The 1893 Scream stolen from the Munch Museum  in 2004 and recovered August 2006, is irreparably damaged, the  Munch Museum states in its report on the recovered picture.  At first it was thought the damage to the lower left hand corner was merely slight  impact damage that could be repaired.  However, the Museum has now produced a two hundred page report which  shows the damage to be worse than initially  assumed.  Severe water damage to the lower left hand corner has irreparably damaged The Scream which, the report states, “cannot be repaired.”

The BBC have chosen  ‘Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream’ to be their ‘Book of the Week’ on BBC Radio 4 throughout the week beginning November 7th.  Five episodes will be broadcast, each lasting quarter of an hour between 9.45 and 10 am and repeated again at half past midnight. Louis Hilyer will be reading Munch. Hilyer is a member of  The Royal Shakespeare Company; he played Banquo in their Macbeth. He should make a fascinating Munch.

The Royal Academy  of Arts Magazine No 88, Autumn 2005, carries the article ‘Beneath the Skin’ which takes an extract from ‘Edvard Munch: Behind The Scream’  . It tells the story of  how Munch’s instense  relationship with Tulla Larsen came to a bloody climax when a violent struggle left Munch’s hand shattered with a bullet. The incident inspired some of Munch’s most iconic works.

BBC History Magazine September 2005 (vol 6, no.9) carries the story  entitled, ‘How The Scream was saved from Hitler’  based on the passage in the biography which reveals how some 30 of Munch’s major paintings including The Scream were hidden from the Occupying German forces in Norway throughout World War II , after Hitler had declared them ‘Degenerate Art’  which must be destroyed.www.bbchistorymagazine.com

This evening Sue Prideaux was presented with the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography, the oldest literary prize in the UK and, indeed, the third oldest in the world. It is pre-dated only by the Nobel and the Prix Goncourt. The James Tait Black enjoys a peculiarly honourable place among literary prizes. It is second to none for academic integrity, being awarded by senior members of Edinburgh University after a rigorous selection process by graduate students in Edinburgh’s School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, the oldest Department of English Literature in the world.
Previous winners include such literary greats as D.H.Lawrence, E.M.Forster, Evelyn Waugh, Iris Murdoch and Graham Greene.
Two prizes are awarded annually, one for biography and one for fiction. The 2006 fiction prize was won by Ian McEwan for his novel Saturday.
The prizes were awarded by Ian Rankin, a former University of Edinburgh English Literature student.
“My colleague Roger Savage, who has judged the biography prize for several years, agrees with me that this year the submissions for both biography and novel have produced an impressive short list. By the same token, neither of us is in any doubt that for sheer excellence of organisation and delivery as well as sheer reading pleasure, Ian McEwan and Sue Prideaux fully justify their selection as winners,” said Professor Colin Nicholson, manager and novel judge of the awards.
The committee included Ian Rankin and the distinguished BBC journalist James Naughtie and Alexander McCall Smith, a Professor of Law at Edinburgh University.
The 2006 biography long list comprised some sixty books. The short list was:
Siegfried Sassoon: A Biography by Max Egremont.
Haw-Haw: The Tragedy of William and Margaret Joyce by Nigel Farndale.
The Pursuit of Victory: The Life and Achievement of Horatio Nelson by Roger Knight.
Stuart: A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters
Voltaire Almighty: A Life in Pursuit of Freedom by Roger Pearson
Edvard Munch: Behind The Scream by Sue Prideaux.

In her acceptance speech, Sue Prideaux praised the spiritual generosity of the disinterested patrons of the arts whose long-ago benefactions bestowed recognition and encouragement on struggling artists.

Edvard Munch: the Modern Life of the Soul, the splendid  show that ran at MoMA, New York, between 19 Feb – 8 May 2006, was the best attended show in New York that year, according to statistics published in The Art Newspaper (March 2007).  A total of 419,563 visitors attended; 6,184 a day. Sue Prideaux gave a walk-through talk on the show in the gallery for CNN’s popular Sunday morning TV programme ‘Sunday.’

The same show came off well in terms of all art shows world-wide where, according to the same source, it attained 5th place overall. It came 3rd in the Impressionist and Modern top ten. With another world record price achieved in the auction rooms, it seems Munch’s time has come.

Sue Prideaux had the privilege of writing the introduction to Sotheby’s catalogue of the Olsen collection,  eight paintings by Munch sold by Fred Olsen at Sotheby’s in London at their Impressionist and Modern Art sale on February 7th 2006.   Selling for a total of 16.9 millions pounds,  they greatly exceeded their high estimate. A world record price of 6.2 million pounds was fetched by ‘Summer Day’, originally part of the Linde frieze. (See description of the paintings in the item below. ) The haunting ‘Self-portrait against two coloured ground’  wildly exceeded its estimate, selling for £3,600,000 with strong competition from six bidders.  International interest in the  sale was intense. It seems that among the younger  generation of collectors, Munch’s work is at last achieving its proper value within the context of the art of his time.