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The Vintage Podcast, March: Anthony Quinn, Sarah Bakewell and Juliet Nicolson

Eureka

Sex, drugs, cinema and stardom in a glorious technicolor romp through London's Swinging Sixties.

In the various layers of a slick, enjoyable plot, the glossy surface finish never distracting from the messiness beneath, art reflects life and also reflects itself… There is wit and entertainment aplenty… What brings it all delightfully together is Quinn’s flawless, easy-going prose. He never once puts a foot wrong… Clever, certainly, but in just the right measure.

Powered by a satisfactorily pacy plot and oiled by Quinn’s effortless prose, this is a book that slips down as easily as a gin-and-it, but larger questions lurk beneath its polished surface… Eureka… is in glorious Technicolor.

Quinn’s prose is elegant and his eye for the evocative details of social history acute as he chronicles the pleasures and perils inherent in Nat’s pursuit of love and art.

A cast of wonderfully vivid characters ducks and dives its way through London’s beau monde… There is something Evelyn Waugh-like about Eureka, not just it its depictions of the escapades that privilege can afford, but in the ease and seeming effortlessness of Quinn’s prose… Few eras have been as well documented, but Eureka succeeds in bringing it to life in a new and hugely entertaining way.

Anthony Quinn’s growing series of period novels about London life is fast becoming one of contemporary fictions most dependable pleasures… Quinn offers sexual intrigue and a class-crossing mystery plot straddling the glitzy and grimy, all told with a rampantly infectious sense of fun.

Quinn’s immersive approach to his historical fiction means we’re soon woozy with the sounds and sights of that significant year when the Beatles changed music history, homosexuality was decriminalised and cinema was playing with our minds.

Quinn isn’t as big as he should be; with luck, this zesty, punchy, yet also hard-edged black comedy will give him the readership he deserves.

A hugely entertaining read set in London’s Swinging Sixties.

Swinging London and its inhabitants come alive under the expert touch of Anthony Quinn, who always finds the dark heart of the story.

Some of the characters in Anthony Quinn’s novel have appeared in his earlier fiction. They have a richness and depth that come from his long familiarity with them and here they are placed in a tale that brilliantly evokes the febrile world of sixties London.

This pleasingly melancholic romp gallivants towards a dark mystery.

London is lovingly and precisely rendered… Eureka plays with cinema, literature…art and music, with the newly released Sergeant Pepper echoing through the pages. It fully inhabits its chosen era, steering clear of period cliché while celebrating the touchstones of the decade, from kaftans and kohl to acid and arthouse. Quinn crafts fully realized characters and allows them to enjoy themselves thoroughly, in a highly entertaining novel.

Anthony Quinn was born in Liverpool in 1964. From 1998 to 2013 he was the film critic for the Independent. He is the author of six novels: The Rescue Man, which won the 2009 Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award; Half of the Human Race; The Streets, which was shortlisted for the 2013 Walter Scott Prize; Curtain Call, which was chosen for Waterstones and Mail on Sunday Book Clubs; Freya, a Radio 2 Book Club choice, and Eureka.

'Powered by a satisfactorily pacy plot and oiled by Quinn’s effortless prose, this is a book that slips down as easily as a gin-and-it' Guardian 
 
Summer, 1967. As London shimmers in a heat haze and swoons to the sound of Sergeant Pepper, a mystery film – Eureka – is being shot by German wunderkind Reiner Werther Kloss. 
 
The screenwriter, Nat Fane, would do anything for a hit but can’t see straight for all the acid he’s dropping. Fledgling actress Billie Cantrip is hoping for her big break but can’t find a way out of her troubled relationship with an older man. And journalist Freya Wyley wants to know why so much of what Kloss touches turns to ash in his wake.

Freya

From the author of Curtain Call comes a haunting story of female friendship stretching from VE Day to the swinging Sixties

A wonderful tale of female friendship… Elegant and compelling, it’s a riveting study of a changing world and the struggle of two women to find their place in it.

