May 18th, 2012

Things to know about The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction.

 What is it?

Named in honour of the archetypal British Comic writer P.G. Wodehouse, The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize awards the best comic novel published in the last twelve months in the UK.

The Prize:

The winner receives a set of the Wodehouse Collection from the Everyman Library and a Jeroboam of Bollinger Champagne. In addition, a local pig is named after the winning novel. This pig represents P. G. Wodehouse’s iconic heroine, the “Empress of Blandings”, an enormous black sow, which is the obsession of Lord Emsorth in the Blandings Castle stories.

Above: Marina Lewycka, 2005 Prize Winner for A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, with a Gloucester Old Spot Pig and a little of piglets.

A few examples:

Last year, Gary Shetyngart was the first American writer to win this quintessentially English Prize with Super Sad True Love Story.

The 2007 Prize winner Paul Torday was a 60-year-old first time novelist with Salmon fishing in the Yemen. His successful book was recently released in UK cinemas as a film, directed by Lasse Hallström and starring Emily Blunt, Ewan McGregor and Kristin Scott Thomas.

What will the pig be named in 2012?

Visit The Hay Festival, one of the world’s biggest book festivals, from 31^st May to 10^th June, where TheBollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize Winner 2012 will be awarded.

May 10th, 2012

We are delighted to reveal the shortlist for 2012′s Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction, which sees much-loved novelists Sue Townsend and Terry Pratchett competing, amongst a strong group of finalists, for this year’s top spot.

It is the fourth time Pratchett has been nominated for the prize, having previously been shortlisted for his novels Thief of Times (2002), Going Postal (2005) and Thud (2006). John O’Farrell and Julian Gough both appear on the list for a second time, whilst Sue Townsend and John Lanchester are newcomers.

Now in its thirteenth year this, the leading comic fiction prize, continues its track record of finding true comic gems – previous winners include Paul Torday’s Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Ian McEwan’s Solar and Marina Lewycka’s A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian – as well as discovering iconoclastic masterpieces such as DBC Pierre’s Vernon God Little, which went on to win the Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

Please follow this blog for further information about the shortlisted novels, their authors and critics’ reactions.

Above: Judges Jim Naughtie, Peter Florence and David Campbell

April 20th, 2012

Champagne Bollinger is proud to be the official sponsor of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction 2012. Named in honour of the inimitable P.G. Wodehouse, it is the only literary award that recognises comic literature (not to mention the only award where the winner receives both a pig named after their work and a Jeroboam of Champagne).

Photo: Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction Winner 2011 – Gary Shteyngart. Photo Credit: Jeff Morgan

Award alumni include Ian McEwen (Solar, 2010), Paul Torday (Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, 1997) and last year’s winner Gary Shteyngart, for his novel Super Sad True Love Story.

The 2012 winner will be announced at the Hay Festival, an annual literary gathering in the idyllic Brecon Beacons National Park and the perfect setting to celebrate comic fiction at its best.

We will be announcing the shortlist in the next week, and will be reviewing each of the nominated works between now and the Hay Festival, which runs from 31^st May to 10^th June.

March 21st, 2012

Champagne Bollinger is proud to once again be associated with The Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize.

2012 is the seventh year of the competition, which was designed by The Lynn foundation, a charity devoted to help children, the disabled, and the arts, and The Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers, which fosters excellence in the Fine and Decorative Arts and Crafts since 1283.

The Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize is a representational painting competition for UK artists, which attracted nearly 800 entries in the last 2010 edition.

Not only is there a first prize of £15,000 and Bollinger Champagne, but it represents a wonderful opportunity for artists’ works to be exhibited and sold.

For the first time in 2012, the exhibition of about 100 works will take place in the outstanding Mall Galleries, from Wednesday 28th March to Thursday 5th April.

For further details, visit The Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize 2012 website.

About the 2012 Exhibition:
At The Mall Galleries, from Wednesday 28th March to Thursday 5th April 2012.
Open from Monday to Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm, free admission and a series of free exhibition events, demonstrations and workshops will take place.

The Mall Galleries are 2 minutes walk from Charing Cross tube station.

August 17th, 2011

Champagne was a silent film, directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1928. The film follows spolit heiress Betty (played by Betty Balfour) who leads a life of luxury on the profits from her father’s champagne business. To bring her back down to earth her father tells her that all the money has been lost so she goes to seek her fortune. So ensues a story of ocean-liners, mysterious strangers and jewel thieves. The silent film sees Betty’s Father (Gordon Harker) and boyfriend (Jean Bradin) follow her as she embarks on a journey of self-discovery and new-found independence, and her relationship with young Jean is tested almost to breaking point.

When asked about the film Hitchcock said: “What happened, I think, is that someone said, “Let’s do a picture with the title Champagne,” and I thought of beginning it in a certain way, which was rather old-fashioned and a little like that very old picture of Griffith’s, Way Down East. The story of a young girl going to the big city. My idea was to show a girl, working in Reims, whose job is to nail down the crates of champagne. And always, the champagne is put on the train. She never drinks any – just looks at it.

“But eventually she would go to the city herself, and she would follow the route of the champagne – the night clubs, the parties. And naturally she would get to drink some. In the end, thoroughly disillusioned, she would return to her old job at Reims, by then hating champagne. I dropped the whole idea – probably because of the moralizing aspect.”

The film was not received well – critics were scathing and consequently Champagne came to be known as the worst work of Hitchcock’s career.

Photo credit: twm1340

July 21st, 2011

“Why do I drink Champagne for breakfast? Doesn’t everyone?” – Noel Coward

Noel Coward (born December 16, 1899 Teddington, Middlesex – died March 26, 1973, St. Mary, Jamaica) was an English playwright, actor, and composer known for his stage and screenplays and often controversial eccentricities and prolific homosexuality.

Coward appeared professionally as an actor from the age of 12. As he matured and between acting engagements he wrote such light comedies as I’ll Leave It to You (1920) and The Young Idea (1923), but his reputation as a playwright was not established until the play The Vortex (1924); a controversially searing look at the debauchery of the upper classes which was highly successful in London. In 1925 the first of his comedies, Hay Fever, opened in London. Coward ended the decade with what is arguably his most popular musical play, Bitter Sweet (1929).

Another of his classic comedies, Private Lives (1930), is often revived. It shares with Design for Living (1933) a worldly milieu and characters unable to live with or without one another. Other successes included Tonight at Eight-Thirty (1936), a group of one-act plays performed by Coward and Gertrude Lawrence, with whom he often played. He rewrote one of the short plays, Still Life, as the film Brief Encounter (1946). Present Laughter (1939) and Blithe Spirit (1941; filmed 1945; musical version, High Spirits, 1964) are usually listed among his better comedies.

Coward performed almost every function in the theatre including producing, directing, dancing and signing and acted in, wrote, and also went on to direct motion pictures.

Coward’s Collected Short Stories appeared in 1962, followed by a further selection, Bon Voyage, in 1967. Pomp and Circumstance (1960) is a light novel, and Not Yet the Dodo (1967) is a collection of verse. His autobiography through 1931 appeared as Present Indicative (1937) and was extended through his wartime years in Future Indefinite (1954); a third volume, Past Conditional, was incomplete at his death.

Coward spent his last years in the Caribbean and Switzerland. He was knighted in 1970.

One of his previously unpublished plays, The Better Half, last performed in 1922 and previously thought to have been lost, was rediscovered in 2007, the same year a collection of his letters was published as The Letters of Noël Coward.

Photo credit: Classic Film Scans