IAN WOODWARD

IAN WOODWARD is the author of more than 30 books, including volumes of verse, which have been translated into 14 languages including German, French, Dutch, Spanish, Indonesian, Arabic and Japanese, in numerous formats from hardback, trade paperback and mass-market paperback editions to large-print and Braille editions and audio books.

AUDREY HEPBURN

His books include Audrey Hepburn: Fair Lady of the Screen (a worldwide best-seller and never out of print since first published in 1984; the Japanese edition hit 1st place in the country’s top booksellers lists; the 1993 Virgin paperback is now in its 20th printing; the title was released as an eBook in 2012 and is available worldwide on Amazon); The Werewolf Delusion; Glenda Jackson: A Study in Fire and Ice; The Story of Clowns; Dance (with an introduction by TV’s former Strictly Come Dancing judge and theatre director Arlene Phillips); The Grand Music Themes; Birds in the Garden; Lives of the Great Composers (two volumes); Spotlight on Ballet (foreword by choreographer and former Royal Ballet star and English National Ballet artistic director Wayne Eagling); and the perennial international best-sellers One Hundred Favourite Poems and Poems for Christmas.

GLENDA JACKSON

Ian Woodward’s interests outside writing and filmmaking embrace music and natural history. For a period, before being waylaid by more pressing distractions, he studied composition (harmony and counterpoint) and piano (under opera star and Proms favourite Josephine Nendick) at the world-renowned Watford School of Music and Drama.

SERGEI PROKOFIEV WITH HIS SONS SVIATOSLAV AND OLEG AND HIS WIFE, LINA

Some years later, at a dinner party hosted by the Russian-born composer Alexander Tcherepnin, he was introduced to a painter and sculptor named Oleg Prokofiev.

And he stupidly asked:

“Any relation to the composer of the ballet Romeo and Juliet?”

Oleg replied:

“Yep, he was my dad!”

OLEG AND HIS PORTRAIT OF HIS FATHER COMPOSING THE BALLET ROMEO AND JULIET, FROM WHICH THE “DANCE OF THE KNIGHTS” MUSIC IS USED IN THE TITLE CREDITS OF BBC1’S THE APPRENTICE SERIES

MAX RICHTER STING WITH MICHAEL NYMAN

Music – mainly classical but also jazz and the English contemporary composer Michael Nyman – remains a constant pleasure and necessity in his life. His great loves are Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Mahler and (thanks to my daughter Stefanie’s introduction) Max Richter, the West German-born British composer who is an influential voice in in the meeting of contemporary classical and alternative popular musical styles.

AN ISLAND OF BIRDS

He has also been a passionate naturalist since childhood. Some of his mid-period nature films, which were shot on 16mm film stock, include the award-winning An Island of Birds and The Darwin’s Finch with an Identity Crisis, filmed on and around the Galápagos Islands on either side of the Equator in the Pacific Ocean.

THE DARWIN’S FINCH WITH AN IDENTITY CRISIS

The author of Birds in the Garden and Caring for Cage Birds, he has a particular interest in ornithology. He has undertaken many scientific research projects, often on remote islands around the world, in recognition of which he was elected an honorary Member of the British Ornithologists’ Union (MBOU) and the American Ornithologists’ Union (MAOU) and made a Fellow of the Zoological Society of London (FZS).

See GREY TABS on the left for more information about specific book titles

“As Ian Woodward demonstrates in this well-researched biography, Audrey Hepburn was every bit as charming and delightful off screen as on.”

– Mail on Sunday (UK)

Never out of print since first published in 1984

AUDREY HEPBURN: FAIR LADY OF THE SCREEN – the first major study of the captivating star of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Roman Holiday, The Nun’s Story and My Fair Lady – has been permanently in print in several languages since first published in Britain in 1984 by WH Allen, London.

During this time the best-selling 420-page biography has been permanently in print and been published worldwide in many languages and in every possible format, from hardback, trade paperback and mass-market paperback editions to large-print and Braille editions and audio books.

