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Ian Kelly
Represented By: Ivan Mulcahy
Ian Kelly is a multi-award winning historian, dramatist and actor, whose non-fiction works have all been adapted as stage, screen and even ballet projects.
Currently filming in Paris: the first Season of Carême, for AppleTV directed by Martin Bourboulon, based on Ian’s best-selling Cooking for Kings, series written and created by Ian Kelly.
Ian’s stage adaptation of his book, Mr Foote’s Other Leg ran in the West End (Theatre Royal Haymarket) after a record breaking run at Hampstead Theatre, directed by Sir Richard Eyre and starring Sir Simon Russell Beale. The original book, Mr Foote’s Other Leg, was named Theatre Book of the Year by the Society of Theatre Research when it was published in 2013.
Ian’s adaptation with Northern Ballet of his previous biography of Casanova, named Outstanding Achievement in Dance by BroadwayWorld, sold out Sadlers Wells twice in 2017 and 2022 and tours throughout the USA in 2024, and has lead on to current commissions to adapt The Red Shoes (Philadelphia Ballet, Juliano Nunes choreographer) and Pride and Prejudice. The original Casanova biography received universally rapturous reviews and was named Sunday Times Biography of the Year in 2008. Ian was approached by Dame Vivienne Westwood to co-author her authorised biography, a book described by the Telegraph as ‘fabulously fetishistically brilliant.’ It has gone on to bestseller lists all over the world in the many languages into which is has already been translated.
Ian’s biography of Beau Brummell was described by Stephen Fry as ‘a magnificent, fantastic read: all the wonders of that incomparable age touched on with mastery’ and by The Times as ‘biography simply as good as it gets.’ It was adapted as a BBCTV film starring Hugh Bonneville, Matthew Rhys and James Purefoy. The US publication was timed to coincide with the Anglomania Fashion Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Kelly’s performance in the title role of Ron Hutchinson’s Beau Brummell, Off-Broadway – a New York premiere.
Ian Kelly’s first book, the New York Times bestseller Cooking for Kings: A Life of Antonin Carême the First Celebrity Chef, was published by Short Books in the UK and Walker Books in the US and the publication in New York coincided with the Off-Broadway premiere of his play, based on Carême’s life. Ian appears frequently on television and radio, often talking about food or theatre history.
As an actor, appearances include recently The Kings Man, as President Woodrow Willson, The Pitmen Painters at the NT, on Broadway and in the West End, the role of Hermione’s father in the last of the Harry Potter films, George III in his own play Mr Foote opposite Simon Russell Beale and tv and stage from Downton Abbey to Howards End, Drop the Dead Donkey to the Russian epic Voina.
Further projects include an LA based film project about the premier of Handel’s Messiah, stage plays about Shostakovich and Dr Johnson respectively, and a number of TV series in development co-writing with Julian Fellowes. Meanwhile a return to non fiction beckons with a commission with Picador Pan Macmillan for a new work on Shakespeare. Ian is represented by ICA for books and book rights.
Represented By: Ivan Mulcahy
Ian Kelly is a multi-award winning historian, dramatist and actor, whose non-fiction works have all been adapted as stage, screen and even ballet projects.
Currently filming in Paris: the first Season of Carême, for AppleTV directed by Martin Bourboulon, based on Ian’s best-selling Cooking for Kings, series written and created by Ian Kelly.
Ian’s stage adaptation of his book, Mr Foote’s Other Leg ran in the West End (Theatre Royal Haymarket) after a record breaking run at Hampstead Theatre, directed by Sir Richard Eyre and starring Sir Simon Russell Beale. The original book, Mr Foote’s Other Leg, was named Theatre Book of the Year by the Society of Theatre Research when it was published in 2013.
Ian’s adaptation with Northern Ballet of his previous biography of Casanova, named Outstanding Achievement in Dance by BroadwayWorld, sold out Sadlers Wells twice in 2017 and 2022 and tours throughout the USA in 2024, and has lead on to current commissions to adapt The Red Shoes (Philadelphia Ballet, Juliano Nunes choreographer) and Pride and Prejudice. The original Casanova biography received universally rapturous reviews and was named Sunday Times Biography of the Year in 2008. Ian was approached by Dame Vivienne Westwood to co-author her authorised biography, a book described by the Telegraph as ‘fabulously fetishistically brilliant.’ It has gone on to bestseller lists all over the world in the many languages into which is has already been translated.
