BooksBarbecue
Back Limelight
Chapters (49)
  1. Cover
  2. Table of Contents
  3. Also by Graham Hurley
  4. LIMELIGHT
  5. Copyright
  6. Dedication
  7. Epigraph
  8. ONE
  9. TWO
  10. THREE
  11. FOUR
  12. FIVE
  13. SIX
  14. SEVEN
  15. EIGHT
  16. NINE
  17. TEN
  18. ELEVEN
  19. TWELVE
  20. THIRTEEN
  21. FOURTEEN
  22. FIFTEEN
  23. SIXTEEN
  24. SEVENTEEN
  25. EIGHTEEN
  26. NINETEEN
  27. TWENTY
  28. TWENTY-ONE
  29. TWENTY-TWO
  30. TWENTY-THREE
  31. TWENTY-FOUR
  32. TWENTY-FIVE
  33. TWENTY-SIX
  34. TWENTY-SEVEN
  35. TWENTY-EIGHT
  36. TWENTY-NINE
  37. THIRTY
  38. THIRTY-ONE
  39. THIRTY-TWO
  40. THIRTY-THREE
  41. THIRTY-FOUR
  42. THIRTY-FIVE
  43. THIRTY-SIX
  44. THIRTY-SEVEN
  45. THIRTY-EIGHT
  46. THIRTY-NINE
  47. FORTY
  48. FORTY-ONE
  49. AFTERWARDS

Evelyn need not have worried about performance nerves because the evening in the shadowed spaces of St Peter’s Church is a genuine triumph. We attend with Christianne and McFaul, and arrive to find the place already filling up. The festival organizers have installed a lectern on a raised dais in front of the choir stalls. The dais is flanked by an artful collage of Evelyn’s favourite authors, faces that need no introduction, and when she settles behind the microphone with her notes, her face is bathed with a soft spotlight.

A member of the festival’s organizing committee introduces her as the doyenne of London editors, one of literary publishing’s treasures. This accolade brings a tinge of pink to Evelyn’s smile, but the moment she clears her throat, briefly checks her notes, and then peers out at the assembled multitude, I know she has this thing nailed.

All writers, she observes lightly, are control freaks, and her opening doff of the cap to one bestselling author’s reliance on 50,000-word synopses – the infant book’s every breath maniacally detailed – is fond as well as very funny. The audience chuckles in appreciation, the kind of reaction every stage actress prays for, and this sense of immediate companionship sets the tone for what follows. As the minutes speed by, my clever friend shares the highs and lows of three busy decades tucked up with her jar of editing pencils and her stable of écrivains.

All writers, she confirms, are needy and demand a bit of TLC, but so is the readership, and it’s been her pleasure to build a bridge between the two. By now, we’re starting to understand the sheer range of talents a calling like this demands, but the detail is richly delicious. One woman, half-American and still the toast of the Sunday broadsheets, evidently needs an early morning bowl of Thai noodles, fiercely spiked with chilli, to unlock her muse before settling at the PC. Another top-selling scribe, male this time, could never tackle his book’s final pages without spending half a day on top of a London bus. You readers, Evelyn confides softly, owe a great deal to the number 38.