| Alexander Fiske-Harrison | |
|---|---|
| Born | July 22, 1976 |
| Occupation | writer, actor |
Alexander Rupert Fiske-Harrison (born 22 July 1976) is an English writer and actor. He is best known for writing and acting in The Pendulum in London's West End [1] and for his research into bullfighting for his book Into The Arena,[2] which has led The Times to describe him as "the bullfighter-philosopher."[3] Into The Arena went on to be shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2011.
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His brother Jules William Fiske Harrison was, according to The Times, a "famously skilled and fearless skiier" who died in a skiing accident in Zermatt, Switzerland in 1988.[4]
Fiske-Harrison was educated at the Universities of Oxford (M.A.) and London (M.Sc.). He trained in acting at the Stella Adler Conservatory in New York.[5]
His non-fiction work has centred on animals and non-human intelligence, especially in Prospect magazine,[6][7][8] but also in the Financial Times,[9] The Times Literary Supplement,[10] Frieze magazine,[11] the BBC[12] and CNN.[13]
His essay on bullfighting for Prospect magazine[14] in September 2008 received media attention which led to him moving to Spain to further research the topic, including living and training with the great matadors of today and bullfighting himself, something he covered in his blog The Last Arena - In Search of the Spanish Bullfight.[15]
In September 2009 the journalist Giles Coren visited Fiske-Harrison in Spain. In the long feature he wrote about that visit - 'Mad Bulls and Englishmen' in The Times - he described him as: "Very brave. Very British. Very Charge of the Light Brigade. Very trenches. Very scary."[16]
In 2009 Fiske-Harrison signed a deal with the UK publishers Profile Books to turn his blog into a book, Into The Arena - The World of the Spanish Bullfight.[17]
The book was released by Profile on May 26th, 2011,[18] and received excellent reviews.[19] The Mail on Sunday gave it four stars, saying, "his descriptions of the fights are compelling and lyrical, and his explanation of different uses of the matador’s capes is illuminating. One begins to understand what has captivated Spaniards for centuries."[20] While the Sunday Times states that "it provides an engrossing introduction to Spain’s 'great feast of art and danger'"[21], the Sunday Telegraph said, it was "a compelling read, unusual for its genre, exalting the bullfight as pure theatre,","[22] and the Financial Times called it, "an engrossing introduction to bullfighting,"[23] while The Herald (Glasgow) called it "an informative and breathtaking volume of gonzo journalism."[24] The Literary Review said, "His eye-witness reports of bullfights are particularly good. He transposes the spectacle into words with great success, conveying the drama of the corrida while explaining individual moves and techniques with eloquence and precision."[25] The Sunday Telegraph selected it as a "best summer holiday read" [26] and the Sunday Times as part of the summer's "essential travel book list."[27] The Daily Mail also points out that although Fiske-Harrison "develops a taste for the whole gruesome spectacle, what makes the book work is that he never loses his disgust for it," [28], and the Financial Times seconds this: "It’s to Fiske-Harrison’s credit that he never quite gets over his moral qualms about bullfighting." However, the Sunday Times found him "a bit too self-regarding to be an entirely likeable narrator" and the Financial Times thought that maybe "its subject encourages a sense of writerly importance."
In November 2011, the book was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, known as the 'Bookie Prize', despite its author writing in the Daily Telegraph on the weekend before the prize-giving that bullfighting is not a sport at all. [29] It was the first year that the book prize required security having received threats against the venue of the awards ceremony, Waterstones flagship store on Piccadilly in London, the largest bookstore in Europe.
Fiske-Harrison’s acting debut was as Govianus in The Second Maiden's Tragedy at the Hackney Empire theatre in London.[30] He has also acted on the German stage.[31]
| The Pendulum | |
|---|---|
Alexander Fiske-Harrison & Gareth Kennerley |
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| Written by | Alexander Fiske-Harrison |
| Date premiered | 3 June 2008 |
| Place premiered | Jermyn Street Theatre, West End, London |
The play is a two-act four-hander set in 1900 Vienna. Its first production was in the summer of 2008 at the Jermyn Street Theatre, in London's West End.[32]
Michael Billington in The Guardian gave it three stars and said, "Fiske-Harrison has clearly done his homework: he understands, for instance, the tensions between Franz Joseph’s imperial benevolence and the antisemitism of Vienna’s populist mayor, Karl Lueger. The author himself plays the disintegrating hero with the right poker-backed irascibility... while it is refreshing to find a new play that gets away from bedsit angst, one wonders why Fiske-Harrison has tackled this subject now. If there are contemporary parallels, they are not obvious, and one comes away with the sensation of having seen an accomplished, but oddly impersonal, historical play."[33] The Sunday Times described it as "something earnest, nicely acted - if a little contained - but as far from the wildness of Schnitzler or the darkness of Schiele as you can possibly imagine".[34]