Ian’s biography of Beau Brummell was described by Stephen Fry as ‘a magnificent, fantastic read: all the wonders of that incomparable age touched on with mastery’ and by The Times as ‘biography simply as good as it gets.’ It was adapted as a BBCTV film starring Hugh Bonneville, Matthew Rhys and James Purefoy. The US publication was timed to coincide with the Anglomania Fashion Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Kelly’s performance in the title role of Ron Hutchinson’s Beau Brummell, Off-Broadway – a New York premiere.
Ian Kelly’s first book, the New York Times bestseller Cooking for Kings: A Life of Antonin Carême the First Celebrity Chef, was published by Short Books in the UK and Walker Books in the US and the publication in New York coincided with the Off-Broadway premiere of his play, based on Carême’s life. Ian appears frequently on television and radio, often talking about food or theatre history.
As an actor, appearances include recently The Kings Man, as President Woodrow Willson, The Pitmen Painters at the NT, on Broadway and in the West End, the role of Hermione’s father in the last of the Harry Potter films, George III in his own play Mr Foote opposite Simon Russell Beale and tv and stage from Downton Abbey to Howards End, Drop the Dead Donkey to the Russian epic Voina.
Further projects include an LA based film project about the premier of Handel’s Messiah, stage plays about Shostakovich and Dr Johnson respectively, and a number of TV series in development co-writing with Julian Fellowes. Meanwhile a return to non fiction beckons with a commission with Picador Pan Macmillan for a new work on Shakespeare. Ian is represented by ICA for books and book rights.
Published Works
Author: Ian Kelly
Genres: Non-fiction, Biography
Vivienne Westwood is one of the icons of our age.
Fashion designer, activist, co-creator of punk, global brand and grandmother; a true living legend. Her career has successfully spanned five decades and her work has influenced millions of people across the world.
For the first and only time, Vivienne Westwood has written a personal memoir, collaborating with award-winning biographer Ian Kelly, to describe the events, people and ideas that have shaped her extraordinary life. Told in all its glamour and glory, and with her unique voice, unexpected perspective and passionate honesty, this is her story.
“The book is billed “as told to”, but one gets the impression it was one long stream-of-consciousness rant, careering off on an uproarious picaresque romp through a wild and often unaccountable life. Holding a legend to account is Kelly’s dilemma – and his skill. He accomplishes it by the skin of his buckskin breeches, with a wit and humour of his own...A fabulous, fetishistically brilliant book.”
- Philip Hoare, The Telegraph“Her strident, frequently outspoken views shine through....that's the root of Westwood's continuing appeal and relevance: the shock of the new.”
- iQ
Author: Ian Kelly
Genres: Subject-Led Non-fiction
Beau Brummell's life is a riveting story of unparalleled fame, fashion and admiration followed by a descent into poverty and madness.
The man who put Saville Row on the map, who could win friends, political arguments or the favours of women with apparent effortlessness, and who was responsible for some of the wittiest put-downs in history, Brummell created the myth of the British gent typified by wit, style, sex, and the finest tailoring in the world. In this biography Ian Kelly brings the clothes, fashions and people of Regency England vividly to life.
Brummell's life is a mirror to his own age and also to our own. Part Andy Warhol, part David Beckham, part Oscar Wilde - Brummell became famous by virtue of his image at a time when the modern concept of 'celebrity' was first termed. This is the man with cause to be considered the father of the cult of personality - to be considered, indeed, as the first true 'celebrity'.
“A magnificent, fantastic read: all the wonders of that incomparable age touched on with mastery.”
- Stephen Fry“Superlative . . . a thoughtful, absorbing and hugely diverting book.”
- George Walden, Daily Mail“A wonderful melange of social history and biography. Vibrant, witty and fact-packed...something of a tour-de-force.”