Quinn explores the big issues of the century – feminism, homosexuality, immigration, the individual versus society – but does so with a deceptively light touch. He draws us into the consciousness of his protagonists in an utterly compelling way… Quinn’s characters…will continue to live on long after reaching the final line of this wonderful novel.

There’s plenty more to tantalise us as we move from the austere 1940s to the tumultuous 1960s... [Quinn] Has evidently gorged on recent histories of the period… Quinn’s skill lies in picking a surprising route through familiar terrain, blurring the boundaries of fact and fiction in a style that calls to mind William Boyd. Besides being adept at marshalling period detail, he is a fluent, engaging storyteller, whose suave prose masks an unusually shrewd sense of how relationships work.

There aren’t many novelists with smoother, more elegant prose styles than Anthony Quinn. His sentences practically purr on the page… Immensely enjoyable… Effortlessly entertaining and gracefully thought-provoking.

I can’t remember the last time I devoured a book with such greed. Quinn’s eponymous, sweary heroine trailblazes her way through Oxford, Nuremberg, Soho and all points between.

A highly readable novel… Freya herself is an impressive creation.

Here is a modern woman to be celebrated in all her contradictions and complexity.  It’s fun to be in her company.

Enjoyed last year’s critically-acclaimed Curtain Call? Then you’ll love Anthony Quinn’s forthcoming novel Freya… Quinn is a gifted storyteller with a particular talent for creating distinctive, believable characters and setting individual lives against key historical moments.

A detailed character sketch… Very convincing and highly readable.

The novel fluently pits a determinedly feminised consciousness against a rapidly changing England divided over immigration, gay rights and a burgeoning youth culture… [Freya is] brilliant, modern, wilful and a fascinatingly unreliable witness to her own flawed character… [Quinn’s] skill at depicting social and political turbulence through the prism of personal experience proves just as nimble [as his previous novels].

Quinn’s willingness fully to detail each of his scenes attests to his years as a film critic… It is a big but nuanced work.

Hugely impressive new novel… The novel is satisfyingly complex and sets you thinking, but most of all you read it, at a gallop in my case, because of the sheer quality of Quinn’s prose – the apparent effortlessness with which he pulls off plotting, pacing and period features… Above all there is his ear for dialogue. The whole is a pure pleasure.

Freya is one of those rare, sympathetic novels that improves the more time the reader gives it.

It is the relationship between the reader and Freya that is most powerful. And, in the end, it is more real than the friendship between Freya and Nancy as you find yourself hoping that this sharp, contrary woman succeeds.

A remarkable portrait of post-war British society, the changing role of women and the barriers faced by female writers… Quinn has a lightness of touch and his deep empathy for his subject makes Freya an engrossing and memorable read.

Brilliantly suspenseful novel… His skill lies in his ability to milk all the nostalgic appeal of his milieu… Quinn is too sharp-eyed, and even his most outlandish characters can bewitch and repel in equal measure. He is particularly good on the trancelike self-absorption of youth… Chapters crescendo towards cliffhanger endings, and the narrative hips on to its immensely satisfying end.

A particularly well-drawn study of a strong-willed and abrasive young woman determined to make her way in a man’s world.

Freya Wyley meets Nancy Holdaway amid the wild celebrations of VE Day, the prelude to a devoted and competitive friendship… 
 
Freya, ambitious and outspoken, pursues a career on Fleet Street while Nancy, less self-confident, struggles to get her first novel published. Both friends become entangled with Robert Cosway, a charismatic young man whose own ambition will have a momentous bearing on their lives. 
 
Flitting from war-haunted Oxford to the bright new shallows of the 1960s, Freya plots the unpredictable course of a woman’s life and loves in extraordinary times.

Curtain Call

Murder, ambition and dangerous love in London's Theatreland.

