A Sip of Claret News | Audiobook Giveaway!
4th November 2024
(ps. This is a condensed version of the Newsletter sent to our mailing list.)
As a big thank you to all our readers, we'll be giving away an Audible credit for the Operation Ark audiobook narrated by Kerry Hutchinson to ten lucky subscribers!
To enter the giveaway, all you need to do is subscribe to the Claret Press newsletter by November 28th. So, if you're receiving this email, then you don't need to do anything as you're already subscribed!
However, if you know someone who might like the chance to win a free (and thrilling) audiobook, then they need to subscribe to the newsletter via the Claret Press website.
We'll select the winners at the end of November. Once the winners have been selected, we'll send them an email with instructions on how to redeem their Audible code. Best of luck!
Ricky Gervais calls him "heroic". The Daily Beast calls it "a damning indictment of foreign policy failures". The Private Eye says, "He's still angry. It's understandable." Operation Ark by Pen Farthing is his account of the Afghanistan Evacuation, whose story caught global headlines.
We are thrilled to announce that Jill Culiner has won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Biographies/Memoirs 2024 for Those Absent On the Great Hungarian Plain!
About the Canadian Jewish Literary Awards: Marking its tenth successful year, the Canadian Jewish Literary Awards recognises and rewards the finest Canadian writing on Jewish themes and subjects in a variety of genres.
What the judges said about Those Absent: "Writer, photographer and social critic Jill Culiner presents vignettes from what was planned as a six-week excursion to find traces of Jewish presence in rural Hungary, and evolved into a multi-year sojourn exploring memory, culture and hard truths about what can lie beneath the surface in the human heart..."
Our many congratulations to Jill once again.
Pen Farthing, an ex-Royal Marine Commando, founder of animal welfare charity Nowzad and author of Operation Ark, is one of the most controversial figures of the 2021 Afghanistan Evacuation, whose story captured global headlines. Pen Farthing was content rescuing the strays of Kabul, working alongside his charity staff of Afghan vets which included the first female vets in the country. That was, until the Afghanistan Withdrawal, where the Taliban overran the country in a matter of weeks.
The government was “Missing in Action” with Pen caught in the crossfire. He had to steer his charity staff and animals through the dangers of a Taliban takeover and a political storm back home.
Ricky Gervais calls him "heroic". The Daily Beast calls it "a damning indictment of foreign policy failures". The Private Eye says, "He's still angry. It's understandable."
He was CNN’s Hero of the Year 2014 and was awarded the 2024 RSPCA Branch Award for Outstanding Contribution to Animal Welfare. Pen, and Nowzad continue to work in Afghanistan and now Ukraine.
We will discuss the lies and the truth of his actions, and the fallout on his personal life and work. Join the conversation on 5th November 2024, 7pm-8pm.
The link to watch the livestream on YouTube is: https://youtube.com/live/yhQEtY2caUg?feature=share
We're pleased to share Claret Press author Steve Sheppard's winning short story for the Midhurst Writers Group Competition, about a Russian who wants to change his identity:
ALEKSANDR, THE GOLDFISH, THE HAT AND THE FAKE MONA LISA
Aleksandr Nikolaevich Borotkin woke up one day and decided to become someone else.
Not that there was very much wrong with being Aleksandr Nikolaevich Borotkin. He owned a goldfish named Pink and had an important job as Deaths Adjustment Clerk in the Ministry of Defence (Ukraine Division). Also, his apartment, number 765 on the fifteenth floor of Block D23, boasted running water and a view into the bedroom of Flat 703. The block, built in 1988, was one of the final construction triumphs of the Soviet Union, and now possessed a life expectancy of minus five years. Occasionally the running water reached the giddy heights of tepidity. Also occasionally, elderly Mrs Oblovsky in Number 703 remembered to put her nightgown on at bedtime. Neither Mrs Oblovsky nor Aleksandr ever closed their bedroom curtains as curtains were not permitted above the sixth floor of Block D23.
