Poppy Shakespeare
Encyclopedia
Poppy Shakespeare is a novel
about mental illness
by Clare Allan. It tells the story of day patients at a mental health hospital. The central characters are Poppy Shakespeare, a new patient, and "N", a long term patient. Poppy arrives at the hospital strongly asserting that she is sane and demanding that she is released from the program. To gain legal aid she must first prove she is sick so that she can get "MAD money", a.k.a. state benefits. She is befriended by N, who helps her work the system.
Author Clare Allan spent ten years in a mental health institution.
The book was adapted by Cowboy Films to a 90-minute drama shown on Channel 4
on 31 March, 2008 and starred Anna Maxwell Martin
as N and Naomie Harris
as Poppy. The book was short-listed for the BT
Mind
Book of the year 2007 and long-listed for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction
2007.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
about mental illness
Mental illness
A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which is not a part of normal development or culture. Such a disorder may consist of a combination of affective, behavioural,...
by Clare Allan. It tells the story of day patients at a mental health hospital. The central characters are Poppy Shakespeare, a new patient, and "N", a long term patient. Poppy arrives at the hospital strongly asserting that she is sane and demanding that she is released from the program. To gain legal aid she must first prove she is sick so that she can get "MAD money", a.k.a. state benefits. She is befriended by N, who helps her work the system.
Author Clare Allan spent ten years in a mental health institution.
The book was adapted by Cowboy Films to a 90-minute drama shown on Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
on 31 March, 2008 and starred Anna Maxwell Martin
Anna Maxwell Martin
Anna Maxwell Martin , sometimes credited as Anna Maxwell-Martin, is a two-time BAFTA award-winning English actress who has won acclaim for her performances as Lyra in His Dark Materials at the Royal National Theatre, as Esther Summerson in the BBC's 2005 adaptation of Bleak House, and as N in...
as N and Naomie Harris
Naomie Harris
Naomie Melanie Harris is an English screen actress. She is best known for her starring role as Selena in 28 Days Later, as well as her supporting turn as Tia Dalma/Calypso in the second and third Pirates of the Caribbean films...
as Poppy. The book was short-listed for the BT
BT Group
BT Group plc is a global telecommunications services company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is one of the largest telecommunications services companies in the world and has operations in more than 170 countries. Through its BT Global Services division it is a major supplier of...
Mind
Mind
The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different traditions, ranging from panpsychism and animism to traditional and organized religious views, as well as secular and materialist philosophies. Most agree that minds are constituted by conscious experience and intelligent...
Book of the year 2007 and long-listed for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction
Orange Prize for Fiction
The Orange Prize for Fiction is one of the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary prizes, annually awarded to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English, and published in the United Kingdom in the preceding year...
2007.