This is an utterly delightful read, made to appear easy, effortless and brilliantly suspenseful, while never becoming predictable or cosy…. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

It had me on the edge of my seat. The only disappointment…is when the curtain finally has to come down

Night after night for a happy week, Quinn filled my dreams with glossy surfaces and hidden vices, silk stockings and champagne and intellectual snobberies and long walks home on hard London pavements. Anyone who paces the West End streets will find them more haunted after reading this book.

Curtain Call is a beautifully written, absorbing work of historical fiction.

Curtain Call goes from gripping you lightly to gripping you tightly. Both in its construction and its characters there is more going on beneath the surface than first appears.

This book is utterly pleasing from the first page to the last.

Sharp period detail and clever pacing all add up to some rather excellent entertainment.

An elegant literary 1930s murder mystery.

One of those rare, enjoyable novels, which…you can read with impunity.

The period dialogue sparkles throughout, the author really bringing to life the smoky clubrooms, balls, and sundry backstage dramas – and the whole things slips down as easily as pre-dinner oysters at The Ivy.

An accomplished book that both enthralls and challenges the reader.

An intricate and rewarding grown-up mystery.

There couldn’t be a more perfect summer read than this elegant, atmospheric, suspenseful novel

Curtain Call is a poignant and gripping story about love and death in a society dancing towards the abyss

On a sultry afternoon in the summer of 1936 a young woman is witness to an attempted murder in a London hotel room. 
 
Nina, a West End actress, faces a dilemma: she shouldn't have been at the hotel in the first place, and certainly not with a married man. But once it becomes apparent that she has seen the face of the man the newspapers have dubbed ‘the Tie-Pin Killer’ she realises that unless she acts quickly, more women will die... 
 
From the glittering murk of Soho’s underworld, to the grease paint and ghost-lights of theatreland, Curtain Call is a poignant and gripping story about love and death in a society dancing towards the abyss.

The Streets

A tale of love and conspiracy in Dickens' London. From the author of Half of the Human Race.(Channel 4 TV Book Club).

Ambitious, gripping and disturbingly well done.

Quinn’s most mature novel yet… His picture of poverty’s shaming, dehumanizing effect is powerful, and the recurrent call for pity heartfelt. Ms Eliot and Mr Dickens would surely approve.

Cements his reputation as an accomplished and challenging novelist… Though it takes place 130 years ago, the questions that The Streets poses about how, as a society and individuals, we tackle deprivation arguably remain just as pertinent.

Quinn blends his history, his political concerns, his ideals, his plot and his characters elegantly, with a light hand and the pace of a thriller.

Displays the unsentimental yet powerful flair for romance that characterized his previous novel, Half of the Human Race. Perhaps most exciting of all, there is a sense that he is still writing within himself.

Magnificent, bringing the Dickensian streets to grubby, teeming life.

Anthony Quinn is a terrific storyteller. He has a thrilling knack for turning familiar periods of history into something surprising and often shocking, and for making the fortunes and misfortunes of his characters matter.

Quinn brings the period in question vividly to life: his research is exemplary, and his subject absorbing.

Anthony Quinn’s novels just get better... Parallels with contemporary London lurk just below the surface. This is not only an exciting thriller and a touching, stop-start love story but a seriously important book.

All the ingredients of an upmarket page-turner.

A story that brings alive an area of Camden that saw massive social change in a short space of time: the explosion of the railways and the shoe-horning of thousands of semi-starved people into slums provide a backdrop.

A devastating tale of subterfuge, poverty and privilege set in the cobbled streets of Victorian London.

