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One Day

  • Introduction
  • Book Excerpt
  • Reviews
  • Emma Morley's Mix Tape
  • One Day - the movie

‘I can imagine you at forty,’ she said, a hint of malice in her voice. ‘I can picture it right now.’

He smiled without opening his eyes. ‘Go on then.’

15th July 1988. Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew meet for the first time on the night of their graduation. Tomorrow they must go their separate ways.

So where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that? And every year which follows?

One Day is a funny/sad love story spanning twenty years, a book about growing up – how we change, how we stay the same.

‘One Day is a wonderful, wonderful book: wise, funny, perceptive, compassionate and often unbearably sad. It’s also, with its subtly political focus on changing habits and mores, the best British social novel since Jonathan Coe’s What A Carve Up. – John O’Connell, The Times.

‘The funniest, loveliest book I’ve read in ages. Most of all it is horribly, cringingly, absolutely 100% honest and true to life. I lived every page.’ – Jenny Colgan.

‘A brilliant book about the heartbreaking gap between the way we were and the way we are…the best weird love story since The Time Traveller’s Wife’ – Tony Parsons.

One Day is a funny/sad love story spanning twenty years, a book about growing up – how we change, how we stay the same.

‘One Day is a wonderful, wonderful book: wise, funny, perceptive, compassionate and often unbearably sad. It’s also, with its subtly political focus on changing habits and mores, the best British social novel since Jonathan Coe’s What A Carve Up. – John O’Connell, The Times.

‘The funniest, loveliest book I’ve read in ages. Most of all it is horribly, cringingly, absolutely 100% honest and true to life. I lived every page.’ – Jenny Colgan.

‘A brilliant book about the heartbreaking gap between the way we were and the way we are…the best weird love story since The Time Traveller’s Wife’ – Tony Parsons.

Some people - well, okay, one person - has asked me what's on the rest of those mix tapes that Emma makes for Dexter (one in 1989, one in 2000). I thought it might be fun, not to mention a distraction from real work, to finish the compilations. So here they are, muddled up and in over-extended form. Emma has a fine record collection, and far better taste than Dexter, and this could have been two-hundred songs long. But if I don't stop now, I'll never write another word. Hope you enjoy it. p.s. I'm never quite sure about the ethics of Spotify, so please, please do go and buy these tracks if you enjoy them.

Emma Morley's Mix Tape

Note - for those without access to spotify, there's a shortened version of this available as an iMix on the iTunes store. And for your info, here's a full track listing. If you've never heard Baby by Os Mutantes, Can't Find My Way Home by Ellen McIlwaine or Who Knows Where The Time Goes by Fairport Convention, then now's the time.

Emma Morley's Mix Tape.

