The Go-Between (1971 film) envisaged Alec Guinness and Margaret Leighton in the leads and employed Nancy Mitford to write a script. L.P. Hartley later claimed Korda had no real intention to make a film of the book - he kept the rights hoping to re-sell them at a profit. Hartley says "I was so annoyed when I heard of this that I put a curse on him and he died, almost the next morning." Joseph Losey was interested in filming the novel. He tried to get financing for a version in 1963 after "The Servant" and says Pinter wrote "two thirds of a script".
The Takeover (novel) role of religion (represented by Hubert's bogus Diana cult and two indolent, chortling Catholic priests) and the role of money: mostly unseen, or buried. A larger-scale backdrop is provided by the 1973 oil crisis. Hubert's secretary, Pauline Thin, shares her surname with the Edinburgh-based stationer James Thin, who supplied Spark's notebooks in which she wrote all her novels in longhand. The Takeover (novel) The Takeover is a novel by the Scottish author Muriel Spark. It was first published in 1976. It is set in Nemi, Italy between 1973 and 1975. The author had moved to Italy as a permanent resident