A judge who was sued for libel by her mother over allegations of childhood cruelty and neglect in her bestselling "misery memoir" won her case yesterday.
Constance Briscoe burst into tears at the high court in London as a jury unanimously cleared her and publishers Hodder & Stoughton over the claims in Ugly, which her mother Carmen Briscoe-Mitchell, 74, had alleged were a "piece of fiction".
During the 10-day trial, Briscoe, 51, who was one of the first black women judges in the UK, told the court her mother repeatedly beat her with a stick for bed-wetting and called her a "dirty little whore", a "potato-head" and "miss piss-a-bed".
She described trying to kill herself by drinking diluted bleach after failing to get taken into care, and told the jury she used a university grant to have plastic surgery to remove the "ugliness" her mother had taunted her over.
Briscoe, of Clapham, south London, also said that when she was nine, her mother had deliberately cut her on the inside of her arm with a knife in a row over the preparation of a chicken.
Ugly, published in 2006, has sold more than 400,000 copies in the UK. Briscoe and Hodder & Stoughton had denied libel and said the book was substantially true. Andrew Caldecott QC, for Briscoe, said the events occurred between 1964 and 1975.
Briscoe-Mitchell, from Southwark, south-east London, left court without making any immediate comment about her legal defeat. During the trial she had denied all the allegations of verbal and physical abuse and claimed she and her daughter had enjoyed a loving relationship within a happy family.
Her counsel, William Panton, told the jury Briscoe was "spinning a yarn", claiming his client had struggled to bring up her 11 children and had provided for them equally to the best of her ability.
Outside court, Briscoe told reporters she was "very happy" with the jury's verdict, which came after more than a day of deliberation.
"It is sad that my mother still feels the need to pursue me," she said. "Now I just want to get on with my career. I would like to thank all my readers who have sent me messages of support, including the very many children who provided helpful advice.
"I can quite understand why my family went into collective denial but whilst child abuse may be committed behind closed doors it should never be swept under the carpet."
Hodder & Stoughton said it was pleased with the verdict. "We are very proud to be Constance Briscoe's publisher," a statement said. "Her books Ugly and Beyond Ugly have touched hundreds of thousands of readers, many of them children. Sadly, as we know from the news over the past few weeks, child abuse is all too common and nothing and no one should ever stand in the way of the truth."
Asked during the trial why she wrote the book, Briscoe said: "I didn't believe for a split second that I owed my mother a bond of silence. I don't. I had a story to tell and that story really is that I, someone who from dirt poverty, from absolutely nowhere, with absolutely no assistance whatsoever, who faced adversity at every turn, could come through."
The court heard she had cleaned offices for two hours every day before school until her studies took her to Newcastle University, the criminal bar and, eventually, to become one of the country's few black women judges.
"I wanted to say to whoever read the book ... you can be whatever you want to be," Briscoe said. "You just have to believe in yourself ... you do not have to be posh or privileged to be at the Bar.
"You just need to believe in yourself and I truly, truly believe that my book has done an enormous amount of good."
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsDoctors assure us that wherever you find an elderly, pompous old writer long past his prime you will find a bottle of scotch nearby. If only that were the case. Hilly hid mine after I fell up the stairs when I came home from the Garrick yesterday, and I've had to make do with a bottle of Blue Nun I found in the maid's parlour. Not that I am an alcoholic. Dipsomaniacs are a breed of the lower orders you meet on street corners: people like myself are bon viveurs who happen to like a drink. Or 12.
My primary observation is that drinking makes the daily grind of dealing with people so much easier. You drink a pint of whisky and become the life and soul of the party. You then start insulting people, before sweating heavily and wetting yourself involuntarily. You will usually find that everyone quickly avoids you, thereby relieving you of the need to make conversation. This is why I prefer to do much of my drinking at home. It saves so much time.
There are a great many drinks on the market - spirits, wines and beers - and I've probably drunk them all. Usually in some kind of combination with one another. Mixing cocktails is one of my favourite hobbies. Here's one I invented last week for my great sycophant, Christopher Hitchens.
