headline Interviews and Night Waves Wednesday 27th of June 2007 10:23 am
You can hear an interview which Jack Thurston of the Bike Show did with me as we rode the lanes of Kent near where I live. go to the Bike Show web page and click on the recent programmes 28 May.
I am appearing on Night Waves on 27 June, Radio 3 9.45 - 10.30pm, in company with Matt Seaton, talkiong about the culture of cycling in Belgium and France and why the Tour de France is the iconic event it is.
Don't forget:
The Beautiful Machine is now on sale, published by Mainstream. Comments from people who have contacted me:
'An exhilarating read' Elizabeth Stinton, Newcastle-upon-Tyne
'I love the writing - it's fresh and full of lovely images' Katy Allen, Tanzania
'You are quite a funny man' Camille MacMillan, Saffron Walden
'Cracking good read' Luke Evans, Tonbridge
'I really liked it, especially the chapters about America, made me want to go out there and ride, too' Carole Hickman, Chelsfield
25 June 2007
headline The Beautiful Machine Wednesday 25th of April 2007 01:22 pm
To be published on 3 May, my latest book THE BEAUTIFUL MACHINE, a life in cycling from Tour de France to Cinder Hill. This is, for sure, bare-knuckle writing at its most punchy, rippling with wit and energy, no holds barred...It is a celebration of the bicycle and the joy, wonder, adventure, good times and bad,bad times associated with it and of the people who ride and with whom I have ridden. Here are explorations of all dimensions of the experience on, round, with, via and about the beautiful machine...in France, Spain and Portugal, Belgium, Timbuktu, New England and the lanes, hills and hard places of old England itself.
available from Mainstream 16.99
signed copies available from me at about the same price.
Welcome to the Graeme Fife Website Tue, 14 February 2006
Welcome to the Graeme Fife website. Feel free to contact me. I must warn you that I can offer no advice about publishing, no hints on survival as a freelance writer or a freelance anything, for that matter: I wish I could but it's all a mystery to me. Example: on 29 December 2005 Radio 4 broadcast a programme by me: "The Fighting Temeraire", "The Battle and the Breeze" (repeated in the early hours of New Year's Day). I made this in conjunction with a senior producer at the BBC, Paul Kobrak, whom I met years ago when I taught him Latin. He seems not to have held this against me and we have now produced a second programme "In Search of Saint-Saëns", a concert interval talk for R3, in the first interval of a live transmission of Saint-Saëns opera Samson et Dalila from the New York Met, Sat. 25 February at 19h15.
I first put the idea for a programme about HMS Temeraire - subject of Turner's famous painting and one of the great ships of Nelson's navy: she followed Victory into the enemy fleet at Trafalgar - about two years ago. We'd tell the story of the painting (pictures on radio is a particularly interesting notion) and the story of the ship herself: where and how she was built, daily life on board, the mutiny of 1801, her gallant action that 25 October 1805 when she turned the tide of the battle, her life after the battle and her eventual sad demise in the breaker's yard at a time when steam power and iron hulls were replacing sail and wooden ships.a fascinating mix. We proposed the programme, an editor asked us to change the format: too much history. We toned down the history and presented it again. Another editor said: not enough history. We put the history back in. Another editor said blah blah blah and we blah blah blahed. Finally, in early 2005, after how many recensions of the original plan I cannot remember, a commissioning editor turned the programme down "because the Turner painting isn't well enough known".
Moron.
Later that same year, September, Turner's celebrated painting of 'The Fighting Temeraire towed to her last berth' was voted 'Nations' Best-Loved painting' in a Today programme listener's poll. The commissioning editor who had rejected the programme sent an e-mail: "I think we may have got that one wrong". Note the 'we'.
So, Paul and I set to in a hurry - this was Trafalgar year, after all - and made the programme. We went to the Historic Dockyard at Chatham, where the Temeraire was built and launched, Rotherhithe where she was broken up, Portsmouth to look over HMS Victory and interview her captain, the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, Public Records Office, Newspaper Archive at Colindale.it was fun, it was fascinating, and the programme came out well.
So all I can say is: it's all a mystery; we all need all the help we can get and never give up.
I am at present working on a big book about the Pyrenees - descriptions and details of the best, most demanding road climbs for cyclists, with related stories from the Tour de France and the Vuelta a España. It's going to be subjective, far from exhaustive but, having ridden more of the Pyrenean cols than I can readily count, it will, I trust, be an encouragement to anyone who wants to explore those most beautiful mountains, so often the decisive battleground of the great bike race.
I am also shaping more radio proposals, as ever, looking for more outlets for stories and articles, waiting to hear whether I will be writing a projected book (or not) and riding my bike.
When I began writing this introductory letter, the skies were grey, damp with drizzle, exhaling chill wafts of old winter and doing the line of washing outside my house no good at all. Now the sun is out, the skies are duck-egg blue and I've just seen the postman walk past. On his way to my letter-box?
You never know.
I will update regularly.
Yours
Graeme Fife