At Freddie’s

From the Booker Prize-winner of ‘Offshore’ comes this entertaining tale of a chaotic stage school and its singular headmistress. With a new introduction by Simon Callow.

It is the 1960s, in London’s West End, and Freddie is the formidable proprietress of the Temple Stage School. Of unknown age and provenance, Freddie is a skirt-swathed enigma – a woman who by sheer force of character and single-minded thrust has turned herself and her school into a national institution. Anyone who is anyone must know Freddie.

At Freddie’s is a wickedly droll comedy of the theatre and its terminally eccentric devotees.

Reviews

Praise for Penelope Fitzgerald and ‘At Freddie’s’:

‘Reading a Penelope Fitzgerald novel is like being taken for a ride in a peculiar kind of car. Everything is of top quality – the engine, the coachwork and the interior all fill you with confidence. Then, after a mile or so, someone throws the steering-wheel out of the window.’ Sebastian Faulks

‘Wise and ironic, funny and humane, Fitzgerald is a wonderful, wonderful writer.’ David Nicholls

‘The wit is crisp and dry, scenes and characters are deftly skewered. Whether you view the theatre as a noble passion or a wasting disease, you are equally certain to be regaled.’ Guardian

‘Enjoy the knowingness of the awful children, the weary fumblings of the professional actors, the constant witticisms at the expense of pretentious directors. An enjoyable, sharp novel…a delicious refreshment.’ Margaret Forster

About the author

Penelope Fitzgerald was the author of nine novels, three of which – The Bookshop, The Beginning of Spring and The Gate of Angels – were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She won the prize in 1979 for Offshore. A superb biographer and critic, she was also the author of lives of the artist Edward Burne-Jones, the poet Charlotte Mew and The Knox Brothers, a study of her remarkable family.
She died in April 2000.