After a bidding war at literary auctions around the United States, world-exclusive serialization rights were eventually sold to the National Enquirer and second rights to the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, resulting in the serialisation of the book in thousands of newspapers and magazines throughout North America and way beyond.

Audrey Hepburn, which is also available on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com (USA) as an eBook kindle edition (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Audrey-Hepburn-Fair-Screen-ebook/dp/B0082B7ARA) inspired the stage musical Fair Lady of the Screen. Composed by Rudi Dobson, one-time globe-trotting keyboardist with the legendary Bee Gees band, it was subsequently released on CD by President Records.

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Audrey Hepburn, with Elizabeth Taylor, was the highest paid female star in the world. Today she is ranked by the American Film Institute as the third greatest female screen legend in the history of American cinema and regarded by some to be the most naturally beautiful woman of all time; and for three decades, as if to mirror such statistics, the author has been receiving letters on a weekly basis from Audrey Hepburn admirers around the world.

The Japanese, in particular, absolutely dote on Audrey, but the author is not really surprised by all the letters from Japanese readers because for many years Audrey Hepburn was firmly entrenched in the box office Top Ten in Japan. There might be one the reasons, as Audrey herself admitted: “Maybe I look Japanese.”

Whether or not Audrey looked Japanese when filmed and photographed, the Tokyo publishers of Audrey Hepburn certainly filled the book with many photos where she looks very Japanese indeed!

Over the years, Ian Woodward has received many thousands of letters in many languages from Audrey readers, and yet the letter he most treasures came from Laura, a 15-year-old girl in Lincolnshire. Like all the other letters, it was forwarded by either his agent or his London publisher and it is one he still holds dear.

Laura, an Audrey Hepburn devotee, was on her way home from school, sitting at the back of the bus on a seat facing a seat on the other side where an elderly woman was sitting. She tells how she had got to a part of the book, towards the end, where the movie star is at her home in Switzerland, succumbing to appendiceal cancer, and where her two ex-husbands (film star Mel Ferrer and Italian psychiatrist Andrea Dotti) and her then partner Rob, along with her two sons Sean and Luca, have come together to be by her side.

It is mid-January 1993 and, as snowdrops and crocuses are pushing their way through frosty flowerbeds to herald a new year, Audrey begins to sink and the family prepare themselves. In March of that year she would be awarded an honorary Oscar – the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award – for her work as UNICEF’s “ambassador to the world’s children”.

Mother Theresa, mirroring the emotional needs of a universal family, orders a two-hour prayer vigil at her Calcutta mission where nuns take turns to pray in three-hour shifts for the star who, like them, has devoted years to helping the hungry and homeless. As she starts to fade, Audrey looks up at Rob, who is holding her frail hand, and calls him “the best husband ever, but there’s no piece of paper”.

Laura then turns the page of the book she is holding and, in her letter, explains how she felt her own life was also slipping away as she read the author’s words:

20 JANUARY 1993: AUDREY’S HOME ‘LA PAISIBLE’ IN SWITZERLAND ON THE DAY SHE DIED

A whipping wind raged outside when, at seven o’clock in the evening, surrounded by Rob, Mel, Andrea, Sean and Luca, the light of her life finally went out. My Fair Lady had at last found that ‘room somewhere, far away from the cold night air’. The pain which had ravaged her skeletal frame was suddenly no more and those qualities of serenity, beauty, dignity and compassion which had been her hallmark now returned in death to lie peacefully on her face.

Laura writes in her letter: “When I read your words on that page in the book, I broke down. I felt so sad and grief-stricken and I just couldn’t help myself: tears streamed down my face. The old lady opposite came and sat next to me and gave me a tissue to wipe my face.

“’What’s the matter, dear?’ she asked.

“I said ‘Audrey’s just died.’

“She saw the cover of your book and she understood immediately.

“‘We all loved Audrey – God has a most beautiful new angel now,’ she said.

“And I sobbed ‘Yes, and she’ll know just what to do in Heaven.’”

“Thank you, Mr Woodward, for writing your lovely book,” she ended her letter. “It has shown me in such a striking way how Audrey Hepburn was so much more than a beautiful, talented movie star, loved by all – she was a brilliant comet, someone who gave out a great light.”

AUDREY’S BELOVED HOME ‘LA PAISIBLE’, IN BÜRGENSTOCK, BY LAKE LUCERNE , WHERE SHE LIVED FOR 30 YEARS UNTIL IN HER DEATH

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The two Japanese editions each hit 1st place in the country’s top booksellers’ lists and stayed in the Top Ten for over a year

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SOME REVIEWS ON AMAZON

FOR AUDREY HEPBURN: FAIR LADY OF THE SCREEN

Fascinating! I used this book to help towards my graded unit for college.

(2018)

I must say this is the best Audrey Hepburn book to date that I have read. It was absorbing reading and I had a job putting it down. Although I am an Audrey fan I am always careful what I read as some people just sensationalise but I was totally swept along with the written word. What came across was the life of a great person who cared so much about people, a gentle soul and a loving mother. The author is to be commended for the way he put her life story across. A very good read about a great human being.”

“What a wonderful book on a wonderful screen actress and person. The author has done such great work to bring out Audrey’s personality through the pages and should be commended for it. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about her life on an off the camera especially her work with UNICEF in the final chapters. The book is carefully choreographed into five parts and researched with great thought and integrity. It is the only book I have ever read about Audrey, but I feel if I read another then Ian Woodward’s book will always be judged against it. A fascinating read which I would recommend to everyone.”

(2017)

Bought as a gift and ‘loved’ by the recipient.

(2017)

Audrey Hepburn is timeless in her appeal to millions of movie fans and fashion followers. Ian Woodward captures Audrey’s legendary public status whilst giving an insight into the trials and tribulations of her fluctuating personal life.

Woodward divides his biography into five chapters, starting with “War and Peace” – a scary and brutal account of Audrey’s childhood in Nazi-occupied Holland. The author reveals the awful reality that Audrey and many others faced during this time, but shows that she found dance and performance as an escape mechanism.

Next, “English Rhapsody” shows Audrey developing as a ballet dancer in the United Kingdom. At this stage, the fantasy world of Hollywood movies was not even in her sights.

In “Hollywood Romance”, Woodward details Audrey’s breakthrough into A-List movies with the classic fairy-tale “Roman Holiday” and reveals her rumoured interactions with some of her leading men, and her ill-fated marriage to Mel Ferrer. Woodward highlights that Audrey was more surprised than anyone when she broke through as an actress as she had never had an acting lesson! The author charts the development in Audrey’s career including her performances in “Sabrina”, “Funny Face” and “The Nun’s Story”, and describes how Audrey started working with Hubert de Givenchy who became her life-long friend and fashion guru.

“Motherhood” shows how Audrey changed her lifestyle when she became a mother, but continued to make movies, including “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “My Fair Lady”. Woodward sympathetically shows how Audrey struggled to find true happiness in her personal relationships, despite motherhood and a phenomenally successful movie career.

Finally, “The Eternal Phoenix” illustrates Audrey returning to Rome and marrying Andrea Dotti. Woodward paints a relatively negative picture of both of Audrey’s husbands, and if half of what the author states is true, Audrey seems to have been badly let down by the men she trusted. Woodward reveals Audrey found possibly her best relationship towards the end of her life with Robert Wolders – probably the only time she was truly happy in a relationship. Also, her charitable contribution to UNICEF is documented.

Woodward’s biography paints a wonderful picture of Audrey – she comes alive with the energy and joie de vivre that makes her image so enduring. Throughout the book, the author successfully shows that there were two Audrey’s – a glamorous screen goddess and fashion icon, but also a quiet and relatively normal wife and mother. Overall, it is a fair portrayal of the “Fair Lady of the Screen”.

(2017)

My friend loves this book. Another gift for her. With an iconic image of a beautiful Audrey Hepburn. Not just a talented actress, but ballerina and resistance fighter!