The Hitch
One bottle of Babycham
One bottle of absinthe
Five shots of Angostura very bitters
Two tablespoons of bile
Two or three glasses of this tincture can give you a lifetime of self-satisfaction.
At some time you will probably be forced to invite people to your home and they may expect a drink. My advice is to offer them the cheapest tipple you can find; my local off-licence does a ghastly Mosel at 70p a bottle. I've never cared for even the best wines, and this should guarantee those poncing off you neither ask for top-ups nor stay long, thereby leaving you more money and time for the pub.
It is well known that only the very dullest of petit-bourgeois minds fail to over-imbibe on a daily basis, so I regard hangovers as a price worth paying for my brilliance. That said, I have found ways of coping with this metaphysical malaise. The first is to fuck someone; preferably somebody else's wife, but if your own is the only one around then she will do. The second is to read a book by that little shit Mart; it will either remind you you're not that bad a writer or give you some sleep.
The one downside to drinking is that it can make you fat. This is remedied by cutting out food entirely and drinking all spirits without mixers. My weight has gone down to 19st with this diet. There isn't much more to say, but as I'm being paid by the column I'd better repeat myself. And now that I'm dead, there's no harm in Bloomsbury repackaging the same material several times in the same collection.
I don't really like wine. Gin is for pansies, though a snifter with water doesn't go amiss. Liqueurs are best left to patent-shoed Wops. Or Americans. Champagne is an overrated girl's drink, though it can be drunk with any food; as such, it's a perfect breakfast drink because a scotch before 10am is very non-U.
I loathe pubs with loud music, but my utmost detestation is reserved for sanctimonious ex-topers. There's nothing worse than a man who doesn't drink. I once tried not drinking for several hours and my wives and mistresses said how dull it was that I was conscious and they were spared removing my soiled trousers from my bloated legs.
Whisky is my favourite tipple, though I recommend never giving it to a Welshman as it's wasted on someone with an IQ of less than 80. Have I mentioned that I'm partial to a Macallan? Gosh is that the time? Hilly's coming to change my IV drip before I fall unconscious again. The publisher can bloody well pad out the rest of the book with a pointless quiz without me.
Q: Who will buy this?
A: No one.
The digested read digested: The old pub bore.
• Hear the digested read podcast at guardian.co.uk/audio
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsThe barrister Constance Briscoe has won the libel case brought against her by her mother, Carmen Briscoe-Mitchell, over her bestselling misery memoir Ugly, in which she accused Briscoe-Mitchell of childhood cruelty and neglect.
Briscoe-Mitchell claimed the allegations were "a piece of fiction", and sued Briscoe and her publishers Hodder & Stoughton for libel.
A 10-day hearing at the high court in London concluded earlier today with a unanimous verdict from the jury after more than a day's deliberation. Speaking outside the court, Briscoe, a part-time judge, said she was "very happy" with the verdict.
"It is sad that my mother still feels the need to pursue me. Now I just want to get on with my career," she said. "I can quite understand why my family went into collective denial, but whilst child abuse may be committed behind closed doors, it should never be swept under the carpet."
The hearing saw Briscoe tell Mr Justice Tugendhat and a jury how her mother beat her with a stick for wetting the bed, called her a "dirty little whore" and drove her to attempt suicide by drinking bleach.
Briscoe's account of her upbringing was published in 2006 and has sold more than 400,000 copies in the UK.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsThe power of Jane Austen never ceases to amaze: the myriad film and TV adaptations, the biopics, the spin-off self-help books, the novels about Austen book clubs and Austen obsessives and even, next spring, the publication of a book about "how Jane Austen conquered the world" (Jane's Fame, by Clare Harman). And now comes the just-too-weird story that deceased fans of Jane Austen have been banned from having their ashes scattered in her garden. In a letter to the Jane Austen Society, Louise West, the collections manager of Jane Austen's House Museum, wrote: "While we understand many admirers of Jane Austen would love to have ashes laid here, it is something we do not allow. It is distressing for visitors to see mounds of human ash, particularly so for our gardener. Also, it is of no benefit to the garden!" (Or is it? Surely a small quantity of fresh ashes judiciously placed beneath a hydrangea bush is just the ticket?)
