Bread of Heaven

About the Book

Bread of Heaven is divided into two parts: a diary detailing a year in the life of a man trying to make babies, films and sense out of life, love, sex and sexuality; and a comedy feature film script, written by that same man, in the same year, about the British coalminers' strike of 1984. 'Bread of Heaven' (the film's original title) is used as a metaphor for the ups and downs of life and creativity, and as a symbol for the solidarity of people from different backgrounds in times of trouble. In the diary, the power of love and friendship, the delights and difficulties of sex, the pressures of conception, and the idyll of an Italian writing holiday are all interwoven in fast moving prose that offers humour and insight amid glimpses of despair. In the film, the light and dark sides of the miners' struggle are revealed, when a striking miners' family from Yorkshire goes to stay with a well-to-do, but supportive academic's family in Cambridge; unexpected bonds grow between the two families, as naivety and a budding teenage romance come face to face with the reality of clandestine state violence.

'Richard Woolley has the rare gift of keeping you anxious to know what happens next.'

David Robinson, The Times New Zealand Agent/Distributor: Publishers Distribution Ltd (PDL) Address: 39 Woodside Avenue, Northcote, Auckland 0627, NZ Ph: +64 9 828 2999 Fax: +64 9 828 2399 Email: orders@pubdist.co.nz

About the Author

Richard Woolley has been a filmmaker, performer, musician and academic, and is still an active author and screenwriter. In the 1980s he wrote and directed several films for cinema and TV, re-issued in 2011 by the British Film Institute in a box set entitled An Unflinching Eye. His films include: Telling Tales (1980), Brothers and Sisters (1981) and Girl from the South (1988). He has written four works of fiction, ranging from the historical novel Friends and Enemies (2010) to the futuristic novel Sekabo (2014). He has lived in Berlin, Amsterdam, Hong Kong and New Zealand, as well as in his country of origin, England. He has been Director of the Dutch Film Academy, Dean of Film & Television at the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts and inaugural holder of the Greg Dyke Chair of Film & Television at the University of York. He now devotes his time to writing.