Tindal Street Press’s Cine Literate Profile (Professor Roger Shannon)

The month of October marked the tenth anniversary
of publishing for the Birmingham based independent publisher, Tindal Street Press.  To celebrate their decade of astonishing success, Tindal have published a new anthology of short stories, ‘Roads Ahead’, a collection of 22 short stories by young writers edited by Catherine O’Flynn, which re visits the formula of ‘Hard Shoulder’, Tindal’s first publication of ten years ago. Catherine O’Flynn is, of course, the writer whose multi award winning debut novel. ‘What Was Lost’ Tindal St Press published.

Tindal’s staunchly regional stance, swimming against the metropolitan literary tide, has paid off handsomely, as those attending the recent Birmingham Book Festival witnessed at the Booker Trio event, when the three part harmonies of Clare Morrall, Catherine O’Flynn, and Gaynor Arnold were heard.

These three Birmingham based women writers have, respectively for their debut novels, been long or short listed for the prestigeous Mann Booker Prize in recent years. And Tindal published all three novels – Morrall’s ‘Astonishing Splashes of Colour’; O’Flynn’s ‘What Was Lost’ and Arnold’s ‘Girl In A Blue Dress.’ An astonishing splash of award nominations for such a small, independently spirited and regionally reared publisher.

It’s a timely moment to write on such matters, as, firstly, this week BBC Radio 4′s Book at Bed Time is serialising Tindal’s ‘Heartland’ by Anthony Cartwright, a very prescient ‘take’ on the emergence of BNP politics in the Black Country, now made more topical and prescient with the recent furore over the BNP’s appearance on the BBC’s ‘Question Time.’

And, secondly, the country’s premier Screenwriting Festival in Cheltenham took place in October, where issues like adaptation and script development were eagerly debated, chapter and verse, by its attendees, particularly ‘script czar’, Phil Parker, whose recent provocation on the ‘original v adapted’ debate stirred and stimulated.

But what’s all this to do with film, television and the digital media? Well, as Alan Mahar at Tindal St Press once commented to me -

‘When Clare Morrall’s ‘Astonishing Splashes of Colour’ reached the Mann Booker Prize shortlist, we were fielding calls from Twentieth Century Fox in Hollywood !’

Writing with original story telling as its rationale and deeply constructed characters at its core provide film and content makers with fantastic source material, and as the screen industries rely so heavily on story telling, it’s no surprise that Tindal and their published repertoire are courted in this way by the world of film and television.

Examples of such are now quite extensive. Clare Morrall’s novel was adapted, though not yet produced, by Olivia Hetreed, the celebrated screenwriter of the movie, ‘Girl With A Pearl Ear Ring.’ And Catherine O’Shea’s ‘What Was Lost’ is in development with Film 4 and Heyday Films, David Heyman’s company. This is the production company that also develops, adapts and produces the big budget Harry Potter movies. It’s also likely that ‘Heartland’ will follow suit and be the subject of a television adaptation.

However, it’s not just the Tindal novels which have been getting the ‘make over’ treatment. Their short story anthologies have also yielded fruit – for example, Paul Green’s adaptation of ‘Mutton’ from ‘Hard Shoulder’ . And reading the gems in ‘Roads Ahead’ it strikes me that we’ll see some of these stories made over for the screen in due course.

Tindal’s emerging cine literate profile isn’t just a one off for the city; it’s part of a wider repertoire and reservoir of story telling talent – innovative, ingenious, urban, contemporary, layered, angular, coolly vivacious – that’s making not just Twentieth Century Fox beat a path to the city’s writers.

Examples are abundant. Helen Cross’s debut novel, ‘My Summer Of Love’, became the multi award winning eponymously titled movie, directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. Jim Crace’s ‘Being Dead’ is being prep’d to shoot in Australia by cult director, Ray Lawrence of film noir ‘Lantana’ reputation. Mark Billingham’s crime novels, ‘Sleepyhead‘ et al, will shortly be filmed by Sky 1 in a six part series headed by David Morrissey in the lead role.

Mike Gayle, Mil Millington et al have all got novels in various stages of development with UK and international production companies.   These are all continuing a robust relationship between the city’s writers on the one hand and film and television producers on the other, a momentum exemplified in recent years by novelists such as David Lodge, who has adapted his own work for the screen – ‘Nice Work’ etc – and more recently Jonathan Coe, whose ‘Dwarves of Death’ has already been filmed, and whose ‘Rotters Club’ graced television screens a few years ago. 

It can also be argued that after the achievements of the Edgbaston born movie mogul, Sir Michael Balcon, Birmingham’s greatest contribution to the world of cinema lies in screen adaptations – in Tolkien’s ‘Lords of the Rings’, the literary source for Kiwi director Peter Jackson’s inspired trio of films, and global box office bonanza. 

The recent trend of Birmingham sourced adaptations signals that the city has become a ‘hot spot’ for film executives looking for original stories that can be given the screen ‘make over’ – and certainly giving out the heat is Tindal’s tinderbox of writing talent.

Professor Roger Shannon, Edge Hill University, Liverpool Producer, swish Ltd, Birmingham

Note – Roger Shannon is a Board Member of Tindal Street Press.