Magnificent, bringing the Dickensian streets to grubby, teeming life

Cements his reputation as an accomplished and challenging novelist… Though it takes place 130 years ago, the questions that The Streets poses about how, as a society and individuals, we tackle deprivation arguably remain just as pertinent

Quinn blends his history, his political concerns, his ideals, his plot and his characters elegantly, with a light hand and the pace of a thriller

Quinn’s most mature novel yet… His picture of poverty’s shaming, dehumanizing effect is powerful, and the recurrent call for pity heartfelt. Ms Eliot and Mr Dickens would surely approve

Anthony Quinn is a terrific storyteller. He has a thrilling knack for turning familiar periods of history into something surprising and often shocking, and for making the fortunes and misfortunes of his characters matter

Displays the unsentimental yet powerful flair for romance that characterized his previous novel, Half of the Human Race. Perhaps most exciting of all, there is a sense that he is still writing within himself

Quinn brings the period in question vividly to life: his research is exemplary, and his subject absorbing

All the ingredients of an upmarket page-turner

Ambitious, gripping and disturbingly well done

Beyond its splendid feel for the era’s chat and patter, the novel pits philanthropy and opportunism, ideals and selfishness, bracingly at odds

This novel is refreshingly different and contains a cornucopia of wonderful material and evocative descriptions

The best book I’ve read in ages… You have to read it.

From the author of Half of the Human Race (Channel 4 TV Book Club) comes an intricate and thrilling tale of love and conspiracy in Victorian London. 
 
London, 1882. David Wildeblood, an idealistic young journalist, pounds the streets of Camden reporting on the notorious slums. The misery and squalor surprise him, but more shocking still is the realisation that someone is profiting from this destitution. Wildeblood’s urge to uncover the truth draws him into mortal danger as his investigations reveal a trail of corruption that leads to the very highest levels of society... 
 
‘Powerful and heartfelt. Ms Eliot and Mr Dickens would surely approve’ Sunday Telegraph 
 
‘Quinn blends his history, his political concerns, his ideals, his plot and his characters elegantly, with a light hand and the pace of a thriller’ Daily Telegraph

Half of the Human Race

'Half of the Human Race is the sort of novel one presses on a friend in a spirit of happy envy, confident of the fictional treat that lies ahead of them' - Evening Standard

Excellent and surprising... wonderfully rich... A thoroughly absorbing and moving novel and it is a testament to the author's adaptability and energy that he is equally at home writing about feminist civil rights, cricket, prisons, art and medicine. And love. Especially love. A good all-rounder indeed

What lights up Half of the Human Race is not only the Suffragist movement in all its glory and lunacy, but Quinn's affection for his cast... So often, historical fiction relies on research for its colour and depth of interest, but these are people who feel absorbingly real in their misunderstandings, jokes, troubles and passions...and this makes the novel equally interesting to both sexes...moving... compelling... satisfying

Quinn's impeccable eye for detail, perfect pitch for the nuances of dialogue, and the quiet, understated passion that enlivens his writing combine here to make his considerable achievement seem effortless... The Rescue Man won prizes. Half of the Human Race should follow in its footsteps and establish its author as one of our most impressive novelists

This is only Anthony Quinn's second novel, but you would never guess it from the expert way he marshals his material, telling a human story in a literate, intelligent way... The real guts of the book can be found in the character of Connie. She is sprightly, impulsive, independent-minded... You really care what happens to her....an exhilarating love story

Enthralling... In effortlessly fluent prose, Quinn keeps you riveted until the very end

Few books boast a suffragette heroine and a professional cricket hero but Anthony Quinn's second novel pulls off such a strange pairing because it is old-fashioned in a very good way... Quinn memorably foregrounds the humanity of the characters...and tells their stories wonderfully

A highly readable book about love, loyalty and integrity

A seamless tapestry...The rhythm of rejection and understanding in Connie and Will's relationship is mapped out with care and precision. The permutations between them and sad, lonely and are explored with such exemplary meticulousness that you can't help but be touched

The Suffragette movement and pre-war country cricket might seem an odd couple for a novel but Anthony Quinn marries them perfectly in a nostalgic and compelling tale whose themes of love and friendship on and off the pitch will appeal to lovers of romance and cricket alike.

