Writing Magazine March 2020

MARCH 2020 7

MISCELLANY

http://www.writers-online.co.uk

In a charming – and therefore highly effective – marketing stunt to promote the

new film of Little Women, actor Emma Watson left copies of the book hidden in

public for fans to find.

Emma wrote 2,000 notes by hand, each of which was placed in one of over

100 different editions of the classic novel and hidden somewhere in one of 38

countries around the world. Although Emma was pictured hiding books, and

posted clues to their location on her Instagram, she was, Miscellany’s team of

crack investigators discovered with no small disappointment, not personally

responsible for hiding them all.

She plays Meg in the new film of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel, the

seventh big-screen version of the book.

The stunt was organised by The Book Fairies, a worldwide venture which

encourages readers to pass on books by anonymously hiding them.

News that an immersive theme park is planned for St

Petersburg to celebrate the poetic fairytales of Alexander

Pushkin – due to open in 2023 if you want to start

planning – prompted the Guardian’s Alison Flood to

highlight a number of other literary experiences.

Although we haven’t yet been tempted off the

Miscellany Estate for a trip to the Harry Potter

Studios, let alone the Stateside Wizarding World of

Harry Potter, one or two others caught our eye...

Alison noted Sweden’s Astrid Lindgren World,

which has us twirling our pigtails in excitement, and

the ‘surprisingly not-awful’ Peppa Pig World, but

most tantalising of all is the, sadly theoretical only,

‘dark ride’ planned for Universal Studios Florida

around the works of Stephen King:

‘Part-way through, riders would pull into the

unload station and hear the usual instructions on

how to exit without extensive bodily injury. But the

restraints wouldn’t lift and the ride wasn’t over. A

Shining-sized deluge of blood would flood out of the

exit doors, Pennywise Itself would spring from the

control room and riders would hurtle deeper into the

nightmare/toward the gift shop.’

Sadly, the powers that be concluded that ‘an

attraction requiring a plumbing system for fake blood

might not have the wide appeal they wanted’.

On the hunt

for Little Women

Spy author John le Carré is the latest recipient – one of only a
handful of writers so honoured, and the first for an oeuvre of
fiction alone – of the Olof Palme Prize, given for an outstanding
contribution to social justice, freedom and democracy.
The $100,000 prize is awarded annually in memory of the
Swedish Prime Minister, who was assassinated in 1986.
Le Carré has famously turned down awards, including a
Booker nomination, in the past, believing that literature should
not be a competition, and promised to donate this prize to
Médecins sans Frontières.
The Olof Palme Foundation cited le Carré’s ‘engaging

and humanistic opinion-making in literary form regarding

the freedom of the individual and the fundamental issues

of mankind... urging us to discuss the cynical power games

of the major powers, the greed of global corporations, the

irresponsible play of corrupt politicians with our health and

welfare, the growing spread of international crime, the tension

in the Middle East, and the alarming rise of fascism and

xenophobia in Europe and the United States of America.

The Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spypy author’s most recent novel, author’s most recent novel,

Agent Running in the Fieldieldield, is about collusion between US and , is about collusion between US and

UK security services to undermine the European Union.

Pushkin park

The writer who stayed

out in the cold