Monday, March 14, 2016

My hero / Louise Rennison by Philip Ardagh

Louise Rennison in 2004


My hero: 

Louise Rennison by Philip Ardagh

Philip Ardagh remembers the author who died this week. ‘Her laughter will live on through the pages of her very funny books. She was a class act’


 Philip Ardagh
Fri 4 Mar 2016

I
have shared a stage with young adult author and comedian Louise Rennison a fair few times over the years, in the UK and in Ireland. I’m also proud to have been a judge for the Roald Dahl funny prize in 2010, which she won with the very funny Withering Tights. Rightly or wrongly, she’ll probably be best remembered for her book Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging. When it became a film, it was retitled Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging because, Louise delighted in telling me, “they were worried about the full-frontal bit”.

Louise was the only fellow children’s author I’ve ever met who always seemed to have a glass of beer next to her on her signing table, regardless of the time of day. One of my fondest memories was when I chaired an event of hers at the Edinburgh book festival. We’d agreed beforehand that I’d simply top and tail her talk: introduce her at the beginning; sit in the audience; thank her at the end. No real preparation required on my part. She arrived at the authors’ yurt just five minutes before she was due to go on. “I’m pissed,” she said. “Interview me after all.” So on we went and I did interview her and, as always, she laughed at her own anecdotes – along with a delighted audience – and, as always, she ended up Irish dancing across the stage.
Once, when visiting her publisher’s, I followed her instantly identifiable laugh and found her holed up in one of their offices – not quite a prisoner – to ensure, as best they could, that she met her next deadline. And she was prolific. So, greatly saddened though I am that she died, far, far too young, on 29 February, there is comfort in the fact that her laughter lives on through the pages of her books. She was a class act and one funny lady.
THE GUARDIAN





2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal

2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
100 Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson
102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill

2012

190 My hero / Iris Murdoch by Charlotte Mendelson
194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer

2015
2016



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