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William Rivière
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Dramatic Rights:
Charles Walker
Book Agent:
Caroline Dawnay
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William Rivière was born in 1954 and brought up in Norfolk. After leaving Cambridge, he spent several years in Venice, and later worked in Japan and travelled extensively around the Far East. He is the author of four previous novels; Watercolour Sky (winner of a Betty Trask Award); A Venetian Theory of Heaven and Earth, Eros and Psyche and Borneo Fire. He is married to a painter, and teaches at the University of Urbino in Italy. |
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BY THE GRAND CANAL |
SCEPTRE (1 Sep 04) |
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In the immediate aftermath of the First World War, Hugh Thurne, a British diplomat involved in the peace negotiations, returns to his second home in Venice. Profoundly concerned about the long-term prospects for peace, he yet has faith in the city's power to raise his spirits. He looks forward to revisiting his old friends Giacomo and Valentina Venier in their dilapidated palace on the Grand Canal; to dallying with a young opera singer; and to the arrival of his best friend's widow, Violet Mancroft. What he does not anticipate is the shadow lying over the Venier family's future. Nor has he reckoned with the vagaries of the human heart. |
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KATE CATERINA |
SCEPTRE (15 Feb 01) |
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When Kate Fenn marries a young Italian in the 1930s, she finds herself in Tuscany at the outbreak of World War II. With her brother and brother-in-law fighting for opposing armies, her husband in prison for anti-Facist activity and a daughter to look after, she struggles to keep her identity. |
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ECHOES OF WAR |
SCEPTRE (4 Sep 97) |
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Explores through the experiences of one family the impact of World Wars I and II, the beginning of the end for the British Empire, and a rural way of life now vanished. At its heart is the love affair between the son of the family and his parents' goddaughter, which begins in the interwar years. |
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BORNEO FIRE |
SCEPTRE (16 Feb 95) |
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Set in Borneo, this is the heart-rending tale of a man tortured by the past, and of the intense love between his son and his adopted daughter which offers him the promise of redemption. |
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EROS AND PSYCHE |
SCEPTRE (20 Jan 94) |
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When Imogen Scottow takes her baby daughter to stay with her godmother, Laura, on her Greek estate for the summer, she still refuses to reveal the identity of Angelica's father. Her tranquillity is shattered and her freedom threatened, however, when a family friend of Laura's unexpectedly arrives. |
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VENETIAN THEORY OF HEAVEN |
SCEPTRE (16 Jan 92) |
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Privileged, rich and self-centred, Amedea's passion is for Venice, the city of her birth. Her marriage to an English architect has begun to founder as passion is replaced by domesticity. But in Gerard Charry, a French lecturer, Amedea sees someone to fulfil her dreams of love. |
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WATERCOLOUR SKY |
SCEPTRE (18 Jan 90) |
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Under the skies of Norfolk, the Dobell family seems to lead an idyllic life, the countryside and its sporting pursuits closely interwoven with the fabric of existence. Yet happiness eludes two generations; only the natural world remains a passion which sustains expectations in this haunting tale. |
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