ALCS Sponsors ‘Anne Chisholm on Frances Partridge’ at 60th Cheltenham Literary Festival

LONDON - As part of the Authors’ Licensing & Collecting Society’s (ALCS) policy to promote authors’ rights and copyright as widely as possible, the Society is sponsoring ‘FRANCES PARTRIDGE - A DISCUSSION’ on Thursday 15 October at the 2009 Cheltenham Literary Festival.

“It’s vital that we engage the widest possible audience with the issues of authors’ rights and copyright and that we extend our geographic reach across the UK,” says Barbara Hayes, ALCS’ Deputy CEO. “Sponsoring high profile events such as this at literary festivals enables us to continue raising awareness of the importance of writers’ rights to the wider literary community and the public who enjoy their work. We are of course particularly delighted to support the Cheltenham Festival as it celebrates its 60th year.

ALCS’s choice of FRANCES PARTRIDGE - A DISCUSSION for sponsorship is particularly fitting in the Cheltenham Festival’s 60th year. Anne Chisholm published her biography of Frances Partridge in April this year and she will be joined by Partridge’s granddaughter, Sophie, to discuss the life and work of this astonishing diarist who captured a large part of our 20th Century literary and creative history. Partridge was at the heart of the Bloomsbury set and enjoyed friendships with Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Lytton Strachey, Dora Carrington and David Garnett amongst others. Her longevity (she died at the age of 103 in 2004) and her talents of observation and flair as a diarist ensure she has recorded an important part of our cultural history for future generations.

‘Anne Chisholm’s authorised biography skilfully extricates Frances Partridge from the crowded scene of her much-praised diaries. It places her centre stage within her own life and adds to her own determinedly unsentimental self-analysis deeper and richer insights…’ said Diana Athill.

Chisholm’s biography of Partridge has received unanimous praise from literary journalists and fellow writers. It has been described as ‘a worthy tribute to the woman often dubbed ‘the last survivor of Bloomsbury’ by Mark Bostridge, the Sunday Independent and as ‘an impressively sure-footed biography and the necessary complement to the published diaries’ by Frances Spalding for the Literary Review. This event featuring Chisholm, her biographer and close friend, and her grand-daughter Sophie is likely to be equally insightful as they discuss Partridge’s fascinating life captured so eloquently on the page.

Anne Chisholm is currently Chair of the Royal Society of Literature. She is a biographer and critic who has worked in publishing and journalism, beginning her working life on Private Eye. Her first biography ‘Nancy Cunard’ (1979) won the Silver PEN Prize for Non-Fiction and in 1992 her biography of Lord Beaverbrook (written jointly with her husband, Michael Davie) was runner up for the Hawthornden Prize. She has also written a life of Rumer Godden and a study of the female survivors of Hiroshima.

ALCS - Protecting and Promoting Authors’ Rights

ALCS protects and promotes authors’ rights concerning their intellectual property and moral rights to ensure they are fully respected and fairly rewarded. ALCS is committed to fostering an awareness of the value of copyright issues amongst writers as well as the wider public who use, enjoy and benefit from the written word in all its forms.

Set up in the wake of the campaign to establish Public Lending Right in 1977, ALCS is a not-for-profit company that has distributed a total of GBP205 million to writers since its inception.

In its role promoting and protecting authors’ rights, ALCS consults regularly with policy makers in the UK and Europe over copyright, digital rights management and intellectual property matters.

ALCS - Sources of Income

ALCS has developed highly specialised knowledge and sophisticated systems which track writers and their work (both print and audiovisual) against various secondary uses for which they are due payment. The main sources of fees due are secondary royalties from: photocopying (through the Copyright Licensing Agency which is jointly owned by the ALCS and the Publishers Licensing Society); international Public Lending Right; cable retransmission; fees from the Educational Recording Agency (ERA) and sources such as blank tape and machine levies for private copying and small miscellaneous literary rights.

The All Party Parliamentary Writers Group (APWG)

ALCS has also supported the setting up of the All Party Writers Group (APWG) chaired by Janet Anderson MP. APWG is a forum for elected Parliamentarians in Westminster to consider and discuss matters of importance to writers. As a focal point for authors’ interests, with its links to UK writer organisations, APWG is well placed to draw attention to the current issues facing writers amongst an audience of decision-makers at Westminster and beyond.

ALCS - The International Picture

The Society is recognised internationally as a leading authority on copyright matters and authors’ interests. It maintains a close watching brief on all matters affecting copyright both in the UK and around the world and makes regular representations to the UK government and to the European Commission. ALCS pays royalties to Member writers based in 137 countries around the globe. ALCS has reciprocal arrangements with over 50 collecting societies around the world.

Notes for Editors ALCS contact information ALCS, The Writers’ House, 13 Haydon Street, London EC3N 1DB Tel: +44(0)20-7264-5700; email: alcs@alcs.co.uk Website: www.alcs.co.uk Follow us - ALCS is now ‘tweeting’ - twitter.com/alcs09

Source: ALCS

Media Contact: Becca Wyatt, +44(0)1798-867-117, +44(0)7801-061-420; ALCS, Alison Baxter, +44(0)20-7264-5700; Notes for Editors: ALCS contact information, ALCS, The Writers’ House, 13 Haydon Street, London EC3N 1DB, Tel: +44(0)20-7264-5700; email: alcs at alcs.co.uk, Website: https://www.alcs.co.uk. Follow us - ALCS is now ‘tweeting’ - https://twitter.com/alcs09