(2016)

Good book with many photos which I had not seen before.

(2015)

This is one of the best biographies I have read about Audrey Hepburn.

(2012)

REVIEWS

Goodreads website

An interesting read for any Audrey Hepburn fan. Good to know about her humble beginnings. Heart-affirming to know that in spite of the trials and tribulations in her life she turned out to be such a compassionate and well-loved celebrity. Also interesting to see what goes on behind the glamorous facade of Hollywood – especially in the 1950s and 1960s.

FOOTNOTE

Audrey Hepburn’s personal shooting script for Breakfast at Tiffany’s, below, which included her annotations, was sold for £630,000 at the London auction house Christie’s in 2017.

PUBLISHED BY LADYBIRD BOOKS UK AND BY PENGUIN USA

Below:

Extract from feature on the Three Wishes Books website

THREE WISHES BOOKS

A blog about books and publishing

LADYBIRD BOOK: BALLET

There is something quite lovely about finding a favourite childhood book again: turning the pages and turning back time just for a moment.

The other day I found a box of Ladybird books in a charity shop. Most of them were modernish, but I found four older ones – and all for 50p each.

One of them I definitely had when I was a child. I was ballet mad for a while until I realised that there was no way I’d ever be good enough!

The book I am talking about is Ballet is by Ian Woodward with illustrations by Martin Aitchison.

The book begins with a brief history of ballet and moves on to ballet language, mime, costumes, makeup, what to expect as a ballet student, etc.

The two pages below are about dancing sur les pointes and explain how to look after and prepare ballet shoes.

The endpapers below show some ballet steps and movements.

There are fourteen wonderful pages devoted to ballet synopses at the end.

I almost cried when I found this book after all these years. In fact, my heart skipped a beat!

Thanks to Ian Woodward I have been able to live an important part of my childhood all over again.

THESIS

Ian Woodward books cited by Mel Ruben in her

PhD Thesis at the University of Warwick in 1998

From the website blog

Ladybird Books Tuesday

BALLET by Ian Woodward

Blog dated Tuesday, 29 January 2013

This week’s Ladybird book concerns a title I found a couple of years ago, in wonderful condition, in a charity shop near my mother in law’s home: Ladybird Book’ Ballet by Ian Woodward with illustrations by Martin Aitchison, from the Ladybird History of Arts series.

Along with writing my Ladybird Tuesday post the other thing that we do every Tuesday afternoon is take my little fox Una to her ballet class. When I was a little girl I thought that I would love to do ballet. I never did.

So, maybe I am vicariously living through my daughter – yes, I know you’re not supposed to do that. But she loves ballet and for all the reasons that attracted me: You get to flutter around in pretty clothes. You get to wear your hair in a bun. The music is great.

As an adult, I’ve worked for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the British Council and the BBC, while two of my closest friends (who did do ballet as children) have been employed in the world of dance. As a result I have been fortunate enough to see many amazing dance performances, from the Bolshoi to Alvin Ailey and Dance Theatre of Harlem, from the Cholmondeleys to Matthew Bourne.

I’ve seen lots of modern dance but relatively little classical ballet. So with Una’s enthusiasm for ballet only growing, and her teaching following the classical model, I bought Ian Woodward’s Ballet for her to read – but also for me to see what it was all about. And it has been very useful.

The book informs the reader of the history and development, the language of ballet and classical mime, and the styles of dancing, training, clothes and performance. The last few pages describe and illustrate a few well known classical ballets.

The inside cover has illustrations of the five positions of feet and arms in ballet.

There is also a great illustration of the basic stances and gestures of mime used in most classical ballets.

Until we went to see a performance of the English National Ballet’s My First Sleeping Beauty, produced especially for children – where they went through the gestures used in their performance explaining to children (and their parents) their meaning – this was the best explanation I’d ever had.

