andrew lownie literary agency

News

  • Crying for Help is no 13 in second week of publication

    14 Feb 2012

    Congratulations to Casey Watson whose Crying for Help is no 13 in this week’s paperback non-fiction list.

  • Latest issue of Words with JAM

    11 Feb 2012

    The latest edition of Words with JAM with Andrew Lownie’s column can be found at

    http://issuu.com/wordswithjam/docs/wwjfebruary2012online?mode=window&viewMode=doublePage

  • Sam Pivnik Holocaust memoir sold to Hodder

    10 Feb 2012

    Hodder & Stoughton have acquired world rights in the memoirs of Sam Pivnik, one of the few living British Holocaust survivors and it will be a major book for them at the London Book Fair.

    Non-fiction Publisher Rupert Lancaster says ‘No one could read this enthralling book and remain unmoved. Sam Pivnik was 13 when the Nazis invaded Poland and changed his life forever. He survived two ghettoes, Auschwitz, working in Fürstengrube mine, the death march and the sinking of the prison ship Cap Arcona which the RAF believed was carrying fleeing members of the SS. It’s an extraordinary testimony and I believe the book will come to be recognized as an important contribution to our knowledge of that terrible period’.

    Sam Pivnik will write the book with the established author, writer and broadcaster, M. J. Trow and Hodder will publish the book, now provisionally titled Ultimate Survivor in August.

  • British Trivia Atlas to Summersdale

    09 Feb 2012

    Summersdale have bought Paul Jones’s British Trivia Atlas.

  • Actress Emily Lloyd's memoirs sold

    08 Feb 2012

    John Blake has bought the memoirs of Wish You Were Here star Emily Lloyd. The book will discuss her Hollywood career alongside Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis as well as her troubled private life and will be published later this year.

  • Crying for Help no 17 after only two days sales.

    08 Feb 2012

    Casey Watson’s Crying for Help has reached no 17 in the paperback non-fiction list on the basis of two days of sales.

  • Rave reviews for Sean McMeekin's The Russian Origins of the First World War

    06 Feb 2012

    Sean McMeekin’s prize-winning new book has gathered a cluster of good reviews including:

    Casting a contrarian eye on the first major conflict of the twentieth century, Sean McMeekin finds the roots of WWI inside Russia, whose leaders deliberately sought—for their own ends—to expand a brawl that the Germans wanted to keep local. The author tracks the fallout of these antique plots right down to the present geopolitical landscape. Barnes & Noble Review

    An entirely new take on the origins of World War I comes as a surprise. If war guilt is to be assigned, this book argues, it should go not only (or even primarily) to Germany—the long-accepted culprit—but also to Russia… Bold reading between the lines of history Robert Legvold, Foreign Affairs

    Going against a century of received wisdom, Bilkent University professorMcMeekin offers a dramatic new interpretation of WWI… Rifling the archives, analyzing battle plans, and sifting through the machinations of high diplomacy, McMeekin reveals the grand ambitions of czarist Russia, which wanted control of the Black Sea straits to guarantee all-weather access to foreign markets. Maneuvering France and England into a war against Germany presented the best chance to acquire this longed-for prize. No empire had more to gain from the coming conflict, and none pushed harder to ensure its arrival. Once unleashed, however, the conflagration leapt out of control, and imperial Russia herself ranked among its countless victims. Publishers Weekly

    As Sean McMeekin argues in this bold and brilliant revisionist study, Russia was as much to blame as Germany for the outbreak of the war. Using a wide range of archival sources, including long-neglected tsarist documents, he argues that the Russians had ambitions of their own (the dismantling of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, no less) and that they were ready for a war once they had secured a favorable alliance with the British and the French. Orlando Figes, The Sunday Times

    A bold reinterpretation of the Russian Empire’s entry into the First World War.McMeekin argues that Russia believed a European war to be in its interest, that it sought to humiliate Vienna, and that it hoped to conquer Constantinople and the Ottoman Straits. Mustafa Aksakal, author of The Ottoman Road to War in 1914

    This book should forever change the ways we have understood the role of Russia in the First World War. Michael S. Neiberg, author of Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of World War I

    The Russian Origins of the First World War is a polemic in the best sense. Written in a lively and engaging style, it should provoke a much-needed debate on Russia’s role in the Great War. Michael Reynolds, author of Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1908–1918

  • Maths on Trial sold to Basic Books

    03 Feb 2012

    World rights in Coralie Colmez and Leila Schnep’s Maths on Trial , ten criminal cases in each of which, at a crucial point, a mathematical mistake played a significant role., have been bought by Basic.

  • US rights sold in book on Atlantis

    03 Feb 2012

    US rights in Peter Daughtrey’s exciting book which pinpoints the location of the lost city of Atlantis has been sold to Pegasus who publish next spring.

  • New Cathy Glass title to Harper Colllins

    31 Jan 2012

    Harper Collins have bought another fostering memoir from best selling author Cathy Glass. Another Forgotten Child will be published in August.