Category: 5. Entertainment

He would go on to write The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, two of the greatest English poems.

But in a letter written when he was 22, Samuel Taylor Coleridge revealed he was contemplating packing it all in and fading into obscurity.

The letter, which is being offered for sale by the London rare books and manuscripts dealer Bernard Quaritch, details his low mood and disappointment in love, and appears to allude to an opium addiction.

The young Coleridge writes he is finishing a work of “consequence”, believed to be his long philosophical-political poem Religious Musings.

But he adds that he is planning to “bid farewell forever” to the stress of writing. “I mean to retire into obscure inactivity, where my feelings may stagnate into peace,” he writes.

Donovan Rees, the head of English books and manuscripts at Bernard Quaritch, described it as a “sliding doors moment” for Coleridge.

Rees said: “If his friends hadn’t stepped in at the right time, and taken him off to Bristol and to his future meeting with William Wordsworth, it is entirely possible his genius would never have revealed itself, and that his depression and laudanum addiction could have led to a very different fate.

“Certainly on the basis of what he had published up to that point he would have only been a footnote in the history of English poetry.”

The letter was written to his friend George Dyer, a leading English radical who championed the young Coleridge, in January 1795, shortly after he left the University of Cambridge.

It almost certainly alludes to Coleridge’s infatuation with Mary Evans, with whom he had been in love since his schooldays. The news of her engagement to another man brought “bitter disappointment” – as he puts it in the letter.

In what may be allusions to both lost love and opium, he says in the letter: “My delirious imagination had early concentrated all hopes of happiness in one point – an unattainable point! This circumstance has produced a dreaminess of mind, which too often makes me forgetful of others’ feelings.”

He thanks Dyer for “a very flattering review of a very indifferent composition of mine”, The Fall of Robespierre, a three-act play that Coleridge and Robert Southey wrote with the intention of raising funds for “pantisocracy”. This was a scheme to found a commune in rural Pennsylvania with 12 men and 12 women who would marry and bring up their children in an equal society without private property.

Coleridge is deprecating about some of his first poems, published in the newspaper the Morning Chronicle, though writes that two are “not so bad as the rest”.

Soon after writing the letter, he headed to south-west England and met Wordsworth. In 1798, the pair published a joint volume of poetry, Lyrical Ballads, considered to be a starting point for the English romantic age.

A standout in the collection was Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In 1797, Coleridge put his quill pen down on the wondrous Kubla Khan, which he apparently wrote after experiencing an opium-influenced dream.

Rees said it was possible Coleridge was being a little dramatic in the letter. “There is clearly an element of performance – Coleridge is writing to an older and more experienced man whose opinion he very much respected.

“I think we see two sides of Coleridge here. He is both fishing for compliments and yet also self-critical and not satisfied with what he has written so far.

“Luckily Dyer does seem to have risen to the occasion and provided Coleridge with enough encouragement that he didn’t retire into obscurity. His was a candle destined to burn bright and hard, not to fade and gutter.”

The Coleridge letter, which has a price tag of £10,000, is one of 80 items in Bernard Quaritch’s new catalogue of English books and manuscripts from 1500 to 1840.

Devon Powers says there is one significant data point no one has considered in the debate around 2025’s Song of the Summer, or rather, why there doesn’t really seem to be one this year: Donald Trump.

As media has become less centralized—music streamers replaced radio stations, TikTok killed the music video, and so on—how people consume music, and who they listen to, has become even more fragmented. But today, Trump represents a reawakened avatar of cultural togetherness. He may be the closest thing in our society we have to a monoculture. In the US, he is the one thing a majority of people have all fervently rallied around, be they for or against what he stands for.

His influence reaches far beyond the fractured political arena of Washington, DC, Powers says, and he could be having an effect on even the music charts. One of the reasons there is no song of the summer this year “may have to do with Trump in a weird way,” a figure whose shadow looms large and has everything “to do with the changing cultural dominant.”

“There was a lot of discussion towards the end of the election season and right after Trump got elected about did country music sort of predict Trump. And I think that there is something to that. There are now more conservative touch points in culture that people can’t really ignore the way that they were before,” she says, mentioning the Paramount+ show Yellowstone, the return of trad wives in pop discourse, and the MAHA movement. “It all fits into that.”

But there are also other culminating factors—a perfect storm of circumstances—that have contributed to an unpredictable summer for music.

For one, listening habits are again shifting on streaming services like Spotify and SoundCloud, where tastes are growing more eclectic, people are venturing outside their comfort zones, and loyalty to any one genre seems to be a dying trend. The industry is also suffering from what has amounted to an authenticity crisis over creative authorship as streamers are being inundated with AI slop, which has become a genre all its own. Then there’s the Trump of it all, whose domineering influence may represent a new version of monoculture that not even the music industry can evade.

Powers, who is a professor of media studies at the University of Michigan and author of On Trend: The Business of Forecasting the Future, says his influence could, in fact, be having an effect on the music charts. She’s not far off either. According to Luminate’s midyear survey on music trends, released last month, more music is being streamed than ever before, but overall growth has slowed globally.

In spite of that, Christian music is on the rise. The genre is evolving fast, both in how it’s defined and how it’s discovered.

“Traditionally, it existed in a fairly closed ecosystem, with limited distribution, niche promotion channels, and a very specific audience, especially in radio and retail,” says JJ Italiano, head of global music curation and discovery at Spotify. “But as younger, streaming-native listeners have become more dominant, there’s been room for a new wave of Christian and faith-driven artists to explore a broader sound.”

Prince Andrew lost his virginity when he was aged 11, a new biography has claimed.

It is one of a number of explosive claims made in a new biography of the Duke of York and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson by Andrew Lownie.

Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York covers Andrew’s life including sexual escapades and further ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

The Royal Family have allegedly tried to have the book banned. It is due to be released later this month.

In the biography, the author claims the prince lost his virginity aged just 11 and had a number of other sexual experiences before he turned 13.

The book alleges it became a moment he “realised that he was obsessed with women”.

It also claims that by the time Andrew became a teenager, he had already slept with “more than half a dozen girls”.

Referred to as “Randy Andy” in the media in the past, people close to him have suggested these encounters may have shaped the person he became.

According to the biographer, the young royal’s early sexual encounters “perhaps explains some of the behaviour later on”, with another source also agreeing that it “might be the root of Andrew’s problems.”

A synopsis of the new book claims: “Based on years of investigation, extensive Freedom of Information requests and more than a hundred interviews with previously silent sources, acclaimed royal expert Andrew Lownie delivers an authoritative and deeply revealing dual portrait of the Duke and Duchess, whose lives and relationship have been marked by privilege, controversy, and public fascination.”

The Black Keys believe Oasis have “transformed the continent.”

Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, who make up the rock duo – played Manchester’s Sounds of the City festival last month, just two days before Oasis’ first homecoming gig at Heaton Park.

Speaking of the Wonderwall hitmakers’ concert, Dan told The Sun newspaper: “The atmosphere was electric. Our audience was so up for it.”

“I feel like they’ve transformed the continent. We’ve never seen anything like it,” he added.

During the Wild Child rockers’ time in Manchester, Dan also visited the Oasis Adidas store. “I had one of the black soccer jerseys made — Oasis on the front and AUERBACH on the back. Had to do it, man, they’re the kings,” he said.

The Black Keys have written three songs with Noel Gallagher in 2023 and have performed with Liam Gallagher as well so they couldn’t be happier over the reunion of the brothers for an Oasis comeback tour.

“It was amazing. We just sat in a circle with our instruments and we worked things up from nowhere. Not too long after that we played a song with Liam [in Milan] and hung out with him afterwards. He gave us some really good advice about our setlist,” Dan told the outlet, as he recalled his interaction with Oasis.

“Noel and Liam are both incredible — we’re really happy for them,” he concluded. 

Journalist Bryony Gordon, a close friend of Meghan Markle, has expressed her frustration with the way the Duchess of Sussex has been treated by the press and public, comparing it to the experiences of other members of the Royal Family. 

Gordon’s comments come amid the serialisation of a new book by royal biographer Andrew Lownie, which makes damaging claims about Prince Andrew’s alleged conduct over several decades.

Gordon first met Meghan in 2018 at a Royal Foundation event, where she was chairing a panel for Heads Together, a mental health initiative supported by the young royals. 

She recalled being warmly greeted by Meghan, who gave her a “big old bear hug” that put her at ease in a room filled with royals and photographers. 

“Meghan’s down-to-earth demeanour worked like a charm,” Gordon wrote, adding that it helped calm the nerves of the other guests, many of whom were charity workers attending their first royal engagement.

Since that initial meeting, Gordon and Meghan have stayed in touch, sharing lunches, visiting charitable projects, and even spending time together at the Duchess’s homes in Frogmore Cottage and Montecito. 

With each interaction, Gordon said she has been left baffled by what she views as the harsh treatment Meghan received from the press and public, compared to others in the Royal Family. 

“Can you blame the couple for wanting to escape the peculiar prison of royal life?” Gordon asked, referencing the scrutiny Meghan and Prince Harry faced.

Gordon’s comments highlight the perceived double standards in the way the Royal Family handles controversy. While Prince Andrew was stripped of his military titles and royal patronages in 2022 following public pressure and a legal settlement, Meghan has faced intense scrutiny for her actions as a royal. 

Queen Elizabeth II publicly supported the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s departure from royal life, issuing a statement in January 2020 that expressed her understanding of their desire for a more independent life.

BBC/BANIJAY RIGHT/KUDOS

BBC/BANIJAY RIGHT/KUDOS

BBC/BANIJAY RIGHT/KUDOS

PA Media

More than a third (36%) of people have had a row with a neighbour, according to research involving users of a property website.

Curtain twitching (70%), noise (78%) and parking spot poachers (71%) are among people’s top annoyances, according to Rightmove’s survey of more than 1,200 people, including homeowners and renters.

Neighbour behaviours deemed to be the biggest red flags were asking for Wi-Fi passwords (87%) and overflowing bins (71%).

Young adults aged 18 to 34 are particularly sensitive to noisy (82%) and nosey neighbours (73%), the research indicated.

People aged 55 and over (39%) and those living in the South East of England (42%) are particularly likely to have had disagreements with other locals, according to the study.

Avoiding neighbourhood disagreements is a top priority for six in 10 (60%) people when moving home, rising to nearly seven in 10 (69%) among people living in the East Midlands.

Prospective buyers are taking extra steps to dodge potential problems, including driving by the property at different times of the day to check for issues (59%), expanding their area search (58%), and checking local community groups online for any disputes (43%), Rightmove’s survey, carried out in May, found.

Colleen Babcock, a property expert at Rightmove said: “Neighbourly disputes are an inevitable part of community life, but our research highlights just how significantly these everyday annoyances can influence people’s decisions when moving home.”

Mary-Lou Press, president of NAEA (National Association of Estate Agents) Propertymark, said: “When buying a property, it can be essential to spend time researching and learning more about the immediate area that surrounds it.

“In addition to a comprehensive and physical look around the local vicinity during the day, the weekend and/or the evening, it can be helpful to strike up conversations with people, such as surrounding neighbours, if the opportunity arises.

“Online snippets of information might also help you make a better decision too, such as checking the rate of crime in a particular neighbourhood, the performance of schools and health-related services, or even running a car insurance quote to help with your financial planning.”

Erik Charlotte VonSosen has always talked of her craft in a nonchalant fashion.

I’ve often witnessed this whenever I see the L.A.-based designer. We go somewhere, maybe a crowded house party or a flea market, and someone strikes up a conversation. They may be a stylist, an industry insider or simply a courageous flirt, but a compliment on what Charlotte is wearing is inevitable. Sometimes she’s wearing a tightly laced corset, a wool minidress or a methodical two-piece set. But either way, she quickly responds to the flattery with a return compliment, an unpretentious, “Thanks, I made it,” and moves the conversation forward.

Though ever-changing, Charlotte’s stylistic instincts were clear from early on in our friendship. Her brows are almost always freshly bleached. A Victorian cameo typically clings to her neck as a choker and her industrial ’90s Jean Paul Gaultier handbag punctuates her daily wardrobe.

A few years ago, we took an art class together where she created an entire corset dress to simply use as a canvas. (The rest of us had settled for paper.) For our final critique, I offered to help lug her sewing mannequin across campus. As I fought gravity and refused to let the white fabric drag, my gut was telling me I had a front-row seat to what was developing into an undeniable, fashion-forward vocation.

Once the 24-year-old designer began sharing her clothing online, a little over a year ago, things started to change. With her Art Deco fireplace as a backdrop and an iPhone perched on a tripod, she stunned the internet with her outlandish silhouettes, statuesque poses and high-fashion innovation.

Her avant-garde exaggerated ruffles, engulfing puff sleeves and sporadic seafarer motifs have since been fast-tracked into the world of celebrity stylists, red carpets, music video sets and the stages of touring musicians. Emma Chamberlain, Christina Aguilera and Richie Shazam alike have been crowned with Charlotte’s signature sailor hats. The musicians Marina, formerly of the Diamonds, and Rebecca Black have both ordered custom looks — Marina put in for a brocade corset and taffeta bubble skirt to wear on Coachella’s main stage, and Black indulged her sailor-bride fantasies at the American Music Awards.

Many understand Los Angeles fashion as a scene that depends on fast trends and lengthy lines outside of sneaker stores. But as a born-and-raised Californian, Charlotte wants to satisfy the sprawling city’s need for extravagance.

“I don’t think I should have to move to make the rest of the fashion world or anyone feel more comfortable. L.A. has so much untapped talent that’s hiding because people think fashion in L.A. is a monolith of hype and trends,” said Charlotte.

I pick up Charlotte from her off-Wilshire apartment, like usual. She’s wearing overalls, half undone, oversize glasses, her golden hair tossed up in a messy bun with a stuffed sketchbook in hand. We set out to go fabric shopping at Fabric Planet in Venice. She’s on a mission to create an all-white lace look, complete with a bonnet, puffy sleeves and feathers, for her own creative fulfillment.

Cerys Davies: When you are making something for yourself, how does your creative process start?

Erik Charlotte: I will only start drawing when I have an idea. Sometimes a building I saw or someone on the street will catch my eye. I let the thought marinate for a few days, or I’ll write it down in my notes. Or an idea will come to me really quick. And then, if I don’t have my sketchbook, I’ll sketch it here.

Surrounded by bolts of fabric, she whips out her phone and swipes through a series of finger-drawn sketches in her notes app.

I only have a couple minutes to sketch before the idea changes. It needs to be as pure as possible. Sometimes, I’ll even get out of the shower to sketch something.

CD: It seems like you have a constant flow of ideas coming out of you. How do you know when it’s done living in your sketchbook?

EC: Once it becomes the most exciting idea. There’s always a couple things on standby.

The look [we are shopping for] has a lot of elements that I’m familiar with, like the puff-sleeve job, the bonnet and the inclusion of feathers. It’s all elements that I’ve already attempted and really liked — so, I’m Frankensteining them.

She lands on six different kinds of white lace, with plans to layer them. An employee comes up to double–check that she only wants one yard of each pattern.

I’ll give myself a challenge: One yard of each and they’re all really different textures — maybe each sleeve puff might even be different.

I like when things are so different that they can’t be replicated. Honestly, [with my work] things really can’t be, because there’s always tiny splotches of blood on my corsets’ lining. It’s such a physical labor that I’ll break half my nails or my hands will be full of cuts.

She opens her hands up to me, revealing Band-Aids and well-formed callouses.

For some reason, I can only cut with my left hand. I do everything else with my right hand.

CD: Have you always been like that? Ever since kindergarten?

EC: Yeah, they thought I was ambidextrous. But I could only use my left when using scissors. It’s strangely helpful, because I can position fabric and then cut it perfectly.

CD: That’s hilarious. It’s almost like cutting fabric is innate to you.

We continue to circle the racks with no real goal — looking for something that strikes up inspiration. Charlotte lands on a fabric with a white background, detailed with fine line drawings in blue.

EC: I’ve always wanted to do something with this, but Moschino has something similar. I don’t want to be too matchy-matchy.

CD: Is that something you think about a lot?

EC: I am influenced by a lot of people, but I don’t want to ever create something that looks exactly the same as something else. I get kind of paranoid sometimes because there’s always a billion things in my head. I actually have this whole crusade against Pinterest. I never use Pinterest, and I don’t do mood boards either, which is uncommon.

I want what I create to be translated exactly from the way I see things. If I were inspired by a fountain or a landmark, I wouldn’t be looking at pictures of it. I’m inspired by what it looks like in my brain. That’s what I’m putting on the page. I’m not looking at pictures of it and going back and forth. I’m thinking, what’s my mental recollection of this?

We keep doing laps around the store. She digs through the scraps and dreams of making a swimsuit. She grabs a zipper and spool of thread. Her eyes linger on the shelves of silks. A gray plaid sticks out. In the blink of an eye, she’s handing it to an employee and asking for six yards. She has a vision of making it into a skirt and wearing it to the bar that very night.

EC: Now I’m feeling a bit over budget.

The original budget was $300.

CD: What’s your final guess?

EC: I think it’ll be around $360, just because of the silk.

The final total was $359.61.

We make the journey back to her rent-controlled apartment. Every inch of the couch is piled high with pinstripe bustles and mountains of sailor hats. She lays out the plaid and begins to craft her outfit for the night. In between pinning every inch, she tells me about how her grandma taught her the sewing basics at 15, as she had dreams of being a drag queen.

CD: Do you consider yourself to be self-taught?

EC: For sure. It manifests in my technique studies, because I don’t know school-taught techniques. A lot of times people will ask me how I did a certain thing, and I don’t have an answer for them.

CD: Does being self-taught ever cause any tension within yourself and your work?

EC: Sometimes I get insecure about it. When a stitch isn’t working, or I mess up the seam, I’ll delegitimize myself a little bit and think I’m a fraud because I’m having people pay me for this. But sometimes it can be a real learning opportunity.

CD: How do you think your roots in drag culture informs what you create today?

EC: It’s where I get my affinity for exaggeration. I love an exaggerated silhouette. I always pattern my corsets with an exaggerated hip shape, because that’s the drag definition of what femininity looks like. I don’t think it’s my definition of femininity anymore, as a trans woman, but having that exaggeration still live somewhere in my work is a testament to drag culture. It’s how I spent my teenage years.

There are also so many queens who don’t know how to sew and can still do a whole re-creation of a Met Gala look with hot glue. In drag, you can do so much with such little material or proper experience. There’s no guidebook on what to do. I bring that same approach to fashion.

CD: Thinking back to your drag days, did you ever think you would end up as a designer?

EC: Not really. I was really set on doing drag. When I first moved to L.A., all I wanted to do was perform. But once I started my transition, I realized it wasn’t drag that I wanted. It was the womanhood and the power. The whole reason I was still doing it was because I loved being able to make the clothes. It was the only excuse I had to wear the clothes and keep presenting feminine. So, when I transitioned, I didn’t need an excuse. I could just start making what I wanted to and it didn’t have to be a costume anymore.

CD: How do you think your relationship to creating clothes has evolved since then?

EC: It almost feels like a calling or a necessity. Before it really felt like a hobby, I was so focused on getting my degree and trying to figure out how to be a person, but now my relationship to it is almost primal. I can’t imagine doing anything else. The thought of not being able to sell or make clothes is devastating. I know it sounds like it’s not that deep, but it is for me.

CD: Is it fair to say you’ve been reaching your goals faster than expected?

EC: I can’t believe that this is all real. It’s crazy — this is all stuff that I make in my apartment. But on the other hand, my vision for what I want has always been so clear in every decision that I make. Everything is really intentional, from the stylists I work with to the types of jobs I take on.

This has been my dream for a really long time. I’m in this dream, but I’m in the dream with a map. I have a general sense of where I’m going. It is definitely surprising and not what I would have expected, timeline-wise. It’s insane to be 24 years old and think that I need an assistant. But I don’t dwell on the surprise. Instead, I just take it in stride and keep aiming higher. It’s not even out of necessity per se, but more out of desire. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with dreaming a little bit bigger.

As Karin Slaughter talks about her new thriller book series, “We Are All Guilty Here,” she’s equally wry, reflective and ready take off on a whole new level.

Her success is formidable: 24 novels have sold more than 40 million copies and been translated into 120 languages. They include the Grant County series featuring Sara Linton, a small-town pediatrician and medical examiner, which was followed by another centering on the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Will Trent. The Will Trent series is the basis for the hit ABC TV series starring Ramón Rodriguez that was recently renewed for Season 4. Add to that a half dozen standalones, including “Pieces of Her,” adapted into a 2022 Netflix series starring Toni Collette, and an upcoming Peacock adaptation of “The Good Daughter,” and Slaughter’s rise to the present moment makes sense.

Two things are striking when talking to Slaughter over Zoom from her second home near the small town of Blue Ridge, Ga.: One, the massive deep-purple bookshelves that cover the entire back wall of her office and almost dwarf the petite writer do not resemble the brag walls I’ve seen in some writers’ offices. Slaughter’s bookcase — which she reveals she designed herself — includes work by Southern writers she admires and champions. (More on that later.) Two, she seems very much at ease as she prepares to launch the new book in the midst of a grueling schedule to bring “The Good Daughter” to the small screen as a limited series next year.

Pretty impressive for a writer who mentions that, early on, she sold only three books at a book conference where she appeared alongside the late mystery legend Mary Higgins Clark, who sold “about 12,000 books.” Slaughter laughs at her exaggeration, but it’s clear that it was a humbling experience. “I was sneaking out the back with my tail between my legs,” she remembers, “and Mary caught up to me, took some cash out of her wallet and said, ‘I want to buy one of your books.’” It was an act of generosity that Slaughter has paid forward many times over as she’s bought the books of lesser-known writers and championed their work, both in the U.S. and the U.K. But Southern writers are where Slaughter’s heart is, her face lighting up as she talks about her favorites.

“My life changed when I read Flannery O’Connor,” she explains. “I was a very strange little girl who didn’t quite fit in and who wrote these really jarring, sometimes violent stories. The early ones were about my sisters being murdered or kidnapped or just disappearing. And the happy ending was always that I became an only child!” Joking aside, she adds, “People were telling me I was weird, that what I was doing wasn’t very ‘ladylike.’” But when a local librarian put a book of Flannery O’Connor short stories in her hands, something shifted.

“I was like, ‘Wait a minute!” she says. “O’Connor was very weird; she lived in a small Southern town like me. She never fit in. And she was famous for writing these short stories. She created a whole freaking genre!”

Later, reading Alice Walker, young Slaughter gained a deeper understanding of a world where slavery wasn’t as romantic as “Gone With the Wind” had led her to believe. “Walker’s writing was so eye-opening for me. That world was never presented to me, a little middle-class white child living in the South.”

The Atlanta child murders from 1979-81 had an equally profound impact on the fledgling writer, a voracious reader of novels across all genres. “It made me very aware of crime,” she says. “And not just the crime itself, but how it changes communities and people, even in my idyllic small town.”

How small was her hometown of Jonesboro in those days? “When I was growing up, there was a guy on the corner of our street who had been convicted of being a pedophile. Story was, he wasn’t sent to prison because he was a family man, and the prosecutors didn’t want to ruin his life.” Her fingers make air quotes to emphasize the irony of the perpetrator being favored over his victims, an injustice she’d rectify decades later in her fiction.

But the Atlanta child murders gripped the city and outlying suburbs like Jonesboro and changed her community’s worldview. “Before, we looked at bad people as ‘different,’ as a shaggy-haired stranger when we should have been looking at the guy on the corner,” Slaughter says.

She explores that truth in “We Are All Guilty Here.” Teenaged Madison Dalrymple, itching to escape with bestie Cheyenne Baker to the glamorous life in 2011 Atlanta, hates everything about her small hometown North Falls, including 70-year old Sheriff Gerald Clifton, whose “great-great — however many greats — grandfather” was a founding father of the county. The Cliftons, especially Gerald, are treated like royalty by residents: “Madison’s dad joked that everybody who wasn’t a Clifton either worked for the Cliftons or had been arrested by the Cliftons.”

Gerald’s daughter, Emmy, 30, is a sheriff’s deputy working the town’s Fourth of July fireworks show while trying to shake off an argument with her ne’er-do-well husband. In the process, she brushes off Madison, who seems desperate to talk. Hours later, Madison is missing, and a guilt-ridden Emmy, led by her father, joins other deputies racing against the clock to unravel the whereabouts of Madison and Cheyenne — with tragic results.

Like many of Slaughter’s novels, “We Are All Guilty Here” is not for the squeamish — she is steadfast in her mission to realistically depict violence against women as a way of warning them about the dangers that can lurk in even the most trusting of relationships. And it wouldn’t be a Karin Slaughter thriller without a few twists, not the least of which is a time jump from the disappearance of the girls until a second disappearance in North Falls 12 years later upends assumptions about the perpetrator of the first crimes and kicks off a new investigation involving an older and wiser Emmy and her son Cole, also a deputy sheriff, as well as Jude Archer, a mysterious, recently retired FBI profiler come to town to consult on the new investigation. It’s a structure that shows off the veteran crime writer’s meticulous plotting of a lot more than the crimes at hand.

“I planned all of it from the beginning,” she admits, relishing a discussion of some of the subtleties of the Clifton family dynamics that add depth to the novel. “And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t completely unaware of the Murdaugh family when I created them.”

The attention Slaughter gives to building out the world of North Falls and Clifton County in the novel also allows her to touch on issues of racism, xenophobia and homosexuality, territory also mined by other contemporary Southern writers she admires, including S.A. Cosby, Wanda Morris, Denene Millner and Connie Briscoe. “I’m writing my Southern experience, but I also live in Atlanta, a very diverse, multicultural and vibrant city,” Slaughter says. “I live in a state that has blood on its hands from the scourge of slavery. I live in a country that is still dealing with that. And I think that when you’re writing a complicated, psychologically driven story, you have to acknowledge those things. But I don’t think you have to jump up on a soapbox because readers will do their own work.”

Slaughter took on a new kind of challenge when she adapted “The Good Daughter” for NBC’s streaming platform. “It started just as a thought experiment to see if I could do it,” she says of the decision to write the “Good Daughter” script before the book was optioned for TV. “I didn’t want to waste anybody’s time.” But then Bruna Papandrea of Made Up Stories and Fifth Season came on as producing partners, and Peacock picked up the project straight-to-series.

For much of the production, Slaughter was the limited series’ lone writer and showrunner. Previously she served as an executive producer on “Pieces of Her” and “Will Trent,” but not in a hands-on way. “On the other projects, I read the scripts and gave feedback with varying degrees of acceptance and collaboration,” she says. But for “The Good Daughter,” Slaughter did almost everything, from script writing to making decisions on costumes and signing off on budgets.