Trench warfare is vividly described: the agonizing wait for dawn, the despairing bravery of those going 'over the top', the futility, the waste, the sadness. Anthony Quinn tells this part of his tale faultlessly, and without a cliché... poetic.

Not just an exhilarating love story... a bold, impressive novel

With crisp prose and evocative description, Anthony Quinn's second novel embodies early 20th century Britain with aplomb and exhumes a political plight that still has great relevance

Set at the same time as E. M. Forster's novels, this intelligent antidote to Downton Abbey is written with wit, narrative craft and elegant prose.

Quinn’s novel concerns the stalling romance between a suffragette and a cricketer, set amid war and middle-class Edwardian mores.  This chalk-and-cheese couple and their stifling environment are equally well crafted

The characters are subtly drawn and the period touches, particularly the sporting passages, have an authentic ring

Summer of 1911. English society is on the brink of change. The streets of London ring with cheers for a new king's coronation and the cries of increasingly violent suffragette protests. 
 
Connie Callaway, fired up by the possibilities of independence, wants more than the conventional comforts of marriage. Spirited and courageous, she is determined to fight for 'the greatest cause the world has ever known'. 
 
Will Maitland, the rising star of county cricket, is a man of traditional opinions. He is both intrigued and appalled by Connie's outspokenness and her quest for self-fulfilment. 
 
Their lives become inextricably entangled just as the outbreak of war drives them further apart. Buffeted and spun by choice and chance, Connie and Will struggle against the aftershocks of war and the changes it wreaks. This is a deeply affecting story of love against all the odds.

The Rescue Man

In a Liverpool torn apart by the Second World War, the 'Rescue Man' takes to saving the wounded from bombed buildings. But can he stop his own life from unravelling?

Thoughtful, beautifully observed and utterly compelling

A fascinating novel - very moving and beautifully nuanced and observed - it beguiles with a tremendous slow-burning power

Brilliant...an involving meditation on passion, history and architecture

A love letter to Liverpool...ambitiously conceived... He has perfect pitch when it comes to the prose of each period, so much so that when I started the novel, I had the uncanny sense that what I was reading must have been salvaged from the 1940s. Its every line convinces

The story has the resonant simplicity of a poem... The Rescue Man turns the ongoing frenzy of construction and destruction into a quietly powerful metaphor of how we grow up

An excellent debut...a moving and powerfully told story of late coming-of-age and redemptive love

Tells the slowly unfolding story of Baines' journey of self-discovery with great subtlety

Quinn has a cinematic eye for narrative scope... Like all good novels this book tells us something new

An absorbing tribute to the city and its unsung heroes

In a novel of cinematic denouements, Quinn has reclaimed an intriguing chapter of Liverpool's past

He [Anthony] hooks you in with his deep, complex characters; he meticulously sets the scene

Liverpool, 1939. Lonely historian Tom Baines is at work on a study of the city's architectural past but the ominous news from Europe, together with his burgeoning friendship with Richard, a young photographer, and his beautiful wife, Bella, are proving a distraction. 
 
When the bombings begin, Tom joins up as 'rescue man', retrieving the wounded and dying from the ruins of buildings, but the love affair he embarks on soon leads him into a very different kind of danger.

Anthony Quinn

‘A gripping espionage thriller’ Observer 
 
 London, 1941. The city is in blackout and an enemy is hiding in plain sight. 
 
 Jack Hoste has become entangled in a national treachery. His mission: to locate the most dangerous Nazi agent in the country. 
 
 He soon receives a promising lead in Amy Strallen, whose life is a world away from the machinations of Nazi sympathisers. But when Hoste pays a visit to Amy’s office, the dangerous game he is playing becomes even more lethal. 
 
 'A cracking tale of high-stakes espionage... Intensely atmospheric' Mail on Sunday 
 
*Perfect for fans of John Le Carré and Charles Cumming*

Anthony Quinn

Our Friends in Berlin

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