Cull and Co. Ltd Latest Deals

THE CAMBRIDGE FOOTLIGHTS: A VERY BRITISH INSTITUTION to Bloomsbury Methuen

Bloomsbury Methuen has acquired world all language rights (excluding dramatic rights) to THE CAMBRIDGE FOOTLIGHTS: A VERY BRITISH INSTITUTION by Robert Sellers.

This book will tell the story of Britain’s oldest student sketch comedy troupe, whose notable alumni include Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Julian Fellowes, John Cleese, Peter Cook and Richard Osman. As well as being a detailed history of the Footlights, the book will include first-hand interviews with former Footlights alumni, extracts from past Footlights productions, and illustrations, including a reproduction of posters, flyers and programmes.

“Like a night sky in the countryside, the more you look, the more stars you see,” wrote comedian and Footlights alumnus David Mitchell in his 2013 memoir. “Footlights seem to be behind about half of the stuff worth paying attention to.”

The Cambridge Footlights

Robert Sellers is the author of over 25 books on subjects such as cinema, theatre, television, music and popular culture. These include Raising Laughter: How the Sitcom Kept Britain Smiling in the ’70s (2021), as well as authorized biographies of Oliver Reed, Kenny Everett and Ernie Wise, along with histories of Ealing Studios, Radio 1 and the Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals.

Cull and Co. Ltd Latest Deals

RUSSIAN NIGHTS: TESTIMONIES FROM THE SOVIET TERROR to Vernon Press

Vernon Press has acquired World English Rights rights to a book that follows the work of Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov, and expands on the spectrum of GULAG stories.

The testimonies, gathered between 2001 and 2005 of actors implicated in different aspects of Soviet life roughly through the period 1917-1956, are from ex-prisoners of the GULAG, survivors of the Siege of Leningrad, veterans of the Russian front in World War II, military men and common people, in cities and the countryside. This book presents autocracy not merely as a past historical curiosity, but as a present call of alarm before the advances of autocracy seen throughout the world today.

Echavarren notes, “The details of the Jewish Holocaust have become part of our history through the testimony of those who survived the death camps. The details of Lenin’s and Stalin’s reign of terror are far less known because they took place behind a wall of secrecy, and because survivors have been loath to speak about them for fear of retribution.”

Roberto Echavarren is a Uruguayan poet, novelist, essayist and translator with a Ph.D. from the University of Paris VIII and taught at New York University from 1975 to 1995 in the Spanish and Portuguese, and Comparative Literature Departments. He is the director of La Flauta Mágica publishing company, specializing in critical bilingual editions of poetry and the rescue of major poetical works written in Spanish.

Prizes include the National Prize of the Ministry of Culture of Uruguay, essay; National Prize of the Ministry of Culture of Uruguay, poetry; Nancy Bacelo Foundation Poetry Prize; Cultural Center of Spain Theatre Prize.

Cull and Co. Ltd Latest Deals

HAWAII’S WOMEN OF WAR to Pegasus Books in the USA

North American rights for Hawaii’s Women of War have gone to US publisher Pegasus Books.

In focusing on the work of women in wartime Hawaii, this book will cover the war in the Pacific and will examine historical events such as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Midway from a totally new angle. It will offer a novel and interesting contribution to Hawaii’s history, as well as to US history.

Though some work has been carried out on American nurses in the Pacific, especially those taken as prisoners of war by the Japanese in the Philippines and in Guam, there remains a conspicuous gap in Pacific war history where women should be. It will examine the work of American women, but it will also look at the wartime work of Pacific Islanders and Polynesian women, many of whom have never before been considered in a study of the Second World War.

Sarah-Louise MillerSarah-Louise Miller is a graduate of the Department of War Studies, King’s College London and is uniquely qualified to write this book, having spent the past five years working full time on researching women in British intelligence roles.

