AN Accrington author has taken on one of the hardest tasks in literature — rewriting William Shakespeare.

Jeanette Winterson has been chosen to launch the Hogarth Shakespeare series in October with The Gap Of Time — her reinvention of The Winter’s Tale.

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The major international project will see Shakespeare’s works re-imagined by some of today’s bestselling and most celebrated writers, albeit retaining the spirit of the original plays, to reach a new audience.

The publications will be released in 14 languages, including Chinese and Russian, across at least 20 countries.

Bafta Award winner Ms Winterson has previously retold the story of the Pendle witch trials in The Daylight Gate and is famous for her semi-autobiography Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit.

Her coming-of-age novel — about being abandoned by her birth mother, being adopted by evangelists and brought up in Accrington to become a missionary and then discovering her sexuality as a lesbian — has since become a television story and is included in the English literature curriculum.

Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale is unusual for the Bard as it has a happy ending.

Ms Winterson said: “All of us have talismanic texts that we have carried around and that carry us around. I have worked with The Winter’s Tale in many disguises for many years.

“This is a brilliant opportunity to work with it in its own right and I love cover versions.’ Reworking the plays of the world’s most celebrated writer is nothing new.

The Taming Of The Shrew was reinvented as teen movie 10 Things I Hate About You, Romeo & Juliet was the inspiration for musical West Side Story, The Tempest led to science-fiction film Forbidden Planet, and Macbeth was transformed into Japanese warrior tale Throne Of Blood.