Anyway, leaving aside the Gardeners' Question Time minutiae, what on earth is going on here? I like an Austen novel as much as the next person – I probably reread my way through the complete works every couple of years – but I am baffled as to why one would want to be laid to rest among the flowerbeds of Chawton. The only explanation is the currently unstoppable power of the Austen cult, fuelled by Colin Firth in a wet blouse, by Andrew Davies's adaptations, and by Hollywood. I'm all for enjoying books, but the cult of Austen has reached ridiculous proportions. In a post-feminist world that should know better, she seems to be adored as the comforting provider of romantic, happy-endings nonsense instead of the sharp and acerbic social satirist she deserves to be seen as.
(Does anyone actually believe her, by the way, when she foretells a happy marriage for Darcey and Elizabeth? I fear a woman as interesting as Elizabeth would be sorely disappointed with this standard-issue British Repressed Public-school Man - hopeless emotionally, and probably hopeless in bed.)
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsAndrew Motion's remarkable 10-year term as poet laureate is drawing to a close. Once again, a national literary institution is being analysed like a sweepstake.
Is Simon Armitage ready to run? Is Wendy Cope's decision to rule herself out of contention final? Is Derek Walcott eligible? Has Carol Ann Duffy reconciled herself to the contest? Can James Fenton be coaxed to the starting gate?
And because this is poetry, every contender has his, or her, claque of supporters. Some want the reclusive but darkly brilliant figure of JH Prynne. Others want Alice Oswald or even UA Fathorpe. Others continue to regret that Tony Harrison shows no interest and wish he would put his name forward.
More generally, a number of well-known writers, including Margaret Drabble, have urged the choice of a woman, which would be a first for this venerable post.
And the ministry responsible for administering this appointment (the Department for Culture, Media and Sport) has let it be known that the public will play a role (yet to be defined) in the consultation process that ultimately results in a nominee being offered to the Queen for her approval.
And there's the nub of the problem that any thoughtful person must have with this extraordinary charade: in 2008/09 we are still in a world of royal patronage; closer, in fact, to the court of Charles II (who made Dryden the first laureate) than in almost any other arena of national life. However enthusiastic you might be about placing poetry at the heart of British cultural consciousness, you must surely concede that this is a very strange way to go about it.
The question, that no one - yet - seems to be asking, is obvious: surely the post of laureate, court poet to the throne, is now redundant? Why should it continue?
Andrew Motion himself seems to have discreetly asked, and answered, this question during his distinguished decade in office by quietly, but radically, redefining his role. The newspapers still treat the laureate with a mixture of philistine contempt and saloon bar merriment. Look closer and you find that figure they're attacking, like Macavity, is simply nowhere near the scene of the crime.
Compared with his predecessors, from Wordsworth and Tennyson to Masefield and Betjeman, Motion has been exceedingly sparing in the supply of national verse. He would probably say - rightly in my view - that in 21st-century British society it is no longer possible, or even desirable, to write relevantly or meaningfully in response to, say, a royal anniversary or a national event. And anyway, can any single writer - poet, playwright or novelist - fully apprehend the British mood and give it lyrical expression?
Instead, rather brilliantly, Motion has made himself into an ambassador of the anapaest, the first minister for poetry in schools, festivals, colleges and universities, and has devoted extraordinary energy to the online Poetry Archive, a truly landmark project of which he is justly proud. Now he's stepping down, as he said he would in 1998, and the arts establishment faces a moment of decision.
New Labour has, generally speaking, flunked the challenge of modernising the most venerable parts of our society. Next May, it could declare a new commitment to contemporary poetry by redefining the post of laureate in such a way as to eliminate the courtly mumbo jumbo. For a start, why not signal a new approach by abolishing the traditional "butt of sack" (sherry) and pay the new laureate a proper salary? And while they're at it, why not declare that the laureate is responsible to speak for poetry, but is emphatically not expected to contribute a line of it - unless the muse takes him? Or her?
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Costa is offering one UK reader the chance to join the judging panel that decides the winner of the prestigious Costa Book of the Year. This is the first time a major book prize has offered this opportunity to a member of the public.
The prize includes attending the final judging meeting in January 2009 with the nine other judging panel members to decide the Costa Book of the Year 2008. The winner will also attend the Costa Book Awards gala dinner and awards presentation.
From Wednesday 1st October 2008, the competition will be promoted throughout all of Costa’s UK stores with entries submitted via www.costabookawards.com.
“The Costa Book Awards have an excellent track record of recognising and celebrating some of the very best current British writing, and books that can be enjoyed by everyone,” said Kevin Hydes, Brand Marketing Manager at Costa. “One of the ways we’ve achieved this is by appointing judges who come from a variety of backgrounds but who all share a passion for reading - the most important prerequisite for our panel members.”
“This competition represents an exciting opportunity for the book-buying public to engage with the Book Awards as never before,” he continues. “If you love books, have a passion for reading and like to express your opinions on both, then we want to hear from you.”
The winner of the competition will join the Costa Book of the Year final judging panel which comprises a representative from each of the five category judging panels, and four people from outside the literary world who love reading, including a Chairman.
The competition is open to all UK adults aged 18 or over. To qualify for entry, entrants must submit a 300-word book review and a 500-word application setting out their suitability for the role.
From the entries received, a shortlist of 12 will be selected. The 12 shortlisted entrants will then be invited to London to attend a book review debate presided over by author Joanna Trollope, Chairman of the 2007 final judging panel, from which one winner will be selected.
The Costa Book Awards 2008 final judging panel will be revealed in December.
“This competition is very exciting because it has the sheer pleasure of reading at its core,” commented Joanna Trollope. “I was thrilled to be asked to be involved and will be looking for entertaining opinions, articulate delivery and most importantly, a real, demonstrable passion for books and reading.”
The closing date for entries is 31st October 2008.
The Costa Book Awards, formerly the Whitbread Book Awards, were established in 1971 to encourage, promote and celebrate the best contemporary British writing and have the single aim of celebrating the most enjoyable books of the last year by writers based in the UK and Ireland.
Since their inception, the awards have recognised a wide range of books and authors across all genres, and the Costa Book Awards is the only book prize to use a category system that includes First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s Book. The two most recent winners of the Costa Book of the Year are Stef Penney for The Tenderness of Wolves (2006) and A. L. Kennedy for Day (2007).
For more information on this year’s Costa Book Awards, go to www.costabookawards.com.
We are excited to announce today that we are one of the first online retailers to integrate the newly launched Google Book Search API into bookrabbit.com.
These features include linking directly with Google customers’ library system of reviews and ratings, as well as harnessing the power of the Google Book Preview - an ambitious project to scan every book in the world. Ultimately Google’s API will allow BookRabbit users to search the entire contents of books rather than just the title and author of works.
Check out any product details page now to see this in action!
We’re excited to announce that Bookrabbit has been awarded the “Web User Silver Award” in WebUser’s Social-Shopping category. They call us the “essential bookmark for bookworms”, and make particular reference to the friendly community - so big thanks to everyone for making the site such a success! Check out this weeks issue on sale today in all good newsagents.
Bookrabbit
Alive & Hopping
There have been many changes at Bookrabbit.com and now that the dust has settled, what are Bookrabbit’s plans ?
After various adjustments to the e-commerce model, including the move to becoming an Amazon affiliate, the Bookrabbit site should become financially sustainable.
Some of the new features that Bookrabbit users can expect to see in the very near future are:
Bookrabbit Calendar
An event calendar that will allow users to add historical events, famous battles, author’s birthdays, book events and the like. You will be able to start discussions about these events and link a book or book category to them.
Bookrabbit Groups
Members will be able to create groups in Bookrabbit. Not just a reading group but any kind of social group. You will be able to create private or public groups and have your own threaded discussions as well as add group events to the calendar system. Independent Booksellers will even be able to link this to their bookseller profile where they can display their stock.
