Representing authors and writers in print, film and broadcast media

© Futerman Rose & Associates 2024

Paul Nicholas’s sparkling, funny and heart-warming memories of more than fifty years in the entertainment business, Musicals, Marigolds and Me, was published by Fantom Publishing on 18 October 2021.

Read more about the book here.

A Life in the Spotlight, Sebastian Lassandro’s fully illustrated biography of music, theatre and film legend Sir Tommy Steele, was published in the UK by Fonthill Media on 10 June 2021. Authorised by Sir Tommy Steele himself, A Life in the Spotlight offers readers a detailed insight into the career of an unrivalled entertainment legend, with countless facts, stories, details and anecdotes never before committed to print.

Read more about the book here.

Voyage of the Damned, by FRA clients Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts, previously adapted for the screen in 1976 and the stage in 2018, was the basis of a BBC radio drama scripted by Sir Tom Stoppard.

Titled The Voyage of the St Louis, the play was first broadcast by BBC Radio 4 on Saturday 9 May 2020. On 26 March 2021 it was announced as the winner of the BBC Audio Drama Award in the Best Adaptation category.

Read more about the book and the tragic true story here.

Film/TV rights to Adam Robinson's Terror on the Pitch, published by Mainstream Publishing, have been acquired by Worldmark Films. The book, first published in 2002, tells the story of a planned terrorist attack on the England football team in Marseilles during the 1998 World Cup.

The film rights to The Assassination of Robert Maxwell, by Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon, have been acquired by Knucklehead Film.

A big FRA welcome to Melissa Mailer-Yates who joins our list of clients. Melissa is an artist of international acclaim, whose work has been exhibited all over the world. Her extensive commissions cover a broad range – royal families to Royal Doulton and many others.

As an author her work includes a series of illustrated children’s books based on Shakespeare’s plays, and a historical novel, Ellerker.

We’re very pleased to welcome James Nye to FRA. James is a writer and composer who has written for several journals, publishing articles and interviews with subjects as varied as Derren Brown, Robert Anton Wilson and John Cage.

James has recently completed work on Not A Nice Jewish Boy, a memoir which he co-authored with its subject, the publisher Peter Owen.

News from our client Christian Piers Betley.

Christian is now working with producer Jacqui Miller-Charlton and JMC Entertainment, UK, on an event mini-series based upon the critically-acclaimed multi-award-winning memoir The Boy on the Shed by fellow FRA client Paul Ferris. The Boy on the Shed was chosen as Sports Book of the Year 2018 by both Robert Crampton in The Times and Nick Pitt in The Sunday Times.

Robert Crampton said: “In literary terms, his autobiography is far and away the best book here. Not for nothing was it shortlisted for the William Hill sports book of the year award. As with Nick Hornby’s peerless classic it will endure beyond a convenient Christmas stocking filler for your dad. That’s because it’s not about sport, but rather about the far bigger themes of family, pain, identity, masculinity and loss.”

The Boy on the Shed was also named The Daily Telegraph Sports Autobiography of the Year 2019 and The Telegraph’s Football Book of the Year. In his review Simon Briggs said: “The Boy on the Shed has enough depth and humanity to make your average football autobiography look like a Ladybird book.”

The Boy on the Shed had already made the final seven for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2018. It was an excellent and well-deserved year for Paul.Read more press reaction here

We look forward to following the project's progress and will report more details on the Latest News page as they become available.

Read more about the book here.

We were very sad to learn of Terence Frisby’s death on 23 April,2020 We were proud to represent him in placing his last novel The Misunderstanding, as well as the film and TV rights to some of his earlier work, and at the request of his son Dominic we will continue to do so.

Though best remembered for his breakthrough success There’s a Girl in My Soup, his many other contributions to television, stage, radio and literature (not to mention acting, producing and directing) confirmed him as a colossal talent.

Our deepest sympathies go to Dominic Frisby. Our deepest sympathies go to Dominic Frisby.

FRA client and The Hollies’s drummer Bobby Elliott’s autobiography It Ain’t Heavy, It’s My Story was published by Omnibus Press on 2 April 2020.

From the publisher: “Continually touring since 1963, Bobby’s adventures have seen him beating Keith Moon in a drumming audition for Shane Fenton and the Fentones, being serenaded by Joni Mitchell while she was in bed with Graham Nash and being offered a job by Paul McCartney to work with Wings ... It Ain’t Heavy, It’s My Story is a funny, honest and enlightening account of sixty years on the frontline of rock ’n’ roll.”

Read more about the book here.

The BBC has acquired the television rights to Enola Gay: Mission to Hiroshima, by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts, after a hard-fought international bidding war.

The Enola Gay was the Boeing B-29 bomber that dropped the Little Boy atomic bomb in August 1945. The book is a meticulously researched account of the planning and execution of the mission which draws on first-hand sources., by Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon, have been acquired by Knucklehead Film.

FRA is privileged to welcome actor, singer, musician, director and producer Paul Nicholas to our list of clients.

Paul’s career in show business, five decades and counting, is recounted in his new autobiography, Musicals, Marigolds & Me, covering the years 1968-2020 – between his first appearance on the West End stage in Hair, and being himself on The Real Marigold Hotel. Read more about the book here.

We are excited to welcome new client the Rt. Hon. Mark Francois MP to our list of authors. In essence, Mark’s book Spartan Victory is the story of how the British Establishment tried to steal the referendum result and how 28 utterly determined Conservative MPs managed to stop them from succeeding. You could perhaps think of it as The Darkest Hour meets House of Cards.

    The book, which has had good write ups/podcasts in everything from the Telegraph to The Spectator, is partly autobiographical and the first four chapters deal with Mark’s early life and getting into Parliament from fairly humble beginnings.   The crux of the book is what Mark has christened “The Battle for Brexit” - from the Referendum in 2016 to finally leaving the EU in January 2020 and all the Parliamentary and media shenanigans in between.  FRA is selling TV rights to the book.

Gibson Square published Metric Martyrs by Neil Herron on  30 June 2022.Metric Martyrs tells the story of five market traders convicted between 2001 and 2008 of selling their wares in pounds and ounces, in defiance of a European Union ban on the use of imperial measurements.

Families and friends – among them author Neil Herron (pictured left with the late Steve Thoburn, one of the convicted five) – have campaigned for years to clear the traders’ names. Government ministers are now looking again at their cases, and talk of a Free Pardon is in the air.

Congratulations to our client Sir Mike Gooley CBE on his knighthood, awarded in the 2021 Queen’s Birthday Honours list for his services to business and charity.

The Mike Gooley Trailfinnders Charity supports medical research, military veterans, sport and youth activities and community projects.

A thoroughly deserved honour!

Congratulations to our client Dame Sara Khan on her DBE which was awarded in the 2022 Queen’s honoursfor her services to counter-extremism

Older News

It is with great sadness that we have learned of the death of our client H. H.Peter Murphy, who has died at the age of 76.

Peter began writing fiction after his retirement from the bench, having been a barrister. and a Crown Court judge. He was the author of the Ben Schroeder series of legal thrillers and the humourous Judge Walden stories (all published by No Exit Press). For these he drew on his wide experience of the law in England, the United States and as a counsel at the Yugoslavian War Crime tribunal in the Hague.

Guy Rose says:”Peter was a kind and extremely considerate man in addition to being amazingly prolific. He will be greatly missed.” Our thoughts and prayers are with his family.

WE are saddened to learn of the death of our client Tom Owen on 8 November 2022. He was 73 years old.

Tom began his long acting career as an assistant stage manager at the Leatherhead theatre,on leaving school. He mixed stage roles, including pantomime with television and film, and is probably best remembered for playing the long-lost son of his real father, Bill Owen, in the long-running situation comedy Last of the Summer Wine, a part that he took on after Bill’s death in 1999.We send condolences to Tom’s family.

We are honoured to welcome to our client list Sir Tommy Steele OBE as, after nearly seven decades as a performer, he turns his hand to screenwriting with an original and very entertaining screen story, Operation Breakheart, A caper movie in the classic tradition of British cinema. Operation Breakheart is set in the dark days of the Blitz in 1941, with a thrilling, twisting plot in which the German High Command with the forced co-operation of an infamous English  safecracker,enacts a plan to undermine the confidence of the British people in their government’s ability to protect some of the country’s most valuable assets