MSt tutor Sam Thompson’s new novel Jott has been published by John Murray.

From the publisher’s announcement:

“In February of 1935, two young Irishmen walk in the grounds of a London mental hospital. Arthur Bourne, a junior psychiatrist, is about to jeopardise his future for his closest friend, an aspiring writer called Louis Molyneux.

Arthur has been overshadowed since childhood by his brilliant, troubled friend. But after years of playing the unassuming companion, he is learning that loyalty has its costs: that old friendship may thwart new love, and perhaps even blur distinctions between the sane and the mad . . .

Jott is a story about friendship, madness and modernism from the author of the Man Booker-longlisted Communion Town.”

Read more about it at the John Murray website, and see Sam talk about it

MSt tutor Peter Moore has been awarded the Mary Soames Award for History.

From the press release

“Peter Moore, author of The Sunday Times bestseller “The Weather Experiment”, has been presented with the Mary Soames Award for History at a prestigious ceremony in London this week (Wednesday 13 June). The award was created as a gift to Lady Soames, Sir Winston Churchill’s youngest daughter, to mark her 90th birthday, in 2012, and is given in recognition of achievement in history.

Peter was one of 130 people being honoured at the ceremony to mark the successful completion of their overseas research as Churchill Fellows. Churchill Fellows are funded to travel for 4-8 weeks overseas, researching new ideas that can make a difference to their communities or professions in the UK.

For his Fellowship, Peter travelled to Australia and New Zealand in 2016 to research the story of HM Bark Endeavour. Endeavour famously carried James Cook on his first great voyage, visiting Pacific islands unknown to European geography, charting New Zealand for the first time and the eastern coast of Australia and almost foundering on the Great Barrier Reef.

Peter’s research in Australia and New Zealand informed his forthcoming book, ‘Endeavour: The Ship and the Attitude that Changed the World’, which will be published in the UK on 23 August 2018 (Chatto & Windus) and in the USA (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) shortly afterwards.

Speaking about his Fellowship, Peter said, “It is easy to think that Endeavour’s story belongs firmly in the past. It’s now 250 years since James Cook, Joseph Banks and ninety or so others set out from Plymouth in a tiny coal collier bound for the far side of the world. But the effects of what happened then are still very much being felt today. Being a Churchill Fellow allowed me to follow the story as best I could: meeting academics in Wellington and Canberra and talking to knowledge custodians of indigenous communities on the New South Wales coast and the Bay of Islands.”

“It was an incredibly enriching experience and I’d urge others wanting to travel to broaden their understanding of a subject to apply for a Churchill Fellowship too.”

For more information about the fellowships visit www.wcmt.org.uk

MSt tutor Sarah Bakewell has been awarded a Windham-Campbell prize.

From the announcement:

“The Call of a Lifetime
The director of the Windham-Campbell Prizes recently made the call of a lifetime to eight entirely surprised writers, informing them that they will each be recognized with a $165,000 USD prize to support their writing. Awards will be conferred September 12-14 at an international literary festival at Yale, where the Prizes are based.

“Sarah Bakewell unknots complex philosophical thought with verve and wit; her eye for detail and her animated conversation bring readers to inhabit the lives of great philosophers …”

Go to the prize website to read more

• about the prize 
• about Sarah Bakewell and her writing