andrew lownie literary agency

News

  • Biography of John McDonnell to Biteback

    30 Aug 2017

    Biteback have bought rights in Bobby Friedman’s life of Labour Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell McDonnell: Corbyn’s left-hand man for publication this autumn. BBC journalist and lawyer Friedman’s previous books include a biography of Speaker John Bercow and study of party political funding.

  • Auschwitz survivor Sam Pivnik dies

    30 Aug 2017

    I am sorry to announce that agency author Sam Pivnik died in London this morning two days before his 91st birthday.

    During the Second World War, Sam was incarcerated in a number of concentration and extermination camps in Poland and Germany and he is believed to be the last remaining Jewish survivor to have worked on the ramp at Auschwitz. At the end of the war, Sam was one of the detainees on the prison ship Cap Arcona, which was bombed and sunk by the RAF, in an incident which remains a source of controversy.

    After the war, Sam played an important role in the foundation of the state of Israel. During the War Of Independence, he fought in the 79th Brigade alongside Jews and gentiles, including former British soldiers who sympathised with the Jewish cause. Eventually, he came to live in London, where he worked initially as a tailor, before becoming a respected art dealer and restorer.

    His memoir Survivor: Auschwitz, The Death March and My Fight for Freedom was published by Hodder in 2012 and rights sold in US, Denmark, Poland, Germany, Holland, Italy, France,

  • Daniel Tammet interviewed in the Times

    17 Aug 2017

    Daniel Tammet is interviewed in the Times today talking about his new book Every Word is a Bird We Teach to Sing: Encounters with Language

    ‘Tammet’s struggle for everyday conversation in English masked a gift for languages that helped to turn him into a bestselling writer with an eye for the detail that separates good authors from bad.’

    ‘He has gone from being a person with autism who writes, to a writer with autistic roots. Soon, probably, no one will bother mentioning the autistic roots.’

    ‘[The book] is a journey through labyrinths of language and the oddities of those who speak it — all of us, in other words. It is not a book about the idiosyncrasies of autism. It is a book about the idiosyncrasies of humanity.’

    ‘Descriptions fly out at the reader … his literary talents … he found salvation in writing.’

    The book will be extracted in the Guardian next week and he is due to be interviewed on Newsnight and will be appearing at the Edinburgh Festival.

  • Recent Foreign Rights sales

    17 Aug 2017

    German rights in Cathy Glass’s Damaged.

    Croatian rights in A Very Dangerous Woman : The Lives,. Loves and Lies of Russia’s Most Seductive Spy by Deborah McDonald and Jeremy Dronfield.

    French rights in Lisa Stone’s first novel The Darkness Within.

    Finnish rights in Daniel Tammet’s Born on a Blue Day - the 27th foreign sale.

  • Two agency titles reviewed in weekend Telegraph

    07 Aug 2017

    Lewis Jones described Julia Boyd’s Travellers in the Third Reich as ‘a compelling narrative’ where the voices of her interviewees ‘skilfully orchestrated, speak for themselves…with great eloquence whilst Ivan Hewett reviewing Adam Ockelford’s Comparing Notes: How We Make Sense of Music felt ‘there is much to learn from this book’.

  • Latest on tv plans for James Barry book

    12 Jul 2017

    The latest news with regard to Dr James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her Time by Michael du Preez and Jeremy Dronfield is that Warner Bros TV is getting ready to start pitching to networks to try and get a series off the ground. They’ve signed up actress Sarah Paulson (lead in American Horror Story etc.) to play James Barry.

  • Emma Wells's book on world's greatest cathedrals sold to Head of Zeus

    12 Jul 2017

    Head of Zeus have bought world rights in Emma Wells’s Heaven on Earth , an illuminating narrative of the conception and legacies of twenty of the world’s greatest cathedrals interwoven with an exploration of the lives, legends and scandals of the people who built them .

  • Wilde's Women shortlisted for Rubery Book Award

    12 Jul 2017

    Congratulations to Eleanor Fitzsimons whose Wilde’s Women , published by Duckworth and Overlook, has made the short list for the Rubery Book Award, an international prize for indie writers, self published authors and books published by independent presses.

  • Recent Foreign Rights sales

    12 Jul 2017

    Spanish rights in Julian Maclaren-Ross’s Of Love and Hunger

    Macedonian rights in John Worthen’s life of Robert Schumann.

  • US rights sold in book on the Queen's childhood

    06 Jul 2017

    Globe Pequot have bought North American rights in Jane Dismore’s Behind Golden Doors: the life of Princess Elizabeth. The book will be published next year.