Jean Findlay – författare

C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s celebrated translation of Proust’s A La Recherche du Temps Perdu was first published in 1922 and was a work which would exhaust and consume the translator, leading to his early death at the age of just forty. Joseph Conrad told him, ‘I was more interested and fascinated by your rendering than by Proust’s creation’: some literary figures even felt it was an improvement on the original.From the outside an enigma, Scott Moncrieff left a trail of writings that describe a man expert at living a paradoxical life: fervent Catholic convert and homosexual, gregarious party-goer and deeply lonely, interwar spy in Mussolini’s Italy and public man of letters – a man for whom honour was the most abiding principle. He was a decorated war hero, and his letters home are an unusually light take on day-to-day life on the front. Described as ‘offensively brave’, he was severely injured in 1917 and, convalescing in London, became a lynchpin of literary society – friends with Robert Graves and Noel Coward, enemies with Siegfried Sassoon and in love with Wilfred Owen.Written by Scott Moncrieff’s great-great-niece, Jean Findlay, with exclusive access to the family archive, Chasing Lost Time is a portrait of a man hurled into war, through an era when the world was changing fast and forever, who brought us the greatest epic of time and memory that has ever been written.

These three plays, composed between 1994 and 2004 are linked by the theme of war: actual, remembered or threatened. They are all tragicomic and each written for a strong female lead.

George Heriot, jeweller to King James VI and I, moves with the Court from Edinburgh to London to take over the English throne. It is 1603. Life is a Babel of languages and glittering new wealth. The Scottish court speaks Danish, German, Middle Scots, French and Latin. King James gives Shakespeare his first secure position, and to calm the perfidious religious tensions, he commissions his translation of the Bible.George becomes wealthier than the king as he creates a fashion for hat jewels and mingles with Drummond of Hawthornden, Ben Johnson, Inigo Jones and the mysterious ambassador Luca Von Modrich... However both king and courtier bow before the phenomenal power invested in their wives.

George Heriot, jeweller to King James VI and I, moves with the Court from Edinburgh to London to take over the English throne. It is 1603. Life is a Babel of languages and glittering new wealth. The Scottish court speaks Danish, German, Middle Scots, French and Latin. King James gives Shakespeare his first secure position, and to calm the perfidious religious tensions, he commissions his translation of the Bible.George becomes wealthier than the king as he creates a fashion for hat jewels and mingles with Drummond of Hawthornden, Ben Johnson, Inigo Jones and the mysterious ambassador Luca Von Modrich... However both king and courtier bow before the phenomenal power invested in their wives.

Set against the backdrop of political intrigue, religious conflict and exile, the novel leads to 1620 as young Queen Elizabeth, heavily pregnant with her fifth child, flees Prague following the Battle of White Mountain. Married to Frederick, Elector Palatine, Elizabeth had accepted the crown of Bohemia in a move that would plunge Europe into decades of war. But exile does not diminish her influence. Through court politics, diplomacy and dynastic ambition, Elizabeth continues to shape the future of Europe while giving birth to eight more children, ensuring her descendants become woven into the ruling houses of an emerging continent. She is a survivor, a mother, a leader and a friend of the great philosopher, René Descartes.