As Lucy Prebble's Enron transfers to the West End, read Alan's interviewwith director Rupert Goold.
Saturday 12 September: Exclusive on Ted Hughes.
Alan breaks a great story right back from postwar London,when art school graduate Jim Downer gave illustrations for a children’s book to a friend he lived with, Ted Hughes, who promised to 'take a look'. The project seemed to die, the friends moved on. Now, more than 50 years later, the book – complete with Hughes’s verse – is finally to be published. Alan talked to Downer about this lost Hughes work, and the remarkable bohemian world that was their 18 Rugby Street home The full story is here.
Read Alan Franks on the on the art of creative writing in the new section of his website that will be devoted to his many plays and other fiction.
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Saturday 7 February
Read Alan's interview with the 'French Sinatra'
Charles Aznavour
This video shows Charles Aznavour and Celine Dion dueting on his new album, Duos. Alan went to Paris last month to interview Aznavour, the French Sinatra. Read it all here..
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Below is Alan and Patty's song about the last crash on Wall Street, strangely pertinent to today's financial crisis: 'The Day it Started Raining Millionaires on Wall Street.'
Saxophonist Tim Whitehead and soprano Kathleen Willison recently sang new jazz songs
written by Tim and Alan at Bedales Arts. Tim is currently artist in residence at Tate Britain., a project supported by the Leverhulme Trust. Alan will be contributing some of the 'words' to the final art/performance show, about musical 'colour'.
This is one of the songs they sang, with lyrics by Alan: