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Reading lists

7 riveting novels on battles for power

The Table Of Less Valued Knights

Eagerly awaited second novel by the author of Gods Behaving Badly - a deliciously funny peek into one of the dustier corners of Camelot 
 
Longlisted for the 2015 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction

As if Jane Austen were rewriting Terry Pratchett: snorts and chortles plus elegant eyebrow-raising… Bold literary and historical misadventures, told with a twist and a lightness of touch.

The reader can enjoy the same level of affectionate detail that the Pythons brought to Monty Python and the Holy Grail… Phillips clearly delights in the world of [King Arthur] and…subverts fantasy motif in refreshing and absurd ways… Very good fun.

The Table of Less Valued Knights infects Arthurian legend with a brio not seen since Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Very funny… It’s a real joy to read a novel that makes you snort out loud with laughter.

This confirms [Phillips] as a genius comic writer… This is Camelot – but as you have never seen it.

The author bends a lot of historical and literary myths to humourous effect.

Marie Phillips was born in London in 1976. Her first novel, Gods Behaving Badly, was published in 2007. Widely acclaimed, it was translated into over fifteen languages and made into a feature film. She is also the writer, with fellow novelist Robert Hudson, of the BBC Radio 4 series Warhorses of Letters.

Longlisted for the 2015 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 
 
Sir Humphrey du Val of the Table of Less Valued Knights – Camelot's least prestigious table, with one leg shorter than the others so that it has to be propped up with a folded napkin – doesn't do quests ... until he meets Elaine, a damsel in distress with a secret to hide. 
 
Meanwhile, Queen Martha of Puddock is on the run from an arranged marriage to the odious Prince Edwin of Tuft. But an encounter with the Locum of the Lake (standing in for the full-time Lady) leaves her with a quest of her own: to find her missing brother, long believed dead. 
 
The two quests collide, introducing a host of Arthurian misfits, including a freakishly short giant, a twelve-year-old crone, an amorous unicorn, and a magic sword with a mind of her own. 
 
With Gods Behaving Badly Marie Phillips showed that she has a rare gift for comedy, giving the Greek Gods an ingenious contemporary twist. In The Table of Less Valued Knights it's Camelot's turn, and you'll never see a knight in shining armour in the same way again.

Because I am a Girl

EIGHT AUTHORS, EIGHT COUNTRIES, EIGHT UNFORGETTABLE STORIES

Edgy and bold...not your standard do-good, feel-good collection at all

Because I am a girl I am less likely to go to school 
Because I am a girl I am more likely to suffer from malnutrition 
Because I am a girl I am more likely to suffer violence in the home 
Because I am a girl I am more likely to marry and start a family before I reach my twenties. 
 
Eight authors have visited eight different countries and spoken to young women and girls about their lives, struggles and hopes. The result is an extraordinary collection of writings about prejudice, abuse, and neglect, but also about courage, resilience and changing attitudes. 
 
Proceeds from sales of this book will go to PLAN, one of the world's largest child-centered community development organisations.

Gods Behaving Badly

Funny and unpretentious, witty and readable, Gods Behaving Badly lives up to all its potential.

Very, very funny and delightfully original as well as acutely clever in a makes-you-think-about-contemporary-morality-without-realising-it kind of way... this novel will not only make you laugh and give you a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling, it will also provide a good basic grounding in Greek mythology

What makes the novel stand out - and it really does stand out - is its originality and lightness of touch

The Olympians are immortal - this we all know. But it has taken Marie Phillips' wit to put them back where they belong - into a decrepit 21st-century London bedsit. It is all very, very funny...this book charms and provokes in a paragraph. I am writing this in Delphi, dangling my feet in Apollo's sacred spring - the water is said to bring the muse. Phillips clearly has a bottle of it on her desk

Ingeniously imagined and satisfyingly lusty

Funny and unpretentious, witty and readable, Gods Behaving Badly lives up to all it's potential

Marie Phillips was born in London in 1976. She studied anthropology and documentary making, and worked as a TV researcher for several years. More recently she has worked as an independent bookseller whilst writing Gods Behaving Badly.

Being immortal isn't all it's cracked up to be. Life's hard for a Greek god in the 21st century: nobody believes in you any more, even your own family doesn't respect you, and you're stuck in a delapidated hovel in north London with too many siblings and not enough hot water. But for Artemis (goddess of hunting, professional dog walker), Aphrodite (goddess of beauty, telephone sex operator) and Apollo (god of the sun, TV psychic) there's no way out... Until a meek cleaner and her would-be boyfriend come into their lives, and turn the world literally upside down. 
 
Gods Behaving Badly is that rare thing, a charming, funny, utterly original first novel that satisfies the head and the heart.

Robert Hudson

Marie Phillips

Stephen Fry

Daniel Rigby

Tamsin Greig

Full Cast

What an odd delight Warhorses of Letters is. An epistolary equine romance between Napoleon's horse, Marengo (Stephen Fry, below, complete with French accent and smooth manner), and Wellington's (Daniel Rigby, all flirty, youthful campness), it's like Ladies of Letters but with gay horses in love.

The poignant BBC Radio 4 comedy

Stephen Fry, Daniel Rigby and Tamsin Greig star in all three series of the poignant BBC Radio 4 comedy drama. 
 
Warhorses of Letters is the world's finest and best-loved equine, military, epistolary romance, comprising the newly-discovered love letters between two horses united by passion but cruelly divided by conflict. 
 
Set against the sweeping backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, these twelve episodes introduce us to Copenhagen, the Duke of Wellington's frisky young racehorse, and his hero Marengo, the seasoned, famous and just-a-little-bit-short mount of Emperor Napoleon. 
 
From the early days of the Peninsular Campaign to the Battle of Waterloo and its aftermath, we follow our horse heroes as their romance blossoms, their fortunes fluctuate and uncertainty and jealousy put strains on their burgeoning relationship. Can they ever be truly together, or are they doomed to remain sundered by fate? 
 
Written by Robert Hudson and Marie Phillips, this moving, surreal comedy stars Stephen Fry as Marengo and Daniel Rigby as Copenhagen, with Tamsin Greig as the Narrator. Totally unique and utterly entertaining, it will appeal to all lovers of horses, history and humour. Duration: 2 hours 50 mins approx.

Marie Phillips

Praise for Warhorses of Letters: Complete Series 1-3

What an odd delight Warhorses of Letters is. An epistolary equine romance between Napoleon's horse, Marengo (Stephen Fry, below, complete with French accent and smooth manner), and Wellington's (Daniel Rigby, all fl ...

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7 riveting novels on battles for power

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