Bookrabbit Map
Integrating with the Google Map system, members will be able to place map pins on the global map that are linked to books, categories, events, profiles etc. This could be a whole new way of looking for relevant books – for example if you go off travelling around South East Asia, you would be able to look at the Bookrabbit map and find books that are related to the region. The possibilities are endless, you could link a famous battle from the Bookrabbit Calendar to the actual site of the battle itself on the map… perhaps you run an archaeological society and you plot on the map sites you have been involved with and create book categories that are about those very sites !
Community Recommends
Now that Bookrabbit has been running for a few months, we have enough data to generate book recommendations based on books that have been reviewed and rated by the community itself ( as opposed to just what books have been sold or books we would like you to buy ).
Top 10 Lists
Bookrabbit will have a dedicated section showing statistics of every nature… from users with most bookshelves to books most talked about…
Community Empowering
Bookrabbit will be appointing a team of community moderators and super moderators. As well as to acknowledge their valuable contributions to the community so far, this is to give them more power to help the Bookrabbit community grow.
Bookrabbit Games
We have several games in design which we intend to release on the bookrabbit site. One of them will be a book quiz engine, those of you familiar with the ‘Neverending Movie Quiz’ on Facebook will immediately know how that will work. The other 3 games are ‘top secret’ at the moment but they will be ‘multi player’ in nature and will involve creating poems and short stories co-operatively.
Delivery Charge & Going Green
Okay, so we have removed free delivery for all books. However we are offering free delivery still on orders over £10. Reasons are fairly obvious, in that despatching books that cost £1.99 means we are selling the books at a loss… too many of these and there would be no more Bookrabbit site… But you can look at this another way – it does mean a reduction in paper wastage: packaging, despatch notes etc. Incidentally, Bookrabbit are ‘green’ conscious, for every server that we use to host the Bookrabbit site, a tree was planted to help towards neutralising the carbon emissions created by the server.
Last but not least…
Obviously we would like the Bookrabbit community to grow and to help us to do this we are going to be running a scheme whereby users getting 5 or more friends to register on Bookrabbit using the Friend Inviter facility will be sent a free book ! ( Terms & Conditions will apply )
The BBC reports that Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who exposed Stalin’s prison system in his novels and spent 20 years in exile, has died near Moscow at the age of 89.
The author of The Gulag Archipelago and One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, who returned to Russia in 1994, died of either a stroke or heart failure.
The Nobel laureate had suffered from high blood pressure in recent years.
‘When one reads any strongly individual piece of writing, one has the impression of seeing a face somewhere behind the page’, wrote George Orwell, in his 1939 essay on Charles Dickens.
From 9th August 2008, you will be able to gather your own impression of Orwell’s face from reading his most strongly individual piece of writing: his diaries. The Orwell Prize is delighted to announce that, to mark the 70th anniversary of the diaries, each diary entry will be published on this blog exactly seventy years after it was written, allowing you to follow Orwell’s recuperation in Morocco, his return to the UK, and his opinions on the descent of Europe into war in real time. The diaries end in 1942, three years into the conflict.
What impression of Orwell will emerge? From his domestic diaries (which start on 9th August), it may be a largely unknown Orwell, whose great curiosity is focused on plants, animals, woodwork, and – above all – how many eggs his chickens have laid. From his political diaries (from 7th September), it may be the Orwell whose political observations and critical thinking have enthralled and inspired generations since his death in 1950. Whether writing about the Spanish Civil War or sloe gin, geraniums or Germany, Orwell’s perceptive eye and rebellion against the ‘gramophone mind’ he so despised are obvious.
Orwell wrote of what he saw in Dickens: ‘He is laughing, with a touch of anger in his laughter, but no triumph, no malignity. It is the face of a man who is always fighting against something, but who fights in the open and is not frightened, the face of a man who is generously angry— in other words, of a nineteenth-century liberal, a free intelligence, a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls.’
What will you see in the Orwell diaries?
