Distant Music

by Charlotte Bingham

Elsie Lanchester is the granddaughter of a hardened old professional actress who runs a seaside boarding house. Elsie is "discovered" in the provinces by Portly Cosgrove, but is sacked by Portly's partner, who runs off with their assets. She then meets and falls in love with Oliver.

Genres: Fiction

576 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2002

About the author

The Honourable Charlotte Mary Thérèse Bingham was born on 29 June 1942 in Haywards Heath, Sussex, England, UK. Her father, John Bingham, the 7th Baron Clanmorris, wrote detective stories and was a secret member of MI5. Her mother, Madeleine Bingham, née Madeleine Mary Ebel, was a playwright. Charlotte first attended a school in London, but from the age of seven to 16, she went to the Priory of Our Lady's Good Counsel school in Haywards Heath. After she left school, she went to stay in Paris with some French aristocrats with the intention of learning French. She had written since she was 10 years old and her first piece of work was a thriller called Death's Ticket. She wrote her humorous autobiography, called Coronet Among the Weeds, when she was 19, and not long before her twentieth birthday a literary agent discovered her celebrating at the Ritz. He was a friend of her parents and he took off the finished manuscript of her autobiography. In 1963, this was published by Heinemanns and was a best seller.

In 1966, Charlotte Bingham's first novel, called Lucinda, was published. This was later adapted into a TV screenplay. In 1972, Coronet Among the Grass, her second autobiography, was published. This talked about the first ten years of her marriage to fellow writer Terence Brady. They couple, who have two children, later adapted Coronet Among the Grass and Coronet Among the Weeds, into the TV sitcom No, Honestly. She and her husband, Terence Brady, wrote three early episodes of Upstairs, Downstairs together, Board Wages, I Dies from Love and Out of the Everywhere. They later wrote an accompanying book called Rose's Story. They also wrote the episodes of Take Three Girls featuring Victoria (Liza Goddard). In the 1970s Brady and Bingham wrote episodes for the TV series Play for Today, Three Comedies of Marriage, Yes, Honestly and Robin's Nest. During the 1980s and 1990s they continued to write for the occasional TV series, and in 1993 adapted Jilly Cooper's novel Riders for the small screen. Since the 1980s she has become a romance novelist. In 1996 she won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award from the Romantic Novelists' Association.

Reviews

[Susan Jones · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awful. No story, terrible characters, badly written I thought. Gave up.

[Christine Roff · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very slow start to this book, I was so close to ditching it and skim read bits of the first few hundred pages. It did get better in the second half, but two of the main characters, who were likeable in the beginning, became so self centered, it was hard to be too fond of them. Written about a time after the 2nd world war, it was interesting to consider how theatre actors thought about television and tv acting when it first started to make it's mark. While I did enjoy the last part of the book, I still probably wouldn't recommend it, there are far better books to read.

[Lisa Johnson · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't enjoy this book at all, it never really got anywhere and none of the characters were likeable

[Denise]

Well a third through and not much has happened. Alright later on. Learnt quite a bit about the acting profession, agents and all that, that I did not know about.

[Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A novel set just after WW 11 in England gives us a window into the life of the theatre, at a time when television is perceived as a threat to live drama. The author has researched her subject well and we begin to see the aspirations of would be actors & actresses, the pressures of the directors and the demands of the agents, from desperate poverty to the very wealthy, all trying to follow their dreams. Coco doesn't really want to act - she wants to design costumes, Elsie who has been reared on her grandmother's failed dreams to make the big-time and now runs a boarding house for theatrical hopefuls and Oliver the youngest of 3 boys, whose family don't consider acting a 'career'; all combine to give us a page-turning, exciting story of a life that many of us know little about. I'm very glad that I picked up this book by accident to read, as probably I wouldn't have chosen it otherwise.

[Angie Swain · Rating 1 out of 5]

I usually like Charlotte Bingham's books but just could not get into this one. I found the story uninspiring and almost as though I had read something very similar before.

[Frances · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not her best but still a good read- as always

[Annette Jellyman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring.

[Annette · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book