Spokesman Books

Mike Harding , on his radio Folk Show , 10th April 2016, dedicated the track 'A Cut in Pay' (Rory McLeod) to Trevor Griffiths, who recently celebrated his 81st birthday. Harding billed him as ‘one of our greatest modern playwrights', extoll ing to listeners: 'You might know his work – Comedians ; Oy for England ; the film Reds ; the series Bill Brand – and he’s also written a wonderful piece for television, which I don’t think has been filmed yet, called March Time . And I do urge you to go and get hold of a magazine called Spokesman , which is a magazine of the Russell Foundation… In one of last year’s issues they’ve got the entire text ' A pod cast of the show (#172) is still avai lable on the following p a ge, with the mention of Trevor Griffiths just over six minutes in : http://www.mikehardingfolkshow.com/category/podcasts/ March Time was published in iss ue 118 of The Spokesman (ISBN 9780 85124 8202, £6), which is available to purchase HERE...

Reds , showing Sunday 25 October, 14:00, Regent Street Cinema 'Celebrating acclaimed playwright and screenwriter Trevor Griffiths’ 80th birthday this year, Warren Beatty’s epic, Academy Award winning drama of the Russian Revolution (which Griffiths wrote) is showing where it needs to – on the big screen. Co-starring Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson and Gene Hackman among many others, it’s a remarkable achievement.' Visit Regent Street Cinema's page here , for more information on the event, and to book tickets. Copies of Trevor Griffiths' published works will be on sale at the screening, and can also be found on the website of Spokesman Books at the following address: http://www.spokesmanbooks.com/acatalog/Trevor_Griffiths.html

Nelson Mandela 1918-2013 http://www.spokesmanbooks.com/Spokesman/PDF/122Griffiths.pdf

The Genesis of Bill Brand. “The political mini-series is by no means foreign to television as examples such as Washington Behind Closed Doors (1977), Blind Ambition (1979), The West Wing (1999-2006), and the 1975 Granada TV British television series The Nearly Man (featuring Tony Britton as a right-wing Labour MP) all show. But rather than interrogating political elements influencing individual lives they often focus upon personal melodramatic issues. In this way they fall within familiar conventions of the type of television drama that Griffiths sought both to utilize and subvert. Personal relationships do occupy key levels of Bill Brand but they are never divorced from the historical and political context of a society that attempts to control individual lives and from which some form of different alternative direction is needed. Since Griffiths has spoken of the significant “detail of the lives of the characters” in this series, it is important to analyze how each episode functi...

This latest volume in the Trevor Griffiths series contains all eleven episodes of the celebrated 1976 Thames TV series Bill Brand , which was the fictional account of a young left-wing Labour MP entering Parliament for the first time and attempting to influence the policies of his largely right-wing Labour government. The series was conceived on election night in 1974, written and produced over the following two years and transmitted in 1976. This was a time of great political and industrial unrest in Britain; it produced the first minority government (under Harold Wilson) since 1931, and Bill Brand was watched with extreme interest by both the political classes and the wider population. At times it seemed almost uncannily prophetic; and many of the issues it dealt with remain of great contemporary relevance. The series starred Jack Shepherd as Bill Brand, Arthur Lowe as the Prime Minister, Alan Badel, Peter Howell, Lynne Farleigh, Cherie Lunghi and many other distinguished actors. Bi...

"Set in a Manchester working-class evening centre in the mid-1970s, the date of its writing, Comedians eschews political theory, professional ideologues and historically sourced discourse on political revolution – all the perceived hallmarks of my earlier pieces – in favour of a more or less unmediated address on a range of particular contemporary issues including class, gender, race and society in modern Britain." Trevor Griffiths writing in Theatre Plays (published in two volumes by Spokesman Books, price £15 each) An acclaimed new production of Comedians , directed by Sean Holmes, continues at the Lyric Hammersmith until 14th November 2009. Some reviews can be read via our Trevor Griffiths page. Theatre Plays One includes Comedians , The Wages of Thin , Occupations , Sam Sam , Apricots , Thermidor , The Party , The Cherrry Orchard Theatre Plays Two includes Oi for England , Real Dreams , Piano , The Gulf between Us , Thatcher’s Children , Who Shall Be Happy? , C...

After Lockerbie - The Spokesman 106 Edited by Ken Coates "There has seldom been such unanimity in the British political class as has come about in the last half of August 2009 with the release of the Libyan prisoner, Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi, on compassionate grounds. This was announced by the Scottish Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill, after medical reports forecast that the Libyan was at death’s door, having advanced prostate cancer which probably gave him a maximum life expectancy of three months. Megrahi had been sentenced by three Scottish Judges to life imprisonment, following a highly contentious trial in which the Scottish Courts sat in an American airbase in The Netherlands to hear the case of the Lockerbie bomb. A Pan American passenger jet had been blown up on the 21st December 1988, while flying over the small Scottish town of Lockerbie en route for the United States. The evidence showed that a bomb had been secreted in passenger luggage. It had exploded in mid...

THESE ARE THE TIMES – TOM PAINE REMEMBERED Readings and Discussion to mark the 200th anniversary of Tom Paine’s death 9 – 10.30pm, Monday 8th June 2009, Old Red Lion Theatre, Angel, London. With Tony Benn, sculptor Michael Sandle, publisher Tony Simpson, musician Elizabeth Green and Neil Sheppeck of Love and Madness Theatre, alongside contributions from actor and playwright Jack Shepherd and writer Mike Marqusee. * An intimate event, on the 200th anniversary itself of Tom Paine's death , to celebrate and discuss the enduring legacy of one of the most influential radical writers and thinkers in history, at Islington's Old Red Lion Theatre, where Paine actually wrote some of his profoundly important work The Rights of Man. Featuring a rehearsed reading, directed by and featuring Neil Sheppeck of Love and Madness Theatre, of Jack Shepherd’s play In Lambeth, imagining a meeting between William Blake and Tom Paine. * Tickets: £7, £5 (concs. Please provide or bring evidence when book...

Recently These Are The Times: A Life of Thomas Paine , a screenplay by Trevor Griffiths, was broadcast in two parts as Radio 4's Saturday Play. The production has stirred up some disussion on Radio 4's Message Board . In an article for New Humanist , Trevor Griffiths describes its making and what the process revealed about Paine and revolution: " I’m in the gallery of a sound studio on a West London industrial estate, watching the recording of a play I began writing 20 years back and finished, in a form I was happy enough to see published, in 2005. Watching with me are producer, director, sound engineer and production coordinator. It’s our fifth day in. Time is tight. Today we’re trying a king ..." Read the full article, Revolutionising Tom Paine .