All posts tagged: Nicholls

One Day author David Nicholls says library closures make him ‘really furious’

One Day author David Nicholls says library closures make him ‘really furious’

Published by Sam

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Best-selling author David Nicholls has hit out at the lack of accessible art available to the British public, as he condemned the ongoing closures of libraries around the country. Nicholls, 57, is known to millions as the author of 2009 novel One Day, which was recently adapted into a critically acclaimed Netflix series, as well as his 2003 debut Starter for Ten. Speaking to The Guardian, Nicholls spoke about his views on education in the UK, stating that he gets “very angry” about libraries closing and “the way the arts are not accessible”. “I have personal experience of what an education can give you and I get angry when it comes under attack,” he said. “It changed my life – being paid to go to university and having access to public libraries and local theatres.” Nicholls said he finds “the way that’s been taken away from people like …

David Nicholls: ‘I don’t think I’ll write another love story’ | David Nicholls

David Nicholls: ‘I don’t think I’ll write another love story’ | David Nicholls

Published by skeptic

This is the year of David Nicholls. Which has come as a bit of a shock, it turns out, to David Nicholls. He had not planned to release his sixth (and, he thinks, his best) novel You Are Here at the same time that the adaptation of his literary phenomenon One Day hit Netflix, or as a musical of his 2003 novel Starter for Ten opened in Bristol. “In one way, it’s very exciting. But in another way, it’s a bit…” he says, searching for a word that is kind, “overwhelming.” The year of David Nicholls means this is a year of the bittersweet. Of love as a matter of life and death and the path from friendship to romance, and all the tiny, exquisite, effortless banalities of modern life that have seen his work, which has encompassed film, telly (including Patrick Melrose, the Emmy-nominated adaptation of Edward St Aubyn’s novels) and particularly his novels, reframe what the truest story of true love could be. Rather than romcom, one reviewer described his work as “rom-trag”. …

Books of the month: From You Are Here by David Nicholls to James by Percival Everett

Books of the month: From You Are Here by David Nicholls to James by Percival Everett

Published by Sam

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails After taking a stroll near Lewes in Sussex in 1932, Virginia Woolf wrote a striking phrase in her diary: “I want to walk, alone, and come to terms with my own head.” The quote appears as the epigraph to Harriet Baker’s Rural Hours: The Country Lives of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner & Rosamond Lehmann (Allen Lane). It is a delightful read, enhanced by quirky photographs – including several of these visionary writers with their goats. When Boris Johnson praised the “vaccine success” he attributed it to “greed, my friends”. His quotation is used by Angus Hanton in the chapter “The NHS Cash Cow” in Vassal State: How America Runs Britain (Swift), a depressing read about how US companies have siphoned profits from Britain. Hanton, a public policy expert, details how a £500m pandemic stockpile of PPE, bought from American companies, was poorly maintained and in a shoddy …

Gary Lineker, Theresa May and David Nicholls join the Hay festival 2024 lineup | Books

Gary Lineker, Theresa May and David Nicholls join the Hay festival 2024 lineup | Books

Published by skeptic

Elif Shafak, Anne Enright, David Nicholls, Judi Dench, Gary Lineker and Theresa May are among those lined up to speak at this year’s Hay festival. Novelists including 2023 Booker winner Paul Lynch, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, Amor Towles, Jacqueline Wilson, Marian Keyes and Jhumpa Lahiri are also scheduled to appear, festival organisers have announced. Along with May, the lineup features a number of current and former politicians including Rory Stewart, Caroline Lucas, Andy Burnham and Dawn Butler. “We’ve got [a] breadth of people with political ideology”, said festival CEO Julie Finch. “We are definitely a civic platform.” “In a year when more voters than ever in history will head to the polls, as at least 64 countries hold their elections, we present a programme to bring people together, respectfully exploring different perspectives and the power of storytelling to unite us,” Finch said. The festival, which begins in May, is also introducing a new event series, the News Review, with daily morning news analysis. “We’re very conscious of our role as a place for that civic dialogue and …

‘There’s a double layer of nostalgia’: David Nicholls on One Day returning to the book charts | Books

‘There’s a double layer of nostalgia’: David Nicholls on One Day returning to the book charts | Books

Published by skeptic

The TV adaptation of One Day, starring Leo Woodall and Ambika Mod, shot straight to No 1 in the UK Netflix chart when it premiered earlier this month. Now, the book it was based on is back in the bestsellers chart, too – 15 years after it was first published. Author David Nicholls says he was influenced by romcoms including When Harry Met Sally when he wrote the story of Dexter and Emma, who meet every year on St Swithin’s Day over the course of 20 years. “I had a desire to write something full of emotion and affection, that owed a debt to romantic comedy, but was also about life and death, the highs and lows of our professional lives, the insecurities of your 20s.” Leo Woodall and Ambika Mod in a scene from the Netflix series One Day. Photograph: AP “I thought I was writing the book for my generation, people who grew up in the 70s and 80s,” Nicholls, 57, says. “But when it came out in 2009 I knew it was …

One Day review: David Nicholls adaptation never quite manages to land a true emotional sucker-punch

One Day review: David Nicholls adaptation never quite manages to land a true emotional sucker-punch

Published by Sam

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Born in around 800, somewhere in Anglo-Saxon Hampshire, Bishop Swithun was an unlikely folk hero. Most famous for a legend where he mends a basket of broken eggs – somehow less dramatic than, say, slaying a dragon or driving the snakes out of Ireland – Swithun was, all the same, given his own sainthood and name-day. And St Swithun’s Day, the 15th of July, is the day that anchors, like a gravitational force, the orbiting drama of One Day, a new Netflix romantic series, charting the search for affection and understanding between two unlikely lovers. Dexter “Dex” Mayhew (Leo Woodall) is your classic man-about-town, posho lothario. Emma (Ambika Mod) is a chippy, slightly bookish Northerner. When they meet on their final day at Edinburgh University, they make something of an odd couple. “What’s your plan for life?” Emma asks him, as they undress, but all Dex can imagine is …

The best fiction books to read in 2024, from David Nicholls to Kiley Reid

The best fiction books to read in 2024, from David Nicholls to Kiley Reid

Published by Sam

Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter The secret to a happy life? Read a very good novel at the end of every day. Thank goodness, then, that the coming year is full of gems, from thrilling debuts to the return of big-name authors. Here’s our guide to the best fiction to read in 2024. Michael Cunningham’s novel ‘Day’ is about the battle to remain sane in a world gone mad (source) Day by Michael Cunningham It’s been almost a decade since The Hours author Michael Cunningham published a novel, and according to him, the helter-skelter world events during that period have hardly been a boon for writerly productivity. At least it’s infomed Day, his latest, which is set on the same day over a three-year period from 2019 to 2021. He says it’s “about the battle to remain sane in a world gone mad”. 18 Jan, Fourth Estate The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez Here’s the chic new hardback to have on your New Year …