6 replies to this topic

[spynovelfan]

John Braine holds a strange place in the canon of spy fiction: nobody knows he

Edited by spynovelfan, 04 February 2005 - 03:38 PM.

[Hitch]

It's posts like these that make CBn a pleasure to visit. I'll be sure to search for The Pious Agent and Finger of Fire. The combination of spying and Roman Catholicism sounds intriguing. Something tells me the books might be a little better written than The Da Vinci Code...

[Hitch]

My mysterious bookshop is looking rather pleased with itself. It has a nice Book Club hardback of John Braine's The Crying Game. Spynovelfan, would you like me to send it to you?

[spynovelfan]

Ah, sorry, Hitch, you've already been here, and I missed this, somehow. Thanks for the very kind offer, but I already have a copy of THE CRYING GAME. It's not a spy novel - the only two he wrote were TPA and FOF. I haven't read TCG, but I have read ROOM AT THE TOP, which is one of my favourite novels, and his book on how to write novels, which has some very interesting stuff in it. Like Larkin, Braine was a librarian, in Bingley in Yorkshire. An aspiring young writer called Harry Patterson lived in the town and made friends with him. Patterson would later reach fame as a writer under the name Jack Higgins. (And steal most of the decent titles for Bond films floating around the ether!)

[glidrose]

Little known fact about Braine. Booker McConnell owned 51% of his copyright. Booker McConnell also owned 51% of the real Glidrose.

Booker McConnell also owned the following copyrights:
-Agatha Christie
-Robert Bolt ("A Man for All Seasons", several David Lean films)
-Gavin Lyall (adventure novelist)
-Harold Pinter (playwright)
-Dennis Wheatley (horror novelist)
-Georgette Heyer (romance novelist)
-John Mortimer ("Rumpole of the Bailey")
-Penelope Mortimer (novelist, John Mortimer's ex-wife)

One wonders if Booker ever asked Lyall to write Bond.

[Dustin]

51 per cent? Sounds like an awful thick slice of the cake. Was it usual at the time to sell such a large part?

[Dustin]

Yes, that was what I thought, quite unusual, almost the proverbial pound of flesh.