Dean Spanley : My Talks with Dean Spanley; Dean Spanley the Screenplay by Plunkett, Edward, Lord Dunsany - 2008

London: HarperCollins, 2008. The classic humorous novel about an alcohol-loving clergyman who thinks he is the reincarnation of a Spanley is the very archetype of a bland churchman: affable, conventional, prudent without being a prig. Only his keen interest in the transmigration of souls and almost excessive enthusiasm for dogs betray any shadow of eccentricity. And then, richly primed with a few glasses of Imperial Tokay, he slips over the threshold between past and present and becomes a dog. Or are his canine memories no more than fancy? Surely no mere dean could speak so vividly, with such total conviction, of the joys of hunting, of rolling in fresh dung, of baying the moon? No human could know so much of rabbiting, the importance of buying bones, the contemptibility of pigs. My Talks With Dean Spanley, first published in 1936, is certainly Lord Dunsany's funniest book and, in its unique way, a remarkable tour de force. Now adapted by Alan Sharp into a new comedy-drama feature film ... it follows a father and son as they encounter the eponymous eccentric in this story of reincarnation and reconciliation set in Edwardian England. This special edition includes Lord Dunsany's witty and inventive original novel, as well as Alan Sharp's hilarious screenplay, which faithfully adapts and also expands upon the events in the book... with colour photos and interviews with the principal film-makers. 320p. illus.. First Thus. Hardcover. New/Book Band for Film Edition.