Faber signs sixties legend Richard Thompson

Faber & Faber has signed Beeswing: Britain, Folk Rock and the End of the 60s by guitarist and singer-songwriter Richard Thompson.

Due for publication in Autumn 2019, Beeswing is a memoir of musical discovery, personal revelation, and social history written by Thompson with journalist and author Scott Timberg. UK rights were purchased at auction by Lee Brackstone at Faber from Daisy Parente at Lutyens & Rubinstein, on behalf of David Patterson at Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency. US rights were sold at auction to Kathy Pories at Algonquin by David Patterson.

In the sixties, Thompson played with a variety of musicians including Jimi Hendrix and Nick Drake. He said it was an "extraordinary time", and it was "great to be in London at the centre of everything".

He added: "It was a crossroads of so many styles - Indian music and the blues and psychedelia together with multi-track recording. It was like going from postwar black and white to Technicolor."

In the title, Thompson will describe how this "intense and fertile" time also led to a spiritual crisis both personal and culture-wide. The book will also detail his conversion to Sufi mysticism, the legendary partnership with wife Linda, years of musical experimentation, and how he wrote some of the "saddest and most emotionally resonant" songs in pop-music history.

Named by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the Top 20 Guitarists of All Time, Thompson has received Lifetime Achievement Awards for Songwriting on both sides of the Atlantic. From the Americana Music Association in Nashville to Britain’s BBC Awards as well as the Ivor Novello. In 2011, Thompson received an OBE.