Unfinished Sympathy - Massive Attack

There is a Light That Never Goes Out - The Smiths

Fight The Power - Public Enemy

All I Want - Joni Mitchell

Sweet Jane - Cowboy Junkies

This is Love - PJ Harvey

Fade into You - Mazzy Star

On Saturday Afternoons in 1963 - Rickie Lee Jones

In My Life - The Beatles

Days - The Kinks

Walk on By - Dionne Warwick

Baby - Os Mutantes

These Days - Nico

Company - Rickie Lee Jones

Waterloo Sunset - The Kinks

Aria from the Goldberg Variations - Glenn Gould

You've Got to Hide Your Love Away - The Beatles

Pitseleh - Elliot Smith

Lover, You Should Have Come Over - Jeff Buckley

All to You - Ellen Mcilwaine

Dedicated to the One I Love - The Shirelles

Corrina, Corrina - Bob Dylan

Each and Everyone - Everything But The Girl

Nothing in this World Can Stop Me Worryin' 'Bout My Girl - The Kinks

Vitamin C - Can

Good Fortune - PJ Harvey

My Sweet Lord - Nina Simone

St. Swithin's Day - Billy Bragg

I Know It's Over - The Smiths

Dress - PJ Harvey

Northern Sky - Nick Drake

I Say A Little Prayer - Aretha Franklin

It Could Have Been A Brilliant Career - Belle and Sebastian

Protection - Massive Attack

Uncertain Smile - The The

Who Knows Where The Time Goes - Fairport Convention

Missing - Everything But The Girl

Pearly Dew-drops - The Cocteau Twins

Cruel - Prefab Sprout

Heroes - David Bowie

Magic in the Air - Badly Drawn Boy

Needle in a Haystack - Martha Reeves and the Vandellas

The Bottle - Gil Scott-Heron

Gloria - Patti Smith

Shipbuilding - Robert Wyatt

Love and Affection - Joan Armatrading

I Heard It Through The Grapevine - The Slits

All Day and All Of The Night - The Kinks

The Boy With The Arab Strap - Belle & Sebastian

Once Around The Block - Badly Drawn Boy

That Summer Feeling - Jonathan Richman

I'm A Believer - Robert Wyatt

Long Hot Summer - The Style Council

Can't Find My Way Home - Ellen McIlwaine

One Day - the movie

In June, July and August of 2010 we travelled between London, Paris, Edinburgh and Brittany, making our film version of One Day. Lone Scherfig directed, Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess played Emma and Dexter, and a wonderful cast, including Jodie Whittaker, Romola Garai, Rafe Spall, Ken Stott, and Patricia Clarkson, played the other roles.

At time of writing, the movie is still in the final stages of post-production, but will be released in July 2011 in the US, August and September elsewhere . It's not a slavishly faithful adaptation - the eight-hour version of One Day will have to wait - but I hope we've stayed true to the tone and spirit of the book, and I hope you enjoy the movie.

More about the movie

www.film4.com/galleries/one-day/one-day-2011-05

www.experienceoneday.com

You are in: » Home » The Books » One Day

One Day

‘I can imagine you at forty,’ she said, a hint of malice in her voice. ‘I can picture it right now.’

He smiled without opening his eyes. ‘Go on then.’

15th July 1988. Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew meet for the first time on the night of their graduation. Tomorrow they must go their separate ways.

So where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that? And every year which follows?

One Day is a funny/sad love story spanning twenty years, a book about growing up – how we change, how we stay the same.

‘One Day is a wonderful, wonderful book: wise, funny, perceptive, compassionate and often unbearably sad. It’s also, with its subtly political focus on changing habits and mores, the best British social novel since Jonathan Coe’s What A Carve Up. – John O’Connell, The Times.

‘The funniest, loveliest book I’ve read in ages. Most of all it is horribly, cringingly, absolutely 100% honest and true to life. I lived every page.’ – Jenny Colgan.

‘A brilliant book about the heartbreaking gap between the way we were and the way we are…the best weird love story since The Time Traveller’s Wife’ – Tony Parsons.

Great Expectations (2012)

A feature-film adaptation of Great Expectations. I've written the script, Mike Newell is the director, and the wonderful cast includes Jeremy Irvine as Pip, Ralph Fiennes as Magwitch, Helena Bonham-Carter as Miss Havisham, Robbie Coltrane as Jaggers, Holliday Grainger as Estella and Ewen Bremner as Wemmick.

One Day (2011)

A film adaptation of the one Day Book. Starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess

Tess Of The D'urbervilles (2008)

An adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s classic novel, starring Gemma Arterton, Eddie Redmayne and Hans Matheson.

And When Did You Last See Your Father (2007)

Adapted from the memoir by Blake Morrison, and starring Jim Broadbent, Colin Firth and Juliet Stevenson. Directed by Anand Tucker.

Starter For Ten (2006)

The feature adaptation of the novel, starring James MacAvoy, Rebecca Hall, Alice Eve, Benedict Cumberbatch and Dominic Cooper. Directed by Tom Vaughan.

Aftersun (2006)

Sarah Parish and Peter Capaldi starred as feuding married couple on a disastrous holiday in Spain.

Shakespeare Retold: Much Ado About Nothing (2004)

Sarah Parish, Damian Lewis and Billie Piper starred in this one-off reimagining of Shakespeare’s romantic comedy. The production was nominated for a BAFTA as best single drama.

Rescue Me (2002)

A six-part series starring Sally Phillips as a journalist on a womens’ magazine.

Cold Feet (2001)

I wrote four episodes of Mike Bullen’s hit TV series, episodes 2, 3, 6 and 7 of the third series.

I Saw You (2001-2002)

This was my first produced TV script. A modern screwball comedy starring Fay Ripley and Paul Rhys, this was about a lovelorn optician who meets the girl of his dreams, then promptly loses her again. He places an ad in the local ‘I Saw You’ column, only to run into trouble when the wrong girl replies…. The pilot of I SAW YOU won the best single drama prize at the Banff TV festival, and led to three further episodes in 2002./

Simpatico (1999)

My first produced piece of work, Simpatico is an adaptation of a stage-play by Sam Shepard which I co-wrote with the director Matthew Warchus. A noir-ish thriller set against the background of horse-racing scams, it stars Albert Finney, Sharon Stone, Jeff Bridges, Nick Nolte and Catherine Keener.