The Booker Prize Longlist has been announced.
http://www.bookrabbit.com/catalogue/browsecategory/categoryid/1360/Man-Booker-Fiction-Longlist-2008
The judges for the 2008 Man Booker Prize for Fiction have announced the longlist for this year’s prize.
The longlist of 13 books, often referred to as the ‘Man Booker Dozen’, was chosen from 112 entries; 103 were submitted for the prize and nine were called in by the judges.
The titles are:
Michelle De Kretser The Lost Dog
Gaynor Arnold Girl in a Blue Dress
Sebastian Barry The Secret Scripture
John Berger From A to X
Amitav Ghosh Sea of Poppies
Linda Grant The Clothes on Their Backs
Mohammed Hanif A Case of Exploding Mangoes
Philip Hensher The Northern Clemency
Joseph O’Neill Netherland
Salman Rushdie The Enchantress of Florence
Tom Rob Smith Child 44
Steve Toltz A Fraction of the Whole
Chair of judges, Michael Portillo, commented:
“With a notable degree of consensus, the five Man Booker judges decided on their longlist of 13 books. The judges are pleased with the geographical balance of the longlist with writers from Pakistan, India, Australia, Ireland and UK. We also are happy with the interesting mix of books, five first novels and two novels by former winners. The list covers an extraordinary variety of writing. Still two qualities emerge this year: large scale narrative and the striking use of humour.”
What do you think of it? Take part in our discussions here:
http://www.bookrabbit.com/topics/showposts/topicid/325
About the Booker Prize
The Man Booker Prize for Fiction, also known in short as the Booker Prize, is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of either the Commonwealth of Nations or the Republic of Ireland.
The winner of the Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and success. It is also a mark of distinction for authors to be nominated for the Booker longlist or selected for inclusion in the shortlist. In 1993, the Booker of Bookers Prize was awarded to Salman Rushdie for Midnight’s Children (the 1981 winner), as the best novel to win the award in the first 25 years of its existence. A similar prize known as The Best of the Booker was awarded in 2008 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the prize - this was also won by Midnight’s Children.
The prize was originally known as the Booker-McConnell Prize after the company Booker-McConnell began sponsoring the event in 1968, and became commonly known as the “Booker Prize” or simply “the Booker”. When administration of the prize was transferred to the Booker Prize Foundation in 2002, the title sponsor became the investment company Man Group, which opted to retain “Booker” as part of the official title of the prize. The prize money awarded with the Booker Prize was originally £21,000, and was subsequently raised to £50,000 in 2002 under the sponsorship of the Man Group
Links
We’ve had a couple of bits of feedback that the site sometimes isn’t as fast as it should be, and it can be hard to search for books and use the bookcase application.
So this week Rob and Nick have implemented a new search engine that now operates all the book, author, user and content searches on the site.
So searching should now be blisteringly fast and bookcase tagging should be much easier.
It is also a more intelligent search, so you should now get better search result. Give it a try.
The complete set of seven Harry Potter “deluxe” first editions signed by J. K. Rowling sold at Cameo Fine Art Auctioneers in Midgham, Berkshire for £17,800. The Illustrated hard covers were in near fine condition, signed, but without dedication, went to an anonymous overseas buyer. Apparently the lots were not true first editions, but the first in Bloomsbury’s ‘deluxe’ series, but still, £17,800 is not a bad figure for the seller, and one wonders what the price the books would fetch if they were first editions.
Henry Winkler of Fonz fame from the classic hit TV series Happy Days has written the Hank Zipzer books about a 10-year-old boy with dyslexia to help dyslexic children. Winkler himself a dyslexia sufferer has been in London to launch the National Year of Reading and made an appearance at the Department of Children, Schools and Families’ Teaching Awards.
“Just because we learn differently, that does not mean that we are not incredibly smart human beings. That’s something I need every child to understand.”
His books are amusingingly titled Hank Zipzer: I Got a “D” in Salami and Hank Zipzer: Niagara Falls - or Does It?
…apparently these books ‘rock!’ very much like the Fonz.
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