{"product_id":"kaspar-prince-of-cats","title":"**Kaspar Prince Of Cats","description":"\u003cp\u003eA heart-warming, colour-illustrated novel about Kaspar the Savoy cat, from the\u003cbr\u003eaward-winning author of Born to Run and The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips\u003cbr\u003eKaspar the cat first came to the Savoy Hotel in a basket - Johnny Trott knows,\u003cbr\u003ebecause he was the one who carried him in.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJohnny was a bell-boy, you see, and he carried all of Countess Kandinsky's\u003cbr\u003ethings to her room. But Johnny didn't expect to end up with Kaspar on his hands\u003cbr\u003eforever, and nor did he count on making friends with Lizziebeth, a spirited\u003cbr\u003eAmerican heiress.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePretty soon, events are set in motion that will take Johnny - and Kaspar - all\u003cbr\u003earound the world, surviving theft, shipwreck and rooftop rescues along the way.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBecause everything changes with a cat like Kaspar around. After all, he's\u003cbr\u003ePrince Kaspar Kandinsky, Prince of Cats, a Muscovite, a Londoner and a New\u003cbr\u003eYorker, and as far as anyone knows, the only cat to survive the sinking of the\u003cbr\u003eTitanic! From the Author.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI'm a story detective. I hunt down clues because I need evidence to write my\u003cbr\u003estories. So what was the evidence behind the writing of Kaspar?\u003cbr\u003eA year ago I was asked to be Writer-in-Residence at the Savoy Hotel in London.\u003cbr\u003eThis involved putting on some literary events and staying for three months at\u003cbr\u003ethe Savoy. My wife Clare and I had a bed the size of Ireland, and breakfast\u003cbr\u003eevery morning looking out over the Thames.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEveryone in the hotel was very kind. We were treated like royalty - which was\u003cbr\u003egreat!\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThen one day, in the corridor next to the American Bar, I met Kaspar, the\u003cbr\u003eSavoy Cat. He was sitting there in a glass showcase - a sculpture of a huge\u003cbr\u003eblack cat - very elegant, very superior.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI made enquiries, as detectives do, and found out why he was there.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOne day, almost a hundred years ago, thirteen men sat down to a dinner party\u003cbr\u003eat the Savoy. One of them scoffed loudly at the suggestion that thirteen might\u003cbr\u003ebe an unlucky number, said it was so much tosh.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOnly a few weeks later, he was shot down in his office in Johannesburg, South\u003cbr\u003eAfrica. Thereafter The Savoy decided that they would never again allow thirteen\u003cbr\u003epeople to sit down together for dinner.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThey would always have a fourteenth chair, and sitting on the fourteenth\u003cbr\u003echair, there would be a specially carved sculpture of a lucky black cat.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe was known as Kaspar. .\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMy first clue.\u003cbr\u003eMy second clue: I came down to breakfast one morning, and was walking down the\u003cbr\u003ered carpeted stairs into the River Restaurant, when I looked up and had a\u003cbr\u003esudden sense of déjà  vu.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe whole decor and atmosphere reminded me of pictures I'd seen of the\u003cbr\u003erestaurant on the Titanic. I knew then my story would be about a cat called\u003cbr\u003eKaspar, who would live at the Savoy and become the only cat to survive the\u003cbr\u003esinking of the Titanic.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut it was the people who lived and worked at the Savoy who gave me my last\u003cbr\u003eand most vital clue. I discovered that they came from every corner of the\u003cbr\u003eglobe. And I soon discovered also that their lives were very different from the\u003cbr\u003elives of the guests they looked after.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt would have been very much like this, I thought, in 1912, at the time the\u003cbr\u003eTitanic went down.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMy evidence was complete. A little dreamtime, to make some sense of all the\u003cbr\u003eclues, and I could begin my story, about how Kaspar was brought to the Savoy by\u003cbr\u003ea very famous diva - an opera singer, a Countess from Russia....\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Collins","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51273197125915,"sku":"9780007267002","price":9.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0915\/4363\/4203\/files\/9780007267002.jpg?v=1771449442","url":"https:\/\/abcschoolsupplies.ie\/products\/kaspar-prince-of-cats","provider":"ABC School Supplies ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}