Margins
The Empress of Ireland book cover
The Empress of Ireland
A Chronicle of an Unusual Friendship
2005
First Published
3.89
Average Rating
400
Number of Pages
Christopher Robbins was a down-at-the-heels freelance journalist in London when a "friend"—an expat American drug dealer who masqueraded as a count—linked him up with an elderly gay Irishman, purportedly the "greatest Irish filmmaker ever"—which turned out to be the case. Brian Desmond Hurst had made some thirty films in his eighty years (including A Christmas Carol, Tom Brown's Schooldays, Dangerous Moonlight, Simba, and Playboy of the Western World), and was on close terms with people such as John Ford, Laurence Olivier, Noël Coward, Sean O'Casey, Vanessa Redgrave, and a slew of other notables. Hurst immediately hired the young journalist to write the screenplay for his final work, a biblical epic about the birth of Christ, dubbed "The Box Office Blockbuster"—and subsequently his autobiography—"The Big Bestseller." No reader can fail to become spellbound and laugh-out-loud by the wit, warmth of heart, sense of mischief, Celtic charm, and vast appetite for life present in The Empress of Ireland.
Avg Rating
3.89
Number of Ratings
105
5 STARS
31%
4 STARS
39%
3 STARS
20%
2 STARS
6%
1 STARS
4%
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Author

Christopher Robbins
Christopher Robbins
Author · 10 books

Christopher Robbins began his career in journalism at the age of sixteen when he started writing jazz criticism for the Daily Telegraph. Since then he has written for numerous newspapers and magazines in Britain, Europe and the USA. The Empress of Ireland won the Saga Award for wit, along with exceptional critical acclaim. In Search of Kazakhstan was short-listed for the Authors’ Club Best Travel Book Award 2008 in the UK and (under the title Apples Are From Kazakhstan) for the Best Travel Books of 2008 in the US. Air America, a worldwide bestseller when it was originally published, was made into a film starring Mel Gibson.

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