Things in Heaven and Earth

A True Story of Love, Mystery and Transformation

Author Jane Metcalfe talks about her book and the extraordinary events that led to the profound spiritual transformation of two strangers.

When cinema legend Lauren Bacall met reclusive British playwright Colin Haydn Evans at a Los Angeles dinner party in 1979, their lives were instantly and utterly transformed. This true story – until now a closely guarded secret – describes how they fell irresistibly in love. But their unlikely relationship had much more to it than that. From that first explosive encounter, strange and unprecedented events unfolded that challenged the meaning of normal.

Quoting directly from the couple’s diaries, intimate letters and interviews of the time, Things in Heaven and Earth painstakingly and exclusively unveils the course of their five-month affair and the deep bond that lasted their entire lives. A unique adventure through the portal of time, seen through the eyes of Bacall and Evans, it is a drama that is both spiritual and deeply human.

There are more things in heaven and earth Horatio than are dreamt of in your philosophy
Hamlet (1.5.167-8) William Shakespeare

We are delighted to be hosting Jane Metcalfe on Friday 3rd November at The Green Door Centre where she will give a talk about her book, Things in Heaven and Earth.

The book tells the story of an extraordinary meeting between Holywood screen legend Lauren Bacall and British Playwright Colin Haydn Evans, a meeting that provoked an awakening in both Bacall and Evans at the same time and sparked a profound spiritual transformation.

“Things in Heaven and Earth breaks new ground in telling the true story of an unlikely relationship between movie icon Lauren Bacall and a reclusive Welsh playwright. Until now, the estates of Bacall and her former husband, Humphrey Bogart, seem to have gone to great – and successful – lengths in preventing this hitherto hidden episode of the actress’s life from entering the public realm.

But in 2007 Jane Metcalfe, the former wife of Colin Haydn Evans – the dramatist and one half of this unusual love story – was granted sole access to the couple’s intimate letters and diaries from that time, which is 1979 and beyond. Drawing on this authentic material, Metcalfe shows that, as well as the undeniable physical attraction, the couple also underwent what might be best described as paranormal experiences, leading to deep revelations of a mystical nature.

However sceptical the reader might be about these testimonies to the esoteric, the documents do represent a previously undiscovered piece in the complex jigsaw that is Bacall’s interior life. I myself have read these documents and I can guarantee that they are one hundred per cent genuine. It was also exciting to be one of the few people in the world to have ever read Bacall’s innermost thoughts and feelings.”

Extract from the Foreword to the new edition, by Robert Nurden 

“Jane Metcalfe is a gifted writer with a passionate and unique angle by which to tell this story.”

– MARIANA CAPLAN, PhD, author of Halfway up the Mountain and Eyes Wide Open

“How I came to reconnect with the playwright – my first husband – a quarter of a century after the event and to be in possession of the material that forms the basis of this book, is equally compelling. Nothing, it would appear, is by chance, or as it seems.

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- Jane Metcalfe

“We resist the present only because it threatens the story we have about ourselves.”

- Colin Haydn-Evans