Folk

by Nell Leyshon

Nominated for an Olivier Award 2022

"I'll tell you one more thing. I got more songs in my head than I ever told you. I got enough to sing for days..."

1903, Somerset. Rooted in the land where she has lived her entire life, Louie Hooper's mind overflows with its songs – more than 300 of them passed down from her mother. Cecil Sharp, a composer visiting from London, fears England's folk songs will be lost forever and sets out on a mission to transcribe each and every one. He believes Louie's music should speak not just for this place but for the whole of England.

Nell Leyshon's Olivier Award-nominated play with songs originally heard on BBC Radio before a sold-out, highly acclaimed run at London's Hampstead Theatre. The production was revived in June 2022 due to popular demand.

80 pages, Paperback

Published August 5, 2022

About the author

Nell Leyshon is a British playwright and novelist born in Glastonbury, Somerset. At the age of eleven, she moved to a small farming village on the edge of the Somerset Levels. Her first attempts at novels were with a baby on her lap. She burned a lot of the early writing, and finally started on Black Dirt, which was her first published novel.

While struggling to write prose, she got a commission from BBC Radio 4 to write a radio drama, "Milk", which won the Richard Imison Award for best first radio play. Her second play, The Farm, was runner up for the Meyer Whitworth Award.

Her novel, Black Dirt was published in 2005 and was long-listed for the Orange Prize and runner up for the Commonwealth Prize.

Her third novel, The Colour of Milk, was published in May 2012 and has won the Prix de l’Union Interalliee and was nominated for the Prix Femina in France and was was voted the book of the year in Spain. Her most recent novel, "Memoirs of a Dipper" was published in 2015.