I still took my daughter to see Matthew Bourne’s The Nutcracker first. Una was insistent that the Nutcracker himself was “wrong”. He was dressed in a 1920’s Panama boater and high-waisted white trousers as I recall, not his usual military attire per the Eric Puybaret illustrations in our traditional version of The Nutcracker book. But other than this she loved it, and every dance work we’ve seen since is judged against this, her first ballet.

Anyway, back to Ian Woodward’s Ballet.

This is a book which will delight all who have some interest in ballet. It will also fascinate the general reader and inspire many to see a ballet in a theatre and experience its excitement and enchantment. How glad I am that I found the book in that charity shop!

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THESIS

Ian Woodward books cited by Mel Ruben in her PhD Thesis for the University of Warwick in 1998

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Zenka and Ian Woodward books SPINE TINGLERS and

COMIC AND CURIOUS VERSE are possibly the

best children’s books ever.

– Books blogger

Way back in 1983, the year before I was born, Ladybird published the legendary Zenka and Ian Woodward books SPINE TINGLERS and COMIC AND CURIOUS VERSE – possibly the best children’s books EVER.

The most memorable story in Spine Tinglers is ‘The Hairy Toe’, where…well, I’ll let you read it for yourself:

I wish I had taken more photos of the innards of this gem, but I can always do that again. Spine Tinglers is just so so so good! It’s had such a lasting impression on me.

Also, in the incomparable Comic and Curious Verse, there is a weird, clever poem called ‘My Sister Jane’.

Jane is “a bird a bird a bird”, it tells us, adding “it never would do to let folks know, my sister’s nothing but a great big crow”. It’s brilliant.

Foreword by

TV’s Strictly Come Dancing judge

ARLENE PHILLIPS

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One of the best showbusiness biographies in recent years.

The Stage

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Capitulo 12 ANALISIS DE OBRAS

(Chapter 12 ANALYSIS OF WORKS)

Below: Page from

Capitulo 14 MÚSICA EN LA EDAD MEDIA Y RENACIMIENTO

(Chapter 14 MUSIC IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND RENAISSANCE)

Below: Page from

Capitulo 16 LA MÚSICA EN EL PERÍODO ROMÁNTICO

(Chapter 16 MUSIC IN THE ROMANTIC PERIOD)

ARABIC REVIEW

**on the Goodreads website**

مقدمة ظريفة مكتوبة أصلا للصغار لتعريفهم بسيرة حياة كبار الموسيقيين. أكثر ما أعجبني في الكتاب الرسوم البارعة التي تعطي فكرة مفصلة عن الأماكن والملابس

والجو التاريخي الذي عاش فيه كل من باخ وموزار وبيتهوفن. تركيز الكتاب كما في عنوانه على سيرة الحياة وليس على الأعمال الموسيقية

التي يصعب الحديث عنها بالكلام. وإن كان هناك في نهاية الكتاب ذكر لبعض أهم أعمالهم الموسيقية للمهتمين بالموسيقى السيمفونية والكلاسيكية

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MORE THAN A MILLION COPIES HAVE BEEN SOLD WORLDWIDE TO DATE.

Below:

Christmas card produced by the publishers’ marketing and publicity departments in the United States and sent out with the TV, radio and print-media review copies of the hardback edition of

POEMS FOR CHRISTMAS.

It shows Zenka and Ian Woodward and their children Philip and Stefanie celebrating Christmas at their 19^th-century German house in the mountains of North Bohemia.

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The blogger writes:

I was given Poems for Christmas as a teenager and I still dip into it in the run-up to Christmas. It includes some of my all-time favourite poems and it is approachable for those who don’t usually read poetry!

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SPINE TINGLERS to me is the Holy Grail of books.

– BOOKS BLOGGER

The Zenka and Ian Woodward books

SPINE TINGLERS and

COMIC AND CURIOUS VERSE

are possibly the best children’s books ever.

– BOOKS BLOGGER

SPINE TINGLERS is just so so so good!

It’s had such a lasting impression on me.

– BOOKS BLOGGER

I’ve finally found THE Book of books!

