Praise for The Last Matchmaker
The Last Matchmaker, just published by Little Brown’s Sphere imprint, has been getting good reviews from the broadsheet press, alongside praise for Philip’s particular skill in capturing the voices of the people he works and writes with. On 14th January, The Times, in a feature article about Willie Daly called ‘You have to find the magic’, wrote that “Willie’s book may have been ghostwritten but it is all him: the pages conjure an Ireland which many believed had vanished along with the fairies he describes.’ And The Irish Times also pointed out that ‘the stories of his matchmaking life, which, as he says, Philip Dodd has helped him put on paper, retain the flavour of the spoken word and a nice turn of phrase.’
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Great news. BBC Radio 4 have picked The Last Matchmaker, by Willie Daly with Philip Dodd (see previous News item) as their Book of the Week for the week starting Monday 4th January. A great thumbs-up for the book, and a wonderful boost on publication in January. We hope all philipdodd.com readers will make it a point of honour to boost the programme’s listening figures by tuning in live on 4th January, or streaming online or via the BBC’s Listen Again option. Oh, and do buy the book for anyone you know who’s looking for love…
The latest book from Philip is published in January by Little, Brown (who published Things Ain’t What They Used To Be last autumn). The Last Matchmaker, by Willie Daly with Philip Dodd, is, in the publishers’ words, ‘the heart-warming true story of the man who brought love to Ireland’. Think Ballykissangel meets Heartbeat crossed with The Horse Whisperer. 
August is drawing to a close. C’est la rentrée… Here’s a quick scoot round current activities. Philip has spent most of the front end of 2009 working on a book for Little, Brown which will be published in February 2010 - full news on that title to follow. Along the way he wrote the text for two new Genesis box sets, one covering the band’s live recordings on CD, the second the best of their live DVDs: the first set is due out in September. Oh, and in July, he was asked to create the text for A Life In The Spotlight, a Michael Jackson tribute produced by Getty Images’ Endeavour Books for Editions Gründ in France. More on all fronts very soon.
Sad news of the deaths of a number of friends and acquaintances of this site, including Joe D. Hawes, one of the stars of The Reverend Guppy’s Aquarium (pictured left), Publishing News co-founder Fred Newman, Mitch Mitchell, the drummer of the Hendrix Experience, and Rick Wright of Pink Floyd. 
Over the past few weeks Philip Glenister has been out and about promoting Things Ain’t What They Used To Be – and for some reason every single interviewer has been obsessed with Curly Wurlies! 
Great news: the Richard & Judy Book Club have selected The Book Of Islands for this year’s Christmas book list. Their book club has of course been one of the most successful retail platforms for books over the past few years. 
Just out from Little, Brown is Philip Glenister’s Things Ain’t What They Used To Be, edited by Philip Dodd, an affectionate and witty look back to growing up in the 1970s and 1980s. Philip Glenister, for those of you who may have been visiting a distant planet over the past few years, is the actor who plays DCI Gene Hunt in the fabulous BBC1 series Life On Mars and its sequel Ashes To Ashes (the new series of which is being filmed right now). Although the book taps into the nostalgia for the 70s and 80s which is such an element of both programmes, Things Ain’t is not a Gene Hunt book, but very much a Philip Glenister one, drawing on his personal memories and observations. 
The Book Of Islands, by Philip Dodd and Ben Donald, has just been released in the UK by Palazzo Editions. It’s the sister volume to Philip and Ben’s 2004 Book Of Cities, this time a tour of 200 of the world’s most intriguing islands – starting on the International Date Line and spinning west around the globe, from Tonga and the Chatham Islands onwards. 
It’s been a busy few months: just after finishing the writing for The Book Of Islands, Philip was asked to work with Philip Glenister on Things Ain’t What They Used To Be, which was an intensive few months of work. That, combined with relocating permanently to Rochester in Kent, has meant the news page has been neglected. So from now on expect regular updates including news on the publication of Things Ain’t, Islands and the paperback editions of Mamma Mia! and The Reverend Guppy’s Aquarium.