Also not permitted were pets (on any floor), not even goldfish. However, the irregular visits of Apartment Block Inspector Sokolov were accompanied by so much panting that Aleksandr invariably had time to hide Pink’s bowl under a Kremlin-themed tea towel before Mr Sokolov thumped on Aleksandr’s door, a thumping that threatened to wreak irreparable damage to the door, which also hailed from 1988 and was thus in line for a State Survival Certificate. The panting was caused by the elevator’s ability to function only intermittently, the electricity supply playing second fiddle to the heating of Councilman Rostin’s swimming pool situated two hundred metres away.
Aleksandr poured himself a cup of tepid black tea and sat in the armchair he had purloined from Flat 766, a mere fifty-three seconds after the departure of its occupant, Mrs Morisov, accompanied by three rectangular gentlemen from the FSB who had arrived to request her presence at Lubyanka Square. Aleksandr had been forced to remonstrate with Mrs Garnin from Flat 767, already attempting single-handedly to push both of Mrs Morisov’s armchairs across the corridor. However, Aleksandr’s argument that, as both he and Mrs Garnin were single – Mr Garnin having perished in a trouser-press accident – they should share the benefit of this unexpected windfall, eventually persuaded Mrs Garnin to see reason.
This sort of thing suddenly seemed like a tiresome sort of existence, notwithstanding the company of Pink which, although pleasant enough, failed to make up for the fact that Aleksandr had not enjoyed a serious relationship with a human female for three years. If one could call one failed visit to the cinema with Viktoriya Artyemova from the underfunded coffee shop, a serious relationship. Which Aleksandr doubted.
Aleksandr had never been abroad. Indeed, he wasn’t totally sure what constituted abroad in these days of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin’s confusing relationships with Russia’s neighbours. For example, Ukraine was clearly no longer officially abroad.
He knew he would require a passport and that obtaining one could be a lengthy and unrewarding experience. It would be difficult enough obtaining one in the name of Aleksandr Nikolaevich Borotkin, let alone the somebody else he wished to become. Also, would Pink the goldfish, who Aleksandr was determined should accompany him, require travel documentation? A brief window of electronic opportunity, as the electricity supply was diverted back from Councilman Rostin’s swimming pool, revealed that a pet passport could be obtained from a licensed veterinarian but in the thirty-one minutes before the electricity cut out again, Aleksandr failed to discover whether such documentation applied to goldfish. Dogs and cats, certainly; even monkeys, especially but not exclusively, capuchin monkeys. No mention of goldfish, however. It also appeared that all pets would need to be microchipped and Aleksandr had a suspicion that this procedure was unlikely to be easy when it came to goldfish and might well prove fatal.
A possible solution to his quandary occurred to him in the form of three items bequeathed him by his paternal grandfather. Firstly, a Homburg hat, brown, manufactured in Yekaterinburg in 1957 and bearing an Official Stamp that confirmed it acceptable to be worn in all public places (except churches) throughout the Soviet Union. Secondly, a half-size forgery of the Mona Lisa with only moderate discolouration. And thirdly, three beads reputed to have come from a religious necklace once worn by Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin and possibly containing gold.
The one-eyed pawnbroker on Krushchev Street screwed a small magnifying lens into his one working eye and studied the faintly discoloured semi-Giaconda whilst somewhat disconcertingly staring at Aleksandr with the eye no longer in active service. Completing his examination of the mini-Mona, the pawnbroker turned his attention to the religious beads. Three seconds later, the beads were tossed disdainfully into a waste receptacle. Aleksandr suspected that it signified the possibility that their previous existence had not included any proximity to Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin.
‘I give you seventy-thousand roubles and fifty-seven kopecks for picture,’ the pawnbroker growled. This, thought Aleksandr, whilst simultaneously wondering about the relevance of the fifty-seven kopecks, was an unexpected piece of good news, so good, in fact, that he decided to overlook the loss of the beads.
‘So is the Mona Lisa not a forgery after all?’ Aleksandr asked.
‘Da, of course it is forgery. But politburo is full of idiots. One of the fools has a copy of the over-rated Italian painting so now all the others want one. I can name my price.’
