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

ABOUT BEDLAM PRODUCTIONS

Gareth Unwin’s Bedlam Productions has seen recent critical success with the low budget noir-thriller EXAM. Written and Directed by Stuart Hazeldine, the film was officially selected for the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2009. Most recently, Bedlam has joined forces with producers Iain Canning (HUNGER, CONTROL) and Emile Sherman (CANDY) on THE KING’S SPEECH. Originally optioned by Bedlam, this film was directed by Emmy Award® winner Tom Hooper (JOHN ADAMS, THE DAMNED UNITED), written by David Seidler (TUCKER; THE MAN AND HIS DREAM), and stars Academy Award® nominees Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter, and Academy Award® winner Geoffrey Rush.

He is currently in production on THE FLYING MACHINE, a 3-D live action and stop-motion animation blend starring Heather Graham and international pianist Lang Lang, being made to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Chopin’s birth. The film will premier in Bejing, Warsaw and London in February.

ABOUT DAVID SEIDLER, SCREENWRITER

With over 40 years of experience in writing for television and film, David has collaborated with some of the biggest names in the industry. Actors to have appeared in his work range from Elizabeth Taylor and Anthony Quinn to Jeff Bridges and Gary Oldman. In 1988, David co-wrote TUCKER: THE MAN AND HIS DREAM for Francis Ford Coppola, which went on to receive three Academy Award® nominations, and followed that success with two films for Warner Bros. David has consistently demonstrated his skill at adapting true life stories, capturing complex characters and creating entertaining and accessible narratives from dense histories. Most recently he wrote THE KING’S SPEECH, starring Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter and produced by See Saw Films and Bedlam Productions.

ABOUT KIRSTEN ELLIS, AUTHOR

Kirsten Ellis began her writing career aged just 18, writing for the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, and has since worked as a journalist – for outlets including Vogue and Tatler – and travel writer around the globe, based in India, Cyprus and New York. Her 2005 book on Cuba was short-listed as Travel Book of the Year by The Observer/Travelex Award. The critically acclaimed investigative and novelistic STAR OF THE MORNING, about the life of Lady Hester Stanhope, is Kirsten’s first biography.

For more information, follow these links:

Hollywood Spy

Screen Daily

Variety

‘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.

The first, which is titled ‘Lady Hester Stanhope in Malta’, may have been painted from life, apparently shortly after Hester arrived in Malta where she and Michael Bruce stayed over the spring months of 1810 as guests of the island’s Governor, Major-General Sir Hildebrand Oakes. The artist is unknown, the picture, frame and style are typical of the early nineteenth century. Hester would then have been thirty-four. Now privately owned, it was purchased by auction in Malta.

The second, ‘A Girl in Eastern Costume on a Terrace with a Peacock’ by James Northcote RA (1746 – 1831) now hangs in the gallery at Stowe House, Buckingham, and over the years, and has always been regarded as being of Lady Hester, but whether painted from life or from the artist’s imaginative vision of her is not known.

Both portraits share several features which are consistent with the earlier portrait as well as ‘Lady Stanhope as Hebe,’ namely the very dark hair, worn loose and quite simply, the pale skin, rounded cheeks and arms, her very definite gaze and look of poised intensity.

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

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

***

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

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.

Lee Miller has always been an inspirational figure to me, and I was particularly taken with Picasso’s cubist portrait of her, which Penrose says he allegedly greeted with a delighted ‘Mama!’ when he first saw it as an infant, adding that he may have been crying out in fright at the splintered image rather than in recognition!

*

Many who were drawn to the legend of Lady Hester Stanhope in later generations found the fact that she appeared to lead a man’s life in a woman’s body to be a potently sensual combination. As an adolescent growing up for a brief time in Corunna, Picasso had stumbled on the grave of the man who might have married her, Sir John Moore. Devouring one of the early biographies about her, he read that even as blood welled up in his mouth, the brave man had choked out her name. In Paris, Picasso told his friend, the photographer Lee Miller, that he found the idea of Hester Stanhope exciting and erotic, that she had been “the very model of the free woman.” According to Miller, “he had been enthralled about by books of her adventures and life with the Bedouin, but instead of wanting to follow her footsteps in the desert, he dreamed of meeting in England someone like her.” In fact, Picasso often remarked upon what he saw as the striking similarities in the Englishwoman’s character and charisma to that of the iconic Miller, beautifully photogenic and adventurous herself, for the journeys she had made into the Egyptian desert – and especially to remote Siwa – on photographic expeditions, just before the Second World War broke out.

I urge anyone with an interest in the life and work of Lee Miller – fashion model, Surrealist muse, photographer, war correspondent and gourmet cook – to make the trip to West Dean, near Chichester, to see Lee Miller: Coinage of the Mind, from 13 September – 2 November at the Sussex Barn Gallery, West Dean College.

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.