In June 2022 she appeared as a historical expert on the British Pacific Fleet on an episode of the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are, featuring actor Ralf Little. In late June 2022 she filmed with Channel 4 for the documentary series, My Grandparents’ War, explaining to actress Keira Knightley what her grandmother’s World War II service entailed, and she featured as a historical expert on a brand new documentary series alongside Professor Alice Roberts.

Sarah regularly films in London studios, most recently for a four-part historical documentary for Sky History. She was also featured as a historical expert in a six-part international documentary series for Sky History, entitled The Bomber: Terror of World War II.

Cull and Co. Ltd Latest Deals

THE WOMEN BEHIND THE FEW to Biteback Publishing

World rights to historian and lecturer Dr Sarah-Louise Miller’s debut work The Women Behind the Few: Women in WWII British Air Intelligence has gone to Biteback Publishing.

The book will investigate the work of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force behind significant and famous air operations in the Second World War, including the Battle of Britain, the Dambusters raid, the Thousand Bomber Raids and the discovery of the German V weapons using aerial reconnaissance.

It also examines the rationale behind the RAF not wanting to employ women in intelligence work, and the emotional reactions of women to warfare and their ability to keep secrets as part of this examination.

Sarah-Louise MillerSarah-Louise Miller graduated in May 2022 with a PhD from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London and is uniquely qualified to write this book, having spent the past five years working full time on researching women in British intelligence roles.

Most recently, she appeared on a six-part television documentary series for Sky History speaking about the bombing campaigns of the RAF during WWII. She also helped actor Ralf Little investigate his grandfather Arthur’s experiences during the Second World War on BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are?

1 April 2023 is the 105th anniversary of the creation of both the Royal Air Force and its women’s counterpart, the Women’s Royal Air Force (which, in WWII, was renamed and became the WAAF). The book will coincide with the commemoration of this date in 2023.

Cull and Co. Ltd Latest Deals

Sarah Black Spy Series by Lucy Hooft to Burning Chair

World English Rights have gone to Burning Chair for the former assistant to Queen Rania and author long listed for The Caledonia Prize Lucy Hooft‘s THE KING’S PAWN and THE HEAD OF THE SNAKE, the first two books in the Sarah Black spy series, based on the author’s real-life experiences.

The series follows the career of a spy who begins as a naïve young graduate, enticed into a career with MI6 (or so she thinks) by a silver-tongued spook; struggling to understand her place in her mentor’s murky hierarchy.

The first novel sees Sarah sent to the Caucasus by Michael, the head of an off-the-books operational section of MI6. She is being used as an expendable and deniable agent, but through her natural pluck (and a hefty dose of luck) she survives and uncovers the real villain and a Russian plot to assassinate the Georgian and US Presidents.

In the second book, Sarah – still inexperienced but significantly tougher with the confidence of a lucky start behind her – strikes out on her own without Michael’s help to war-torn Sierra Leone to bring the villain of book 1 to justice.

Lucy studied languages and philosophy at Oxford and joined the Foreign Office straight out of university in search of adventure and new people and places. She quickly moved across to the Department for International Development (DFID), where she spent time in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, China and Sierra Leone. She left Sierra Leone to join her now husband in Jordan, taking the long way there across the Sahara, Europe, the Balkans, Turkey and Syria in a much-beloved Land Rover. In Jordan, she worked for Her Majesty Queen Rania while spending much time bumping around the phenomenal Jordanian desert.

After Jordan, she spent several years in a jungle camp in Gabon surrounded by elephants and humpback whales, which is where the Sarah Black books began. They took life, as a way to record all the best bits of people she had met and places she had been, with a plot to make them much more exciting. Lucy has always plausibly denied being a spy—but she wrote the books to show what that life might have been like.

She now lives at the end of the world in Lüderitz, Namibia, crafting stories and making films about the adventure of growing giant kelp.

THE KING’S PAWN will publish in 2022 followed by THE HEAD OF THE SNAKE in 2023.