News 24 November 2005

New Acquisition

Mainstream Publishing is delighted to have acquired the rights to KITCHEN CON: The Restaurant Racket by Trevor White.

With unique, amusing and controversial content about a fashionable subject, a tell-and-sell title and a media-savvy author, KITCHEN CON is poised to become a major international success. White, 33, grew up in the restaurant business but in spite of never learning to cook embarked upon a career as a food critic in the great cities of the world. KITCHEN CON is a breathtaking account of life as a restaurant critic that is also a social history of restaurant criticism and a polemic about the restaurant business. He lifts the lid on the culinary cartel - owners, chefs and critics - that cons the customer in restaurants around the world. Passionate about living well but unwilling to accept the absurd conventions of gastronomic dining, White has written a defiantly populist critique of restaurant culture. From the world's first restaurant to the most fashionable kitchens of London, Paris and New York now, KITCHEN CON is a tribute to dinner, but also a scathing attack on gourmet dogma:

'Trevor White writes with witty intelligence and a sharply elegant pen. Once this book has dropped into the frying pan, nothing will ever be the same in the restaurant world'
- AC Grayling, philosopher and Booker Prize judge

White is regional editor for the Zagat Survey though he possibly won't be after the book is published! Bill Campbell bought the book for Mainstream from Robert Kirby at PFD. It will be published in August 2006.

Film / TV:

Marsha Hunt, author of UNDEFEATED, has been interviewed for a BBC 2 tribute to Lord Lichfield who died on 11 November. It will be broadcast either 1 or 2 December. Patrick Lichfield took the distinctive jacket images of Marsha, the first in 1969, the second replicating the original shoot shortly after her masectomy.

Euan Macpherson, author of THE TRIAL OF JACK THE RIPPER, has spent four days filming with a BBC TV crew for the next series of Inside Out to be broadcast between January and March 2006. In addition to the interview there will be a dramatic reconstruction.

Publicity

T2 in The Times ran an extract from THE LAST MAN ACROSS THE ATLANTIC by Paul Heiney on 8 November.

Marsha Hunt has written a piece for FEMAIL in the Daily Mail which runs today.

Events

NOVEMBER

26	Jim Telfer is signing copies of JIM TELFER at Ottakars, George St., Edinburgh, 11.00am
28	Stiliyan Petrov is signing copies of YOU CAN CALL ME STAN at Bookworld, St. Enoch Centre, Glasgow, 4.30-6pm

DECEMBER

3	Iestyn Harris is signing copies of IESTYN HARRIS at Ottakars, Oldham, 12-2pm
3	Jack Turpin is signing copies of BATTLING JACK at WHSmith, Warwick, 2-3pm
7	Colin Bell is signing copies of COLIN BELL at Borders, Stockport, 6.30pm
8	Paul Heiney is signing copies of THE LAST MAN ACROSS THE ATLANTIC at Browsers, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 7pm

Awards

To celebrate this year's Lancashire Day on 27 November, Charles Nevin, author of LANCASHIRE: WHERE WOMEN DIE OF LOVE has compiled a list of The Fifty Greatest Living Lancastrians. Cricketer Freddie Flintoff just beats Paul McCartney and Peter Kay to the top spot.

And Finally...

Fiona Brownlee, Director of Marketing and Rights at Mainstream, is now back after six months maternity leave. She eased herself in gently by working from home after the Frankfurt Book Fair but is now back in the office and enjoying the new systems which have been implemented by Random House in her absence!