Savoy News: Oct 2002-March 2003

M A R C H 2 0 0 3

Fenella TS Eliot

Fenella Fielding returns—Fenella and the Perils of Eliot

On the week beginning March 3rd 2003 Savoy returned with Ms Fielding (see recent News) to the Strongroom Studios, Shoreditch, to record a recitation of The Four Quartets by T S Eliot.

Fenella gave her usual consumate reading/performance and, dare we say, it’s an actual improvement on Eliot’s own reading!

She has now agreed to an ongoing series of readings. The schedule is to run every six months until one or other of the parties die—a blood pact made on the Surrealists' oath.

Pencilled-in for our next date is a reading of JG Ballard's novel Crash. As this will be part of a multi-media package (the proceedings could be filmed, there may be a book tie-in), we'll have more details about this later.

F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 3

Shhh, He is coming . . .

NVH

HOOGSTRATEN AND THE MAUSOLEUM OF BEELZEBUB

Savoy have been following the exploits of that arch anti-Establishment fabulist Nicholas van Hoogstraten for the last dozen years or so. As he is currently a habitant of Bellmarsh Prison, we have decided that the hour is right for us to give the man surreal justice in a Savoy book.

Who could resist this modern-day Count of Monte Cristo?

Who would not warm to his Hobbes-ian philosophy?

Who shouldn't recognise Jerry Cornelius made flesh?

Shhh! Here he comes, lupine grin intact, his Vulcan persona uncoiling in our presence, the perfect icon for modern Albion, his Beelzebub alchemy freezing our blood as he confidently walks in the footsteps of Engelbrecht, Zenith and Horror.

As a follow-up to the highly successful A Tea Dance at Savoy (see below) we have commissioned Robert Meadley to do the bizzness on the Devil's Emissary. Herr Hoogstraten is the perfect foil for our Angry Man of Letters.

The landlord from Hell deserves all the moral irony mustered by this detective of the Id.

And when will this book appear? How long is a piece of string? But, rest assured...He is coming.

J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 3

A Tea Dance at Savoy A TEA DANCE AT SAVOY by Robert Meadley

Official publication date: 17th February 2003
ISBN No: 0 86130 112 9
RRP: £20.00
280pp

From Antioch to the Twilight Zone, from Saddleworth Moor to the caves of Tora-Bora, black ink spills from the pen of a great unsung British essayist. The Savoy ship's philosophical rat—coming from an odd angle out of time and space...

Robert "Phil" Meadley has been coming into the Savoy office for twenty-five years, and has partcipated in some of our more off-the-wall scenarios. He has watched the goings-on with a clinical eye, and here records his insights into our Marx Brothers-meets-Schopenhauer shenanigans.

Up the rickety stairs to a Savoy office that is now deceased, he has recorded the world of all our yesterdays.

Phil captures the madness of the events, the fervid atmosphere of being stuck in an office with a hundred years of Manchester history boiling in its bricks. He catches the pirate ship of Savoy at a moment of transition between the Old World of the seedy end of Deansgate and our subsequent move to the bright New World of Withington, almost turning us into an up-market cruise ship.

Events—now just hazy memories—that seemed life and death at the time, reduced to farce. Phil has used them as jumping off points to write about the big themes and big events of his book.

On Horror, real and imagined:

"There, but for the Grace of God go I." said a Catholic prelate watching a Protestant burn. He did. The Protestants burned him a few years later. Well, that's one way to get your bon mot in the language. He wasn't the only one to die but the others didn't die with irony.

On Diana's funeral:

They called her 'a loose cannon' and the shade of Tommy Cooper stalked the land.

On the Moors Murderers:

I doubt if there's a square mile of the inhabited world that hasn't soaked up the ephemeral juices of some act of violent selfishness. I don't believe in abstract evil. It's just a metaphor we use as an excuse.

On the Holocaust:

The black hole has a core. Its name is Mengele. His spider's web is made of railway lines.

On Hombres, Hopalongs and Mysterious Dave Mather:

Fantasy is both a touchstone and a talisman in a world overhung with monstrous tyrannies of all sorts and sizes.

On a voyage to the end of the world, with pirates and philosophers:

"I've been thinking," says Bob. "If algebra is the language of philosophy, then you could express the substance of the universe as 'w squared times d equals R', where the elements of the equation are (w)eirdness, (d)odginess and (R)eality."

On September 11th:

You have to give it to Osama Bin Laden, no-one else has managed to piss-off, collectively and simultaneously, the Americans. the Europeans, the Russians, the Chinese and the majority of Islamic governments.

Designed to death by John Coulthart and lavishly illustrated with a copious selection of rare, eclectic and downright bizarre drawings and photographs, this could only be a Savoy book!

"For those tired of the lazy after-dinner displays of Sunday supplement journo-personalities, Robert Meadley offers substance and originality. What you'll find here is the work of a sharp, idiosyncratic, independent and wonderfully educated, observant mind. They are literary excursions in some ways more reminiscent of the great 18th century eccentrics than more modern essayists and as such they carry a certain post-modern atmosphere. Give this book your generosity and your time and it's very likely you'll never see life quite the same again."

Michael Moorcock in his introduction

Although the official release of this book will be in February, copies are available for purchase now. For mail order details, including postage rates, see our Orders section.

O C T O B E R 2 0 0 2

Broken Sword Pipped to the post: The Broken Sword

"The first great American fantasy."—Baird Searles

Savoy had planned to reprint the original edition of Poul Anderson's 1954 novel The Broken Sword as part of the recent line of hardbacks. The book had been republished as a paperback in the 1970s, but Anderson had "tinkered" with the text and effectively reduced the impact of his book; ever since, this version has been the one most widely available. However, Orion have now included the book in their Masterwork series and, at the suggestion of Michael Moorcock, have gone back to the original version. So we wholeheartedly recommend this reprint and urge all interested Savoyards not to miss this marvellous, essential book.