It’s by Zenka and Ian Woodward.

– BOOKS BLOGGER

**This was the book that started it all!**

Recently I was in Ipswich, staying with relatives. Late one afternoon, whilst my partner went for a nap, I strapped our baby daughter into her buggy and went for a wander around the neighbourhood. At the time I was working on a ghost story – one set in a Tudor reenactment society, something I’ve been writing on and off for well over year but was now at a loss as to how it should proceed – and thought a stroll might help me puzzle it out. And so I set out, walking and thinking, walking and thinking. I tried to put my mind to the constituent elements of this story, much the same as a good deal of what I write: history, imagination, dreams, fears.

After about fifteen minutes of walking down one long, deserted street and then another, and another, each seeming to lead me somewhere without ever quite arriving there, I conceded that I had lost my bearings, vanished from the small patch of the area I knew.

The night had begun to gather around me – with a suddenness, as it does in Suffolk in winter – streetlights flickered on unseen, the cold began to dig in, wind blew, my daughter whimpered sleepily. I was thinking about fear but, easily distracted, had still not given any thought to the story I was trying to write. Fear is almost always experienced through fantasy, it is an instinct powered by imagination, one which finds its true potency after the sun has set.

A familiar phrase – Why does he gallop and gallop about? – came into my mind and I found myself darkly enjoying my role as a man in the shadows. For some of us, those who are fortunate enough to have been born into such places, with so little to materially endanger us, the unsafe – darkness, mystery and disruption – develops something of an allure. The night, and all it represents, becomes something to be enjoyed and engaged with.

Why does he gallop and gallop about?

Towards the back of my mind my thoughts had fixed on these words. They come from a book I’d owned as a boy, a great anthology of poems for children titled Spine Tinglers, published by Ladybird and edited by Zenka & Ian Woodward.

The book came with a warning:

Although, as a boy, I amassed a sizeable library of books on monsters, ghosts, vampires and the like (always reliable gifts for relatives – still are), Spine Tinglers was a steadfast favourite, perhaps because, although it contained works by dully respectable names like Shakespeare, Rudyard Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson (below) they were legitimized for my Ghostbusters sensibilities by the accompaniment of ghoulish cartoon illustrations.

One poem in particular which stuck with me was “Windy Nights”, a simple enough piece – brief and straightforward – but one which also, I found, has the capacity to lodge itself in the mind, seeming to carry with it an echo something more substantive and more mysterious than is initially visible.

Whenever the moon and stars are set,
Whenever the wind is high,
All night long in the dark and wet,
A man goes riding by.
Late in the night when the fires are out,
Why does he gallop and gallop about?

Whenever the trees are crying aloud,
And ships are tossed at sea,
By, on the highway, low and loud,
By at the gallop goes he.
By at the gallop he goes, and then
By he comes back at the gallop again.

Later, when I went to university, I would learn that, a little like myself, Stevenson had been a nervous child, one who had been afflicted by what would today be termed sleep paralysis, the phenomenon whereby the safety of sleep becomes transmuted into a heightened terror. Visions of a particular shade of brown, powerless when thought about in the daylight, would strike horror at night; he received visits from a “night-hag” who would stoop over his bed, at times even seizing up his paralysed body by the throat; invariably he would awake in a cold sweat, breathless and contorted. When awake, he also, as ‘Windy Nights’ suggests, had a powerful loathing for storms.

As an adult Stevenson eventually succeeded in freeing himself of the terrors of the night, and yet his extraordinary sleep-life – always fascinating and always to be taken with a pinch of salt (or, as some of his biographers would have it, a pinch of cocaine) – remained crucial to him as he increasingly drew inspiration from the vivid and detailed dreams he would experience.

Robert Louis Stevenson

A small storm was now congregating over my scrap of suburb: the wind had picked up, rain was beginning to fall, my daughter began to grumble. I pressed on quickly, passing the endless implacable houses, all their curtains now drawn, until I found I was once again alongside the stream, babbling forcefully in the darkness.