While it sounds daunting for a first-timer, Slaughter took it in stride. “People forget that, as an author, you’re really running a small business,” she explains. “You’ve got to deal with contracts and business relationships with different publishers all over the world, so I felt like those skills translated. And there’s a lot of hurry up and wait on book tours with the media and press junkets and book signings, so the production schedule for ‘The Good Daughter’ was like being on a book tour for 71 days as opposed to two weeks!”

“The Good Daughter” is the story of Charlotte and Samantha Quinn, daughters of controversial attorney Rusty Quinn, who survive a brutal invasion of their home in rural Pikesville, Ga., that’s linked to one of their father’s cases. The shocking crime, outlined in the book’s opening chapter, is both violent and heart-wrenching, and it shatters the Quinn family and separates the sisters. Years later, they reunite when Charlie (as Charlotte is nicknamed), now a criminal attorney herself, witnesses another murder, this time a school shooting. When their father decides to defend the accused teen, it dredges up past traumas for Charlie and Sam as well as secrets Pikesville residents and the Quinn family have hidden for years.

Slaughter found “The Good Daughter” production exhilarating, working with many of the “Will Trent” crew members as they filmed on location in and around McCaysville and Blue Ridge, where the story is set. She credits the crew, a collaborative relationship with director Steph Green and great performances — by Rose Byrne as Samantha Quinn, Meghann Fahy as Charlotte Quinn and Brendan Gleeson as their father Rusty — with making her first time as a showrunner memorable. “Everybody really believed in this story. And I’m really proud that we were able to tell it through a woman’s lens; everything that happens in the series is only told from Sam or Charlie’s point of view. But it’s also the first show I’ve ever seen that has a survivor of gun violence as a main character.”

While Slaughter is mum on whether she’d undertake another showrunner role, she’s excited about what’s next, which definitely includes a second North Falls thriller. What’s it about? “Let’s just say somebody dies and we find out why at the end,” she quips before adding more seriously, “I know that doing all that-world building and work on my North Falls characters won’t pay off until maybe next book or three books from now. It took a lot of discipline to not reveal so much, but over 24 books, I’ve learned to be patient and trust that readers will want to stay with me for the ride.”

What is certain is that The Black Cauldron aimed to be a different kind of Disney film. “Ron Miller, the former CEO of the company and the son-in-law of Walt Disney, wanted the film to be a departure,” Neil O’Brien, author of After Disney: Toil, Trouble, and the Transformation of America’s Favorite Media Company, tells the BBC. “He wanted it to appeal to a teenage, young-adult audience, and deliberately went about making sure there were no songs in the movie that could turn off teenage audiences.” 

The Black Cauldron also had a PG rating, a first for Disney. “That’s standard now, but it was very progressive in that regard, pushing boundaries to where animation could be,” Mindy Johnson, author of Ink & Paint: The Women of Walt Disney’s Animation, tells the BBC. “It feels strikingly dark. The Cauldron-Born scene is probably more macabre than anything they’d done in the past,” Dr Sam Summers, lecturer in Animation at Middlesex University, tells the BBC. 

Clashes at the studio

But things were getting dark behind the scenes, too. A new generation of graduates from the California Institute of the Arts, or CalArts, such as Brad Bird and John Lasseter (who later became driving forces at Pixar, directing The Incredibles and Toy Story respectively), wanted to bring a fresh aesthetic to the studio. But this led to clashes with the old guard, who were keen to maintain the status quo. “There were a lot of competing factions when Cauldron was underway,” says O’Brien. The mood at the studio shifted from highly optimistic to concerned.

Based on a five-book 1960s series, The Chronicles of Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander, adapting The Black Cauldron was a towering feat. “It was an epic narrative, and there were challenges winnowing that down in years of development,” says Johnson. It was also the first film to implement computer animation, including cauldron effects and a magical orb. And it was the first Disney film since 1959’s Sleeping Beauty to be in 70mm, which meant animators had larger and more expensive canvases to animate. They toyed with complicated and costly technology like a hologram system for cinemas to bring those born from the cauldron to life.