About the Screenplay:

This collection of Christopher Hampton's screenplays includes his two best-known films, Carrington and Dangerous Liaisons, as well as three works never before published: The Custom of the Country, A Bright Shining Lie, and Mary Reilly.

Christopher Hampton won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Dangerous Liaisons, which he adapted from his own stage play (itself an adaptation of Les Liasons Dangereuses, the saucy epistolary novel penned in 1782 by French author Pierre Choderlos de Laclos). Stephen Frears turned Hampton’s screenplay into the 1988 feature Dangerous Liaisons starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich in the roles of the two libertine aristocrats who challenge one another to a cruel and titillating bet.

What people say:

"Christopher Hampton's brilliant adaptation... gives a pitiless and searching portrait of the erotic diversions of aristocrats in putrescent pre-revolutionary France." — The Daily Telegraph

"Hampton's achievement is to have preserved the satanic magnetism of the twin conspirators while going all out for social comedy. But this is comedy of the highest theatrical kind: edged with danger, replete with pain and forever reminding us that lives are being ruined with the flick of a well-turned phrase." — The Daily Guardian

Carrington was the winner of a Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1995. It is a British biographical film written and directed by Christopher Hampton about the life of the English painter Dora Carrington, who was known simply as "Carrington". Carrington tells the true love story of of Cora Carrington and writer Lytton Strachey. With tragic consequences, they openly acknowledged the differences that exist between love and desire at a time when society did not encourage such experiments.

This screenplay is the story of their lives together, as depicted in a film Carington starring Emma Thompson as Carington and Jonathan Pryce as Lytton Strachey, for which he won Best actor at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. The decision to award Christopher Hampton the Special Jury Prize was unanimous.

What people say:

"Deftly scripted, this may be Hampton's best original text since The Philanthropist." — Financial Times

Also included in this book are Christopher Hampton's entertaining introductions to each of the screenplays, published to chart the circuitous routes by which his films have, or have not, been made.

What people say:

"It is a constitutional requirement in this area of my profession that one remains unreasonably but permanently crazed with optimism." — Christohper Hampton

About the Screenwriter:

Christopher Hampton is a British playwright, screenwriter, director, producer, and a consummate translator and adaptor of novels. He is perhaps most famous for his play Les Liaisons Dangereuses (based on the novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos), which won an Olivier Award in 1986. He adapted the play for film and won an Oscar for the screenplay. His theatre work includes the stage adaptation of Sunset Boulevard for Andrew Lloyd Webber, which received Tony Awards for both Book and Lyrics. He has translated a wide range of works including classics by Chekhov, Ibsen and Moliere as well as contemporary plays by Yasmina Reza and Florian Zeller. His long list of screenplays includes A Doll's House, The Good Father, Total Eclipse, and The Quiet American.