News & Events

New Period Drama from the Producer of “The Kings Speech”

Toronto – September 11, 2010 – Acclaimed screenwriter David Seidler will pen a new period drama about the life of Lady Hester Stanhope, THE LADY WHO WENT TOO FAR, for Bedlam Productions.

The film will be produced by Gareth Unwin whose THE KING’S SPEECH saw it’s world premiere last night at TIFF 2010 and has already been heavily tipped as a front runner in the Oscar race 2011.. THE LADY WHO WENT TOO FAR is based on the acclaimed biography STAR OF THE MORNING, by journalist and author Kirsten Ellis.

Charting the true, epic and extraordinary story of Lady Hester Stanhope and set during the Napoleonic Wars, THE LADY WHO WENT TOO FAR is the sweeping saga of a complex, beautiful and romantic woman seeking her destiny. Her story is enmeshed in a political thriller layered with intrigue, murder and love, as the fate of Europe, the Middle East, and beyond hangs in the balance.

“She was a female Lawrence of Arabia, a hundred years before Lawrence,” commented screenwriter David Seidler. “She came to exactly the same conclusion that Lawrence did, that we had no place in the Middle East and should keep away politically.”

“Hers is a very powerful story that’s never been told cinematically before,” said biographer Kirsten Ellis. “She’s an undiscovered iconic emblem and the film will lift the lid on what made Hester spend half her life in the Middle East and what she tried to achieve there.”

The film will mark the second collaboration between Seidler and producer Gareth Unwin following THE KING’S SPEECH, which stars Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, and Helena Bonham Carter and received its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this week.

“I am ecstatic to be working with David again; this is just the type of story that draws out his best work,” said Gareth Unwin. “We had a creatively rewarding time bringing the script for THE KING’S SPEECH through its early stages of development and the opportunity to work so quickly again with a writer of David’s stature is a real treat.”

“I am further buoyed by being able to unite a number of the early investors in THE KING’S SPEECH,” added Unwin. “Richard Price (ex Chair of BAFTA) and Mark Foligno and Steve Milne (MD and CEO of Molinare respectively) have been incredibly supportive of me and my aspirations for this project.”

For further information please contact:

Kate Lee – Freud Communications +447771600070

kate@freud.com

For more information, follow these links:

Hollywood Spy

Screen Daily

Variety

Talk at the Sevenoaks Literary Festival on September 28th 2010.

‘Star of the Morning: The Extraordinary Life of Lady Hester Stanhope’

New Zealand-born Kirsten Ellis will tell the astonishing story of Lady Hester Stanhope, who spent her early life at Chevening House acting as a political hostess for her uncle, William Pitt the Younger. Famous for her wit, beauty and energy, she became the greatest female traveller of her day, developing a passion for the Arab world. She forged lasting friendships with pashas, emirs and sheikhs, and ended her life living in the Lebanon. Kirsten’s fine biography is based on meticulous research, and breaks new ground in not depicting Lady Hester as an English eccentric but as a power broker and a woman of political ambition and influence whose role prefigured that of Lawrence of Arabia.
This event is sponsored by Sevenoaks Kaleidoscope Library.

Click here for further details.

3rd Chichester Writing Festival at West Dean College

Sunday 29 March
9.30 – 10.45
Informal panel discussion on Biography.
Chaired by Greg Mosse, with Kirsten Ellis, Will Ellsworth-Jones, Bettany Hughes and Simon Sebag-Montefiore
For more details and booking:
http://www.westdean.org.uk/site/arts_info/events/chichester_writing_festival_2009.htm

Creative Writing

July 17-19
Part of the Short Courses Programme, June-October 2009, West Dean College
Writing biography: life writing.
Suitable for all.
Find out more about autobiography, biography and memoir and discuss the varied approaches by established authors in this non-fiction genre. Practical advice on suitable subjects, research, structure and style are covered. Led by Kirsten Ellis.
For more details and booking:
http://www.westdean.org.uk/site/arts/writing/writing/index.htm

Star of the Morning will be the subject of a panel discussion on Talking of Books, the live books programme broadcast weekly on Dubai Eye 103.8 FM on 10 January, aired from 12 noon to 2pm Dubai time, (UK time 8am to 10am) and online at:

http://www.arnonline.com/dubai-eye/index.html

Talk at Sessions House Lecture Theatre, Maidstone, Kent

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Talk, Q&A and Book Signing at Chawton House Library

Book signing by Kirsten Ellis at the Winter Fine Art & Antiques Fair, Olympia, at The Earl’s Machine
on Saturday 15 November at 12 noon and 4pm.

The Earl’s Machine  presents the remarkable inventions of Lady Hester Stanhope’s father, Charles, 3rd Earl Stanhope (1753-1816).

“In contrast to his aristocratic upbringing, Stanhope was an outspoken libertarian who adopted the sobriquet Citizen Stanhope after the French Revolution. Despite a reputation for eccentricity, the earl was a more-than-amateur gentleman inventor. Besides his calculating machines, he registered patents for steamships, developed fire-proof building materials and designed canals. He also invented a new form of stereotyping and built a printing press which was acquired by Oxford University Press.”

Thanks to Clarion Arts for this summary:

This fascinating exhibition is curated by Martyn Downer, currently a director of Corfield Morris, the independent consultants to collectors of Fine Art and Antiques, and author of Nelson’s Purse and The Queen’s Knight.

The edition of Great Lives about Lady Hester will be broadcast on Tuesday 23 September 2008 at 16.30 on BBC Radio 4 and repeated at 23.00 on Friday 26 September 2008.

If you don’t manage to catch the programme live, you should be able to listen at your leisure via the Radio 4 “Listen Again” facility after the initial broadcast.

Check the BBC Radio 4 wesbite for full details.

Kirsten Ellis will be discussing her book on BBC Radio Scotland (FM only) -
Listen here
Radio Cafe: Provocative discussions, inspiring guests and news about trends, fashion, music, theatre and art.
3 Sep 2008 13:15 -14:00

‘As Kirsten Ellis vividly shows, Hester Stanhope’s story is one of brave (and often foolhardy) triumph over the straitjacket of Regency attitudes and the even more hidebound conventions of Islamic society. Stanhope was the subject of a recent study … but Ellis has unearthed startling new aspects of this remarkable woman’s life, such as Hester’s relationships with no fewer than three Napoleonic spies. Ellis’s enthusiasm for her heroine makes Star Of The Morning a fascinating study with some trenchant points about the position of strong-minded women in male-dominated societies.’

Barry Forshaw, Daily Express, 29 August 2008 – Read full review here

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‘What is it about ‘the east’ that seems to attract powerful Englishwomen? … Each of them, however, was following in the footsteps of Lady Hester Stanhope, first among equals, and the subject of this spirited new biography … Star Of The Morning is a fascinating and atmospheric biography of a truly remarkable woman. Kirsten Ellis has left no stone unturned in this admirable book, doing some mean travelling of her own in the process’

Katie Hickman, The Daily Mail, 23 August 2008 – Read full review here

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‘Kirsten Ellis…is keen to take her subject out of the category of “benign but barking” to which single women travellers were often confined. The ground has been well covered in earlier works, but Ellis has unearthed fresh material, and retells the story with idiosyncratic panache… Ellis is a vivid narrator with an eye for detail: the perfumed dinners attended by naked female slaves; the dusk return of the swallows to the Umayyad mosque.’

Sara Wheeler, The Daily Telegraph, 23 August 2008 – Read full review here

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‘In Ellis’s account…we have a very different Hester Stanhope: a woman who has inherited the mantle of her Prime Minister forebears (William Pitt the Younger was her uncle; Pitt the Elder her grandfather), showing due leadership, courage under fire, and a mission to count in the imperial power games being played in the East.’

The Scotsman, 23 August 2008 – Read full review here

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‘An intense and readable biography…the exploits of headstrong proto-feminists in alien cultures make for good copy and perhaps, a good film. Ellis writes clearly and objectively…and refuses to be swayed by her subject’s emotional excesses… she is excellent on historical detail, particularly the interplay between international and local politics around the Mediterranean.’

Andrew Lycett, Literary Review, August 2008 – Download full review here

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Listen out for Deborah Meaden, of Dragon’s Den celebrity discussing her choice of Lady Hester Stanhope as her Great Life, in discussion with Matthew Parris and ‘expert witness’, Kirsten Ellis, on Great Lives, BBC Radio 4, to be aired in September.

Check the BBC Radio 4 wesbite for details.

Or check back again here for details of the listing to be posted.