Beyond the Book: Background information when reading The Society of Others

Beyond the Book

This article relates to The Society of Others

William Nicholson is a playwright for film, TV and stage. His TV credits include Shadowlands (the life of C.S. Lewis) and Life Story, both of which won the BAFTA Best Television Drama award in their year.  His first play, an adaptation of Shadowlands for the stage, was Evening Standard Best Play of 1990, and went on to a Tony-award winning run on Broadway. He was nominated for an Oscar for the screenplay of the film version, which was directed by Richard Attenborough and starred Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger.

Since then he has written more films and also The Wind On Fire trilogy for children.  The first book in the series,  The Wind Singer, won the Nestle Smarties Prize Gold Award on publication in 2000, and the BBC Blue Peter Book of the Year Award in 2001 (both prestigious UK awards for children's books).  The other two books are Slaves of the Mastery and Firesong.  The Society of Others is his first adult book. He lives in Sussex, England, with his wife Virginia and their three children.

His next book, The Trial of True Love, was published in the UK in May 2005, and will be released in the USA in March this year.  I'm reading it at the moment and, sadly, am finding it to be not nearly as compelling as The Society of Others. However, others find much to praise, for example The Sunday Express newspaper (UK) describes it as 'wonderfully involving and perceptive...Clever, funny, subtle and hopelessly romantic.'

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This "beyond the book article" relates to The Society of Others. It originally ran in February 2005 and has been updated for the January 2006 paperback edition. Go to magazine.

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