Products – Page 3 – William Boyd

Mister Johnson

Winner of The Silver Bear (for Maynard Eziashi) at Berlin International Film Festival 1991

British East Africa, 1923. Harry Rudbeck, an ambitious army officer, wants to build a road to bring the outside world to the backwater town where he is posted. Struggling to find ways around Foreign Service bureaucracy, he relies on his resourceful African clerk, Mr. Johnson. But when Johnson’s can-do attitude runs afoul of British law, Rudbeck must make a painful decision.

Starring Pierce Brosnan, Maynard Eziashi, Edward Woodward & Beatie Edney

Buy the Region 2 DVD (UK & Europe) of Mister Johnson
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Scoop

This 1987 television play, adapted from Evelyn Waugh’s barbed comic novel, centres on a naïve young newspaper columnist, William Boot, who is caught up in an unfortunate case of mistaken identity. Each week, Boot writes a nature column for The Daily Beast entitled ‘Lush Places’, featuring detailed observations from the depths of his country estate. All is fine until the paper’s foreign editor confuses him with a war reporter, and the bewildered Boot is dispatched to the East African republic of Ishmaelia to cover a major political crisis. Once there, he encounters the manipulative power of the world’s press, tangles with big business, and falls hopelessly in love for the first time. Inspired by Evelyn Waugh’s own experience as a war reporter, Scoop aims a satirical spear at an array of Fleet Street archetypes

Starring Denholm Eliot, Donald Pleasence & Michael Maloney.

Buy the Region 2 DVD (UK & Europe) of Scoop
Buy the Region 1 DVD (US & Canada) of Scoop

Stars and Bars

This hilarious fish-out-of-water comedy places a British art expert in America with instructions to purchase a rare Renoir painting in the South but comes across some crazy characters in the process.

Starring Daniel Day Lewis, Joan Cusack & Henry Dean Stanton.

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Dutch Girls

English public school boys go on a school hockey trip to the Netherlands. However they are much more interested in the Dutch girls than they are in hockey. Led by their dour but clueless games teacher Mr Mole (Bill Patterson), they manage to try smoking, drinking, and their luck with the ladies with differing success.

Starring Bill Patterson, Colin Firth, Timothy Spall & James Wilby.

Buy now from Amazon UK

Buy Region 1 DVD (US & Canada) of Dutch Girls

Good and Bad at Games

Set both in 1973 and in London in the early 1980s, the focus is Cox, a bitter outsider bullied for his lack of sporting skill at school and now a left wing investigative journalist. Catching up with his former tormentors, army officer Mount and salesman Niles, Cox is determined to avenge the unhappiness he suffered as a kid. His chance comes, appropriately, at an old boy’s cricket match.

Starring Anton Lesser, Martyn Stanbridge & Rupert Graves

Currently unavailable to buy.

The Argument

It was supposed to be a fun night out at the cinema for Meredith and Pip. But Meredith hated the film and Pip didn’t. Now it’s turned into an argument – the perfect opportunity to share their differences.

With their marriage at breaking point, they turn to their respective friends, Jane and Tony. But maybe Jane likes Pip a little too much and maybe Tony doesn’t like Meredith enough.

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The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth

A philandering art dealer tries to give up casual love affairs – seeking only passionate kisses as a substitute. A man recounts his personal history through the things he has stolen from others throughout his life. A couple chart the journey of their five year relationship backwards, from awkward reunion to lovelorn first encounter. And, at the heart of the book, a 24-year old young woman, Bethany Mellmoth, embarks on a year-long journey of wishful and tentative self-discovery.

The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth depicts the random encounters that bring the past bubbling to the surface; the impulsive decisions that irrevocably shape a life; and the endless hesitations and loss-of-nerve that wickedly complicate it. These funny, surprising and moving stories are a resounding confirmation of Boyd’s powers as one of our most original and compelling storytellers.

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Trio

A producer. A novelist. An actress.

It is summer in 1968, the year of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. While the world is reeling our trio is involved in making a rackety Swingin’ Sixties British movie in sunny Brighton. All are leading secret lives.

As the film is shot, with its usual drastic ups and downs, so does our trio’s private, secret world begin to take over their public one. Pressures build inexorably – someone’s going to crack. Or maybe they all will.

From one of Britain’s bestselling and best loved writers comes an exhilarating, tender novel that asks the vital questions: what makes life worth living? And what do you do if you find it isn’t?

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Buy from Amazon US (US version available 19th January 2021)

The Romantic

A new “whole life” novel from William Boyd, the author of Any Human Heart. Set in the 19th century, the novel follows the roller-coaster fortunes of a man as he tries to negotiate the random stages, adventures and vicissitudes of his life. He is variously a soldier, a lover, a husband, a father, a bankrupt, a friend of famous poets, a writer, a jailbird, a farmer, an African explorer – and many other manifestations – before, finally, he becomes a minor diplomat, a consul based in Trieste (then in Austria-Hungary) where he thinks he will see out the end of his days in well-deserved tranquillity. This will not come to pass.

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