Seventy-thousand roubles and fifty-seven kopecks richer, Aleksandr paid a visit to the passport office, where, after a short delay of six hours, he found himself face-to-face with a grim-faced, probably female passport official with a mole so hairy on her upper lip that Aleksandr found himself wondering whether it might require its own hairdresser. Tentatively, he explained his requirements whilst casually pushing fifty thousand of his newly acquired roubles across the table. The sight of the roubles appeared to bring her a great deal of joy, so much so that something Aleksandr took to be a smile broke out just south of the mole, whose hairs waved appreciatively in response.
Back in Flat 765, Aleksandr discovered Pink looking slightly listless. However, there was nothing obviously wrong with her and he was after all richer by twenty-thousand roubles and fifty-seven kopecks, also a brand-new passport and accompanying exit visa in the name of Valeri Davidovich Vasiliev.
Literally, staring him in the face was a watercolour of a town called Dawlish in Devon, south west England, purchased to cover a large damp patch on the wall. He had once read an interesting article about Devon cream teas and had wondered how Devon tea differed from the black variety he was more used to and whether it would be less tepid. The newly-dubbed Valeri’s mind was made up.
Valeri jammed his grandfather’s Homburg hat firmly on his head and set off for Sheremetyevo Airport. The Homburg remained on his head throughout the convoluted journey from Moscow to Dawlish, Putin’s enlightened foreign policy decisions meaning that flights to London included a twelve-hour stopover in Ankara, Turkiye. At no time during his two-day journey to Dawlish did Valeri remove his grandfather’s Homburg hat. An air stewardess asked him if he would prefer the Homburg stowed in the overhead locker, an offer Valeri politely declined; and at Heathrow, the bored-looking British customs officer decided the hat was some sort of religious fad and he was most definitely not going to get involved in questioning that sort of thing.
Arriving in Dawlish, Valeri breathed in the clean, fresh air and went in search of somewhere to stay. Finding a friendly local estate agency, he was quickly sent on his way armed with directions to a conveniently vacant holiday cottage near the seafront, to be met by his new landlady, Mrs Morris.
However, it transpired that Valeri was not the only Russian citizen who had recently undergone a change of identity.
‘I imagine you were not expecting this, Aleksandr Nikolaevich Borotkin,’ said Mrs Morisov, formerly of Flat 766 in Block D23. Valeri wondered briefly if Mrs Morisov was there to query the theft of her armchair, but it took little time for her to explain her position was as a senior official with the FSB and not, as Valeri had thought, a recent arrestee of that august organisation. She enthused at great length about her desire to arrange Valeri’s transportation back to Moscow, either to continue his valuable work as Deaths Adjustment Clerk or to become a new resident in the basement cells in Lubyanka Square.
‘How did you find me?’ he asked.
In response, Mrs Morisov whipped the Homburg hat off Valeri’s head and triumphantly flourished the water-filled bag containing Pink. ‘You were wrong, Aleksandr Nikolaevich Borotkin,’ she said with a smirk. ‘You can microchip a goldfish.’
Steve Sheppard is also the author of the Dawson and Lucy Series - a comedy thriller series like no other. They all make for excellent Christmas presents...
We're excited to share the next episode in our new online series Adaptations and Conversations, in which Katie Isbester (Publisher) and her friend Michelle discuss books, their adaptations to film, TV and theatre, and answer your comments.
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck's classic novel of migration, exploitation and the failure of the American dream was published just before WWII and turned into a movie starring Henry Fonda in 1940. More recently the National Theatre adapted it for the stage and the film of that stage production will be broadcast in December.
It was always a controversial story. The Grapes of Wrath is one of the most banned books in the USA. The movie was one of Hitler's favourites, who saw it several times. It helped to convince him that the USA would not pose much of a threat during the war. And Eleanor Roosevelt while First Lady visited the work camps and declared that she had always believed the Grapes of Wrath to be true. The book helped to legitimate the profound change made to workers' rights.
We'll be having this discussion in the aftermath of the American presidential election, which will undoubtedly affect our conversation.
The link to the YouTube livestream is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcU7guqKCRo
We hope to see you there.
“If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he's poor in hisself, there ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an' maybe he's disappointed that nothin' he can do 'll make him feel rich.”
John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath
