The English Patient looks set to be the film of 1997 and to sweep the board at this year's Oscars, and a little of its glamour will be travelling to Dublin in the shape of its star, Ralph Fiennes, who will be here on April 16th to read from his late mother's final novel, Blood Ties.
Fiennes, nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award, and his sister Sophie are coming to promote the book by Jennifer Lash, which they discovered among her papers after her death in 1993. The actor spent much of his childhood in Ireland with his six siblings because of his mother's love for the country, and Ireland is the setting for her last novel. She wrote her first book at the age of 23, and followed it with four more which were published in her lifetime, including an account of the solitary journey she took in 1986 from France to Santiago de Compostela upon learning she had cancer.
Her son and daughter have cancelled all other engagements in order to promote their mother's book, with Fiennes's altruism extending to the stage, having opened this week at London's Almeida Theatre in David Hare's adaptation of Chekhov's Ivanov, for the minimum Equity rate of £200 a week.