"Janet Coombe stood on the hill above Plyn, looking down upon the harbour. Although the sun was already high in the heavens, the little town was still wrapped in an early morning mist. It clung to Plyn like a thin pale blanket, lending to the place a faint whisper of unreality as if the whole had been blessed by the touch of ghostly fingers."
The Loving Spirit, ch. 1, p. 1, William Heinemann Ltd., 1931
Welcome to the Daphne du Maurier website
The du Maurier Fowey Literary Festival 2026
***Important news***
Due to circumstances beyond their control, the dates of The du Maurier Fowey Literary Festival 2026 will be slightly different.
Routinely, the festival has always been in the week including Daphne du Maurier’s birthday on 13th May.
In 2026, the festival dates will be one week earlier than usual, and so will be from Friday 1st until Saturday 9th May 2026.
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Please make a note of this in your diaries and book your accommodation early, as the new dates include a bank holiday, which is likely to mean that there will be more people in Fowey than usual during Festival week.
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Today is Daphne du Maurier's birthday. She was born on 13th May 1907.
The image we have chosen to share with you on this special day is this stunning photograph of Daphne just before she left finishing school in France in 1925.
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The du Maurier Fowey Literary Festival 2025 begins today, Friday 9th May
The du Maurier Fowey Literary Festival 2025, beginning this evening with music from Mad Dog Mcrea in the Parish Church at 8pm.
From Saturday 10th May, there will be a full day of events every day until Saturday 17th May. Events will include walks, reading groups, talks, music, a quiz, and much more. During the week, the Fowey Art Trail will take place from Saturday 10th to Saturday 17th May 2025 and the Secret Gardens, on Friday 16th and Saturday 17th May 2025.
The Royal Fowey Yacht Club will be open for coffee and cake, teas, light snacks and meals. At the Yacht Club, you will also find the Waterstones Festival Bookshop and the Festival Box Office, where you can buy your tickets and ask any questions that you may have.
There will also be a sale of second-hand books, some of which are very hard to find and some that are really rather special. The book sale will be beside the Box Office in the Yacht Club. There are some lovely editions of Daphne du Maurier’s books, and some beautiful books about Fowey and Cornwall. Do go along and have a look, as there is bound to be something that you would like to buy for yourself or as a present for someone else.
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After Midnight by Daphne du Maurier - Indie Edition announced
Great news from Virago
* Exclusive Independent Bookshop Edition *
From murderous desires to supernatural forces, du Maurier’s masterful short stories stare into the dark heart of our relationships: between men and women, humanity and nature, love and obsession, the future and the past. Whatever you do, don’t look away now .
🕰️ A stunning new hardback collection of Daphne du Maurier’s thirteen darkest stories - including The Birds and Don’t Look Now . . .
Buy your copy of After Midnight from your Independent Book Shop - Coming 29th September 2025 🕰️
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Virago reveal UK cover for After Midnight by Daphne du Maurier
Virago reveals the UK cover of After Midnight, due to be published on 30th September 2025.
Virago has revealed the UK cover of After Midnight, the collection of Daphne du Maurier’s short stories, which will be published on 30th September 2025. This stunning new collection brings you thirteen chilling tales for the dark hours, introduced by international bestselling author Stephen King. To find out more, please go to our News Page or click here: https://www.dumaurier.org/news_details.php?id=1271&nc=2
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Discover the Dark Romance Collection from Daphne du Maurier
Coming March 2025
Virago has produced stunning new covers for four stone-cold classics:
🌺 Rebecca
🌊 Jamaica Inn
🗝️ The King’s General
🌙 My Cousin Rachel
Which cover is your favourite?
Pre-order on the Virago Store for 30% off using code: DarkRomance
https://store.virago.co.uk
Coming 13th March 2025.
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Rebecca on Audio – read by Holliday Grainger
Holliday Grainger
The Rebecca Audiobook
Last November, we told you that W.F. Howes, RBmedia's UK publishing brand, was going to release 25 works by Daphne du Maurier in audiobook format, many of which have never been released as audiobooks before.
