrew Lownie
Selected current Submissions
Nicholas Best continues his series of snapshot evocations of critical periods of history, through the lives of dozens of famous people, by looking at the seven days around Pearl Harbour in Seven Days of Infamy.
Louise Chapman’s ghosted memoir of the intersex Joella Holliday She's A Boy.
Andy Donaldson’s Terrible Estate Agent Photos based on his very successful blog.
Michael Du Preez’s life of the Victorian doctor revealed on death to have been male Dr James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her Time
Eleanor Fitzsimon’s Wilde's Women which explores the many rewarding relationships that the writer Oscar Wilde enjoyed with a series of fascinating and accomplished women throughout his life.
Glyn Gowan’s revisionist biography , Prince George: Duke of Kent, which reassesses the reputation of George V’s most handsome, glamorous and cultured son.
Martin Hammond’s Ask a Silly Question: Messages from eBay's most troublesome customer, a collection of stupidly funny and completely genuine email exchanges between the quirky Fredrick Facedass and the online sellers of eBay.
The hilarious memoirs of Mark Jenkins - ‘Manager Mark’ from the cult tv series The Hotel - Unbelievable! : My Life of Boom, Doom and Dolphin Racing
Christian Jennings’s account of the fierce fighting in Italy during 1944 Gothic Line : The First Battle of the Cold War
Former Sunday Times’s film critic Iain Johnstone’s memoir of his Close Encounters with Hollywood actors from John Wayne and Barbra Streisand to Christopher Reeve and Pierce Brosnan.
Diana Kader’s Hear My Cry - the true story of a Yemeni/British woman, Diana Kader, who successfully resisted a forced marriage whilst on a dream holiday to the Yemen and two attempts on her life by her spurned suitor.
Sean Longden’s Deliver us from Evil:: The Liberation of the Concentration Camps, 1945.
Christine Lord’s Who Killed My Son?:: A devastating memoir of a boy taken too soon and his mother’s quest for justice part memoir and part investigation into how BSE started, how it was allowed to enter the human food chain and why it was kept secret from the public for so long.
Banker and historian David Lough’s ‘Churchill and his Money: A Perfect Sieve’ the hitherto unknown story of Churchill’s lifetime of problems with his personal finances.
The memoirs of Emma O’Reilly, Lance Armstrong’s masseuse and the whistle blower who bought him down, Race to Truth
Brazilian model Gabriella Santos’s memoir Full Brazilian : The true story of baring all in the front line of lap dancing lifting the lid on the lap dancing clubs, punters and girls.
Ross Slater’s Spy Games: One Man's Account of What it Takes to be a Double Agent a compelling account of what happens when an ordinary bloke finds himself in the middle of a bizarre intelligence operation.
Mandy Smith’s Cabin Fever a raunchy and hilarious, account of what it’s like to be a stewardess in the modern world of air travel. ANZ rights sold.
Lee Trimble’s biography of his father Beyond the Call: The Incredible True Story of One American’s Life-or-Death Mission on the Eastern Front in World War II which tells the extraordinary World War Two story of an US pilot who covertly smuggled over a thousand people to freedom, including American POWs, foreign slave labourers and concentration camp inmates from his airbase in the Ukraine.
Chris Woodford’s Atoms Under the Floorboards: The Secret Science Hidden in Your Home an exploration of the science of everyday life which picks out the fascinating and surprising scientific explanations behind a variety of very common (and often entertainingly mundane) household phenomena, from gurgling drains and squeaky floorboards to rubbery custard and shiny shoes.
Alan White’s examination of government outsourcing based on his successful series in the New Statesman The Shadow State: The Secret Rise of Corporate Britain
Denise William’s memoir The Ultimate Agony: A mother's story of losing her sons to their murderous father
David Haviland
Fiction Submissions
The Art of Letting Go a thoughtful and surprising drama about art and artifice by award-winning debut novelist Chloe Banks.
Warwick Cairns’ action-packed historical romp The Fall, set during the English Civil War.
Paul Callan’s The Dulang Washer, a powerful historical novel set in the tin mines of 19th century Malaya. Longlisted for the prestigious IMPAC Literary Award.
Weep No More, a romantic saga set against the sweep of history, in the tradition of James Clavell, Noel Barber and Colleen McCullough, by bestselling novelist Marius Gabriel.
Louisa Treger’s literary novel The Lodger, which tells the story of the passionate affair between writer Dorothy Richardson and H. G. Wells. US rights sold to St Martin’s Press.
November Titles
Christian Jennings’ Bosnia’s Million Bones : Solving the world’s greatest forensic science puzzle
Mei Trow’s historical crime novel Crimson Rose
Christian Wolmar’s Trans-Siberian railway
The paperbacks of Kirk Norcross’s autobiography Essex Boy and Christian Wolmar’s history of America’s railroads Great Railway Revolution
The latest two articles on the agency website are: Author tips on obtaining an ITIN and Vanessa Curtis’s The rise and role of the literary consultant.
The agency’s traditional Halloween party for its ghost writers was picked up by the Evening Standard diary: Evening Standard
Andrew Lownie will be speaking to MA Publishing students at Kingston University on Monday 4th November on the future of agenting and at the NGP Self-Publishing Summit on November 9 at King’s College London.
With best wishes, Andrew Lownie and David Haviland