- Claire Harman, Sunday Telegraph“Kelly tells Brummell's tale chronologically and with empathy, in prose well worthy of his aesthetic subject: "Opalescent in its small perfection." But this book's greatest triumph is to bring Brummell's times to life. Kelly has a fine feel for the period and its paradoxes of repression and enlightenment, of discipline and dissipation, for its sounds and smells. He expresses elegantly the essence of Brummell's dandyism, and holds it as a mirror to our own times today. Beautifully formed and dressed, this is biography at its best.”
- The Times“Hugely entertaining. . . The reader will want neither the book, not the intriguing life it recreates, to come to an end.”
- Herald
Author: Ian Kelly
Genres: Non-fiction, Biography
Giacomo Casanova: one of the most beguiling and controversial individuals of his or any age.
Braggart or perfect lover? Conman or genius? He made and lost fortunes, founded two state lotteries, wrote various plays, philosophical and mathematical treatises, opera libretti, poetry, and forty-two books. His 3,600 pages of memoirs recorded hundreds of meals as well, of course, as his affairs and sexual encounters with dozens of women and a handful of men and have bought him two centuries of notoriety.
Now, in CASANOVA, Ian Kelly reveals previously unpublished documents by Giacomo himself, as well as his friends and lovers, which give new insights into his life and his world. From his devotion to the Kaballah to his collaboration with Mozart on his opera Don Giovanni, from his vast appetite for food and sex to his training for priesthood, this is the fascinating story of an icon of his age and ours.
“Where others have berated Casanova for exaggeration, inaccuracy or manifest error, Kelly extends him imaginative sympathy... he does provide a surprisingly intimate sense of what Casanova was like.”
- The Times“...enthralling new biography puts us right. . . It is hard to conceive of a juicier, more informative account of social and sexual mores of 18th century Europe.”
- Daily Mail“Casanova has baffled and thwarted many of those writers who, while trying to describe and evaluate his experiences, have succeeded only in repeating in edited form the events as he tells them, but in Ian Kelly he has at last found his Boswell... Ian Kelly has taken on a tremendous challenge and produced a great blast of a book, packed with energy and information, marinated in sympathy and understanding, and rippling with enthusiasm right down to the final footnote.”
- Telegraph“Born into an acting family, and living among performers all his life, Casanova knew exactly how to play to an audience. The great strength of Ian Kelly's new biography is that he emphasises this aspect of the old rogue's character... By re-examining Casanova's life... Kelly has written an adult book, or I should say one for grown-ups... it is impressive work... He pays him the compliment of taking him seriously as man of genuine historical interest.”
- Ben Wilson, Spectator“Much more than a serial seducer, Casanova was a great European intellectual, a romantic, a trickster and a writer of tremendous skill and energy. He was probably, as he would be the first to admit, the most interesting man who ever lived, as this vivid and vibrant biography suggests.”
- The Sunday Times biography of the year 2008
Author: Ian Kelly
Genres: Non-fiction, Biography
Currently filming in Paris: the first season of Carême, for AppleTV+ directed by César winner Martin Bourboulon, series written and created by Ian Kelly, based on his best-selling Cooking for Kings.
Alongside this historical drama – set to drop globally with Apple Originals in 2025 – is the Bloomsbury UK and USA reprint of Cooking for Kings.
A unique feast of biography and Regency cookbook, Carême: The First Celebrity Chef (previously Cooking for Kings) takes readers on a chef’s tour of the palaces of Europe in the ultimate age of culinary indulgence. Drawing on the legendary cook’s rich memoirs, Ian Kelly traces Antonin Carême’s meteoric rise from Paris orphan to international celebrity and provides a dramatic below-stairs perspective on one of the most momentous, and sensuous, periods in European history – First Empire Paris, Georgian England, and the Russia of War and Peace. Carême had an unfailing ability to cook for the right people in the right place at the right time. He knew the favorite dishes of King George IV, the Rothschilds and the Romanovs; he knew Napoleon’s fast-food requirements, and why Empress Josephine suffered halitosis. Carême’s recipes still grace the tables of restaurants the world over. Now classics of French cuisine, created for, and named after, the kings and queens for whom he worked, they are featured throughout this captivating biography. In the phrase first coined by Carême, “You can try them yourself.”
Take a first look at the AppleTV+ series served up by Deadline here.