I followed it upstream, grateful to finally be free from the meandering ouroboros of silent streets, trying again to think of my story – I could make one of my female protagonists a man, could bring a scene from later in the story to the opening, could remove a section of back-story – but I found I was unable to fully shake my thoughts free from ‘Windy Nights’.

Why does he gallop and gallop about?

Why indeed? On the surface the poem is a simple, descriptive exercise based around Stevenson’s childhood dread.

But, as I took the final familiar path to the house where I was staying, it occurred to me that the poem could also easily be taken for being about inspiration, darkly assailing, receding and then once again galloping back to assail. In fact, for many, possibly for Stevenson, the two – fear and the imagination – are hardly divisible.

Indeed, it seemed to me that only when we are safe – I unlocked the front door and pushed the buggy into the hallway as quietly as I could, the occupants all no doubt still soundly asleep in their beds – are we free to dream up our threats.

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The most memorable story in Spine Tinglers is ‘The Hairy Toe’, where…well, I’ll let you read it for yourself:

I wish I had taken more photos of the innards of this gem, but I can always do that again. Spine Tinglers is just so so so good! It’s had such a lasting impression on me.

Also, in the incomparable Comic and Curious Verse, there is a weird, clever poem called ‘My Sister Jane’.

Jane is “a bird a bird a bird”, it tells us, adding “it never would do to let folks know, my sister’s nothing but a great big crow”. It’s brilliant.

WORLDWIDE MASS-MARKET PAPERBACK EDITION

SCENES ABOVE FROM WAYNE EAGLING’S WORLDWIDE SMASH-HIT PRODUCTION OF THE NUTCRACKER

WAYNE EAGLING, FORMER PRINCIPAL DANCER OF THE ROYAL BALLET AT COVENT GARDEN, WAS ONCE THE HEART-THROB OF THE BALLET WORLD. HE BECAME ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF THE ENGLISH NATIONAL BALLET AND THE DUTCH NATIONAL BALLET.

WAYNE EAGLING AS ROMEO IN ROMEO AND JULIET WITH THE ROYAL BALLET AT COVENT GARDEN

WAYNE EAGLING’S INTERNATIONALLY ACCLAIMED PRODUCTION OF THE NUTCRACKER

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IAN WOODWARD’s international best-seller, The Werewolf Delusion, formed the basis of the film An American Werewolf in London. At the start of filming, Hollywood director John Landis (Twilight Zone, Spies Like Us, Michael Jackson Thriller video) presented every cast and crew member – and the marketing team – with a copy of Ian Woodward’s book.

“I remember thinking ‘Wow! what a great cover’,” she told the author when they last met. “It really helped all of us to get to grip with the background of the rather complex subject of lycanthropy.”

Jenny Agutter, having spent the past few years rocking a wimple of a Sunday evening as Sister Julienne (above left) in BBC1’s hit Call the Midwife series, seems reconciled to the fact that she will probably always be identified as Nurse Alex Price (below) in An American Werewolf in London.

For Jenny Agutter, the film is as much a defining moment in her life as either Walkabout or The Railway Children, both considered “signature” roles in a long film career. She was a reluctant horror queen, living in Los Angeles, when she was offered the role of as über-sexy and yet wonderfully down-to-earth nurse Alex Price, a 20-something nurse working in London tasked with caring for David Kessler.

The young American backpacker has been hospitalised following a horrific attack on the bleak Yorkshire moors. David is mauled and left for dead. His friend Jack is killed.

DAVID NAUGHTON (ABOVE RIGHT) AS WEREWOLF DAVID KESSLER

AND GRIFFIN DUNNE AS JACK GOODMAN ON THE YORKSHIRE MOORS

“Yes, where I am in Camberwell, people want to talk about it,” she said. “In other places people want to talk about The Railway Children. A lot of people approach me about Call the Midwife because it’s so personal to them.

“A lot of middle-aged men tell me how frightened they were of American Werewolf as a child. I look at them and say, ‘But you’re not meant to see it as a child!’”