Today, we focus on Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier's dark study of suppressed desire and tragedy. This novel is narrated by British actress Holliday Grainger, who is probably best known for her roles in two BBC dramas, as Robin Ellacott in the television adaptations of the Strike books by J.K. Rowling and Rachel Carey in the 2019 conspiracy thriller The Capture.
Holliday Granger's clear, intuitive delivery of Daphne du Maurier's most famous novel is a triumph and certainly worth listening to.
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A Family Memoir about Daphne du Maurier written by her Grandson
Virago has announced that it has acquired the rights to a history of the du Maurier family written by Daphne du Maurier’s grandson.
The Du Mauriers: A Family Portrait by Paul de Zulueta, Daphne du Maurier’s oldest grandson, is a fascinating, intimate, revelatory family memoir. Virago will be publishing it in September 2026.
The book focuses primarily on Daphne du Maurier but also includes a number of key family members, going further back in time to include Mary Anne Clarle, George and Gerald du Maurier and others.
Paul will draw on his own memories of his grandmother as well as private papers and letters, the archive at the University of Exeter, interviews and unpublished photographs.
You can read more, here https://www.dumaurier.org/news_details.php?id=1243&nc=2
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Daphne du Maurier as a Celebrity Mastermind Specialist Subject
Kirsten O'Brien
Did you see Celebrity Mastermind on BBC2 yesterday evening (Monday 20th January 2025)? If not, watch it on the IPlayer because television, radio presenter and actress Kirsten O'Brien was one of the four celebrities taking part, and her specialist subject was the Life of Daphne du Maurier.
She did really well, getting eight of her ten specialist questions right and then had a successful general knowledge round, winning the whole show with a final score of 17 points and only one pass.
Well done, Kirsten, what an excellent choice of specialist subject!
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Gareth Southgate and Rebecca
Gareth Southgate
During his episode of Desert Island Discs, just before Christmas, Gareth Southgate revealed that he belongs to a book group with other dads from his daughter's former school and that they have read between 40 and 50 works of classic fiction, including Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.
We love the fact that Daphne du Maurier's popularity makes an appearance in all sorts of unexpected places, and we hope Gareth Southgate and his book club colleagues will go on to read more du Maurier in the future. To read more, please click here: https://www.dumaurier.org/news_details.php?id=1228&nc=2
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Taylor Swift's five favourite books
Taylor Swift in Concert
It is a well-known fact that Taylor Swift is not only a musical genius but that she also frequently shares how deeply literature influences her songwriting process.
This week (18/11/24), Anushka Bhattacharya has written a piece for Netflix Junkie about Taylor Swift’s favourite books, naming the top 5 life-changing books the singer recommends and that you must not miss.
Here is her list:
To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
We have to agree that these are five super books, and we are, of course, delighted that Rebecca is second on Taylor’s list.
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Eight Murder Mystery Books Recommended By Gillian Flynn
Gillian Flynn and two of her book choices
timesnow.in is the digital arm of Times Now, an English-language news channel in India owned and operated by The Times Group. This week, they posted an article about the eight murder mystery books recommended by Gillian Flynn. Gillian Flynn is, of course, best known for her hugely successful novel Gone Girl and her famously dark and twisting, psychologically gripping thrillers.
We are happy to say that Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier is first on her list. She describes it as a classic tale of suspense and intrigue. To read more, please click here https://www.dumaurier.org/news_details.php?id=1203&nc=2.
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Virago to publish a collection of thirteen of Daphne du Maurier’s darkest stories with an introduction by Stephen King
On Friday, 26th September, Virago Modern Classics announced through the journal The Bookseller that it will be publishing a new hardback edition of Daphne du Maurier’s supernatural stories. It is to be called After Midnight: Thirteen Chilling Tales for the Dark Hours, and it will bring together thirteen of Daphne’s most haunting stories for the first time. It will include such classic tales as The Birds and Don’t Look Now, and it will have an introduction by Stephen King.
This collection will celebrate the dark heart of Daphne du Maurier’s writing. It will be published in October 2025 as a beautiful collectable hardback edition. It will also be available in an ebook edition. The timing of its publication will be perfect as a Halloween read for Daphne du Maurier’s fans, psychological thriller readers and lovers of horror.
To read more, please click here https://www.dumaurier.org/news_details.php?id=1195&nc=2
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Stanley Tucci wearing his Daphne du Maurier t-shirt
Stanley Tucci wearing his Daphne du Maurier t-shirt
From time to time, on the Daphne du Maurier website news pages, we have mentioned the Women's Prize for Fiction and Girls on Top collaboration, which has produced a range of beautiful t-shirts with the names of some of our finest authors on them.
Obviously, the one we love best is the one with Daphne du Maurier's name on it. We particularly like this fabulous picture of Stanley Tucci wearing his. Doesn't he look great!
To find out more about getting your own t-shirt go to https://www.dumaurier.org/news_details.php?id=1121&nc=2.
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Taylor Swift and Phoebe Waller-Bridge - Two Celebrity Fans of Daphne du Maurier’s writing.
Daphne du Maurier’s writing is loved by millions of people right across the world. Her novels and short stories, in particular, never cease to capture people’s imaginations, and once someone has read a piece of du Maurier’s writing, they are inevitably hooked and need to read more. She means so much to such a wide demographic, including many well-known and celebrity figures.
Taylor Swift is one such Daphne du Maurier fan. Her song Tolerate It was inspired by Daphne’s most famous novel, Rebecca. We have discovered a great piece on TikTok from an interview between Taylor Swift and Paul McCartney. She specifically refers to Daphne du Maurier and explains how reading Rebecca inspired her song, Tolerate It.
Taylor Swift
Please click here to watch Taylor Swift talking about Daphne: https://www.tiktok.com/@theswiftiebookclub/video/7254983959988194565
Actor and writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge is also a fan of Daphne du Maurier. She is probably most famous for adapting Killing Eve for television and for creating, writing and starring in the dark comedy Flea Bag. In an interview with Far Our Magazine in October 2023, she talked with Aimee Ferrier about her favourite books of all time. Third on her list of thirteen titles was the Daphne du Maurier short story, The Blue Lenses. We are happy to see Daphne du Maurier’s work represented in Phoebe’s list, especially as it is one of Daphne’s less well-known short stories, which suggests to us that Phoebe has read a lot more of Daphne du Maurier’s writing, too.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge
To read more about Phoebe Waller-Bridge and to see all the books on her list, please click here: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/phoebe-waller-bridges-favourite-books-of-all-time
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In early autumn 2023, we revamped the Daphne du Maurier website, changing our home page picture to the iconic image of young Daphne smoking a cigarette in the kitchen at Ferryside. We also changed the colour scheme, and our wonderful technical wizards made clever amendments, making the Daphne du Maurier website much more user-friendly on your phones, something which I know has made life easier for many of you.
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In March 2016 we re-launched the Daphne du Maurier website. We extend thanks to the du Maurier Browning family for its on-going support and John Baxendale for all his work running the site for so many years.
You will find information about Daphne du Maurier's life and work, and her family and associates, on this site. A Forum provides an opportunity for Daphne's readers, followers, admirers, and fans to contribute their views and knowledge, a News Page to keep you up to date with the latest information on people, places, and events connected with Daphne, and much more.
Early in 2020, a new organisation called the Daphne du Maurier Society of North America was formed, with their base in Dallas, Texas. They suggested that we forge links with them, and, with the blessing of the du Maurier Browning family, that is precisely what we did. By joining together, we can promote their events and learn from any discoveries that come about through their meetings. We can also share the knowledge and information that is continually growing on our website. Click here to find out more about them: https://daphnedumauriersociety.org
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, the great writer and important literary man of Fowey, was often referred to as Q. Some years ago, the Daphne du Maurier website was approached by The Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch Memorial Fund (the Q Fund) asking if we would consider giving him an internet presence. Because of the close links between Daphne du Maurier and Q, we happily agreed to this. So, it was with real pleasure that the du Maurier Browning family and the Daphne du Maurier website welcomed this section to the website dedicated to Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. Just click here to find out more: https://www.dumaurier.org/sirarthurquillercouch.php
We are always interested in including your articles, news, reviews, and snippets of information on the website. So, come on all you Daphne du Maurier and Q followers, make this your website by getting in touch and sharing what you know.
