Read the latest articles by and about Daisy GoodwinIn short: Iain Finlayson's nonfiction reviews | The TimesSusannah HerbertSeptember 22, 2007Silver River: A Family Story by Daisy Goodwin Fourth Estate, £16.99 The fashion among poets and critics for exorcising parental ghosts through biography has sometimes produced a rather turgid stream of consciousness, but Silver River runs bright and clear, a quick, vital current of self-awareness by a natural storyteller who uses literary styles and devices with a deft hand. From the first terror of being dangled over a cliff by her father, greatly amusing her mother, to her depression and sense of abandonment after the birth of her daughter, Goodwin artfully integrates the disparate sections of her life, emerging whole and healed. Read onSilver River: A Family Story by Daisy Goodwin | The Sunday TimesSusannah HerbertSeptember 23, 2007The very first line of Daisy Goodwin’s family memoir suggests long intimacy with suspense. “ ‘But don’t you want to be famous?’ said Joe as he held me over the cliff.” Goodwin was six, a plump, scowling child with vague aspirations to film stardom. Joe, her new stepfather, was a storybook ogre, her rival for the love of her runaway mother. “What I’m going to do,” he declared, “is drop you here off this cliff and I’m going to film you falling down . . . You might be crippled, but you’d be a crippled film star.” Read onGoodwin: First Person | GuardianSeptember 16, 2007Daisy Goodwin was just five when her mother left their safe, middle-class life for a 'dirty, rude, sexy' northern boy called Joe. The effects of her abandonment are still being felt I don't remember the day my mother left, but I remember the moment when I noticed she had gone. Someone, not my mother, had left my brother and me alone in the bath with a Lucozade bottle made of glass. I was five and my brother was three so we were soon sitting in a tub of bright red water, crying. Someone, not my mother, came at last and plucked us out of the bath and dried us and put plasters on my wounded knee. The someone may have kissed it better even; I don't remember, she was not my mother. Read onGoodwin: "Children of the divorce Olympics stay married" | Sunday TimesSeptember 16, 2007A victim of the break-up boom of the 1960s, our correspondent says her generation will fight to avoid inflicting such pain again From the age of six I have lived a double life. Not because I was intrinsically deceitful but because, like 20m other people in this country (according to a survey last week), my life has been profoundly altered by divorce. Read onGoodwin: "People like fairy stories" | Digital Spy.co.uk ( Joanne Oates)August 24, 2007A session on factual entertainment provoked some lively debate at MGEITF this afternoon, discussing the success of shows that try to change people's behaviour. Kelvin Mackenzie, former editor of The Sun, said that too many factual entertainment shows that try to do good are bad for a channel. Speaking at a MGEITF session today - called F'*ck off, I'm a TV God - he said: "They keep making these things and they don't work, and then it takes over a network."... Joining Mackenzie on the panel was Daisy Goodwin, founder and 'head girl' of indie Silver River, the company behind many successful factual entertainment shows. She defended the format, pointing to Grand Designs as an example of where a fact-ent show had 'done some good'. "It has raised people's awareness of what can be done in architecture in this country, " she said. Goodwin said the popularity of using experts in fact-ent shows is because they are like 'fairy godmothers'. "People like fairy stories and that is what these experts are," she added. Read onGoodwin Stops Traffic | Media Guardian.co.uk ( John Plunkett)August 28, 2007Having transformed the nation's attitude to architecture and encouraged us all to get on the property ladder, Daisy Goodwin is about to tackle her toughest challenge yet - traffic congestion. Channel 4's The Woman Who Stops Traffic will feature her efforts to cut traffic in Marlowe, Buckinghamshire. It is made by Goodwin's production company, Silver River. Read onLet's Facebook, my dear | timesonline.co.uk ( Daisy Goodwin)July 22, 2007The scene: Shoreditch House (the new east London members’ club) last weekend; the cast: middle-youthy, middle-class media types; the conversation: “Nice Facebook picture, love the Warhol vibe. How many friends have you got? Only 30? Never mind, it’ll pick up. You know, Ricky Gervais is on it.” Both parties consider this a substitute for actual conversation and edge away to find other “friends”. Everybody at the party is either on it, thinking about joining or is an official refusenik. Even five months ago this wouldn’t have been the case, but the Facebook phenomenon is greasing the wheels of middle-class social life faster than Nigella’s goose fat. Read onConfessions of a Heroine Addict | The Sunday Times (Daisy Goodwin)September 17, 2006Confessions of a heroine addict They’re never considered for literary prizes, but romantic novels say more about the society we live in than many realise, says Daisy Goodwin From the age of 10 I have been sharing my most intimate moments with some highly unsuitable men: a would-be bigamist with a penchant for dressing up in women’s clothes, a gun-running philanderer who isn’t averse to a little marital rape, a misogynist snob with more money than sense and a sociopath who likes to strangle puppies. Despite their failings as human beings these men have been there for me through teenage heartache, marital difficulties, new babies, new jobs. In fact I rarely go to bed without one of them. Read onDon't Do It Girls: It Wouldn't work for me and it shouldn't for you | Independent on Sunday (Daisy Goodwin)September 03, 2006At the age of 17 I was convinced my difficulties with boys, parents and French verbs would be resolved if my hair was blond and curly instead of dark and straight. Funnily enough, the marmalade-coloured frizz that I arrived at, courtesy of Clairol, did nothing to improve my lot - quite the reverse if anything. But at least the evidence of my folly had grown out four months later. Read on Daisy Pulls It Off | Broadcast ( Dan Wootton)September 19, 2006After launching in the midst of unexpected tragedy Daisy Goodwin's start-up Silver River has had a bumper first year. Self-styled head girl tells Dan Wootton how she is fostering a culture of success at the indie Daisy Goodwin has always been the archetypal glamorous TV executive. She's a talent-spotter par excellence, she's friends with the right people – and she's certainly not camera shy. Read on Poetry? It'll soon be about as popular as morris dancing | The Observer (David Smith)January 29, 2006Daisy Goodwin, the TV presenter dubbed the Nigella Lawson of poetry, has warned that the art form of Shakespeare and Keats is dying and set to become as quaint as morris dancing.Read on Fremantle makes a splash with Silver River | C21Media (Jonathan Webdale)October 19, 2005
Under the terms of the three-year arrangement, FID will have rights to sell all formats and finished shows from Silver River, which was set up in July by Goodwin and comedy producer Harry Thompson. Read on Festival: Something for everyone - Books - | Times OnlineMarch 20, 2005
In just three weeks’ time, the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival will swing into unmissable action. Between Sunday, April 10 and Sunday, April 17, the historic city of Oxford will provide the stunning location for one of the country’s most successful, entertaining and high-profile celebrations of the written word. John Mortimer kicks off the festivities in style with a rereading of Brideshead Revisited. Hilary Spurling talks about her brilliant biography of Matisse. Melvyn Bragg and Ann Widdecombe are the entertaining speakers at the festival dinner, held in the candlelit Tudor dining hall of Christ Church. Kazuo Ishiguro will discuss his new (already bestselling) novel, and Doris Lessing will talk about a distinguished lifetime’s writing. Hear Claire Bloom, Charlotte Rampling, Harriet Walter and Dominic West interpreting poems about the garden; Daisy Goodwin on Poems to Last a Lifetime; Simon Armitage and Nick Laird on their poetry. Novelists include last year’s Man Booker winner Alan Hollinghurst, David Mitchell, A L Kennedy, Andrew Miller, Jasper Fforde and William Boyd. Take the rare opportunity to hear one of France’s greatest writers, Andrei Makine. Read on Birth of a Notion - Poetry - | Times Online (Daisy Goodwin)December 11, 2004Books of the year It is a striking paradox that while sales of poetry decline year on year, the number of volumes of poetry published rises annually. Perhaps these facts are not unconnected — readers may well be daunted by such an abundance of new collections. One place to start is Newborn by Kate Clanchy (Picador, £12.99; offer £10.39). These vivid, tender poems form a lyrical alternative to all those bossy childcare manuals. The collection flows like a novel through conception, pregnancy and birth — capturing the gradual but ineluctable changes that come with motherhood. Read on Goodwin sets out stall for BBC2 job | The Guardian (Jason Deans, broadcasting editor)April 22, 2004Daisy Goodwin, the TV lifestyle queen behind shows including How Clean is Your House?, Grand Designs and Life Laundry, has set out her stall for the BBC2 controllership, saying she would commission more "edgy, challenging arts and current affairs" if she got the job. Ms Goodwin, who was interviewed in today's Times, has emerged along with the ITV controller of current affairs, arts and religion, Steve Anderson, as the leading external candidates for the BBC2 job.Read on (free subscription only) Reality - the next stage | The GuardianDecember 1, 2003Television trends develop in strange ways. Someone hits on a successful format, everyone else jumps on the bandwagon and produces clones until the original idea is exhausted, and then we all sit and wait for something else to come along. The way ahead, as with all things, is in successful mutation... Read on It's education, honest... | The IndependentOctober 28, 2003There are five simple rules to follow if you want to show naked people having sex on telly. Vincent Graff and Lucy Rouse report. Sex, a television executive explains, "ticks all the correct boxes - it gets high ratings, appeals to young audiences and is popular with upmarket viewers." You may not be entirely surprised to learn of TV's love affair with the subject. And, just like the beginnings of real-life love affairs, after each date the television company wants to go one step further next time. Read on (paid only) |
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