A correspondent writes (as they used to say in Agony columns ahead of a discussion of a complex personal problem, but none of those here) that she would be grateful for a slightly shorter post than the previous one, so here it is….
IT MAY BE daffodils that best declared the arrival of… CLICK FOR FULL BLOG
A RISING MOON over Christ Church Meadow brought the very successful 2010 Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival to a memorable end yesterday.
The great thing about literary festivals these days is that they are no longer just about ‘literature’ or dominated but the literary establishment. Rather the opposite. Their programmes now are celebrations of great ideas and current controversies which offer… CLICK FOR FULL BLOG
I FOUND myself the other night a sleepless guest in a house with a great deal of ambient nocturnal light. It came from two high street lamps, neighbours’ security lights and a lot of passing traffic …
My friend’s glazed front door was simply astonishing, a glowing blaze of fiery light which I found hypnotic. Sleepless as I was… CLICK FOR FULL BLOG
IT’S AN AWE-INSPIRING business witnessing one of Britain’s premier orchestras recording a major new work by a living composer. But there I was last week in Cardiff, at the BBC’s HQ adjacent to the Millennium Centre, with a select audience of five people, watching the 75-member BBC National Orchestra record Adrian William’s magisterial and profoundly moving new Cello Concerto… CLICK FOR FULL BLOG
‘Wow!’ you say and want to stop the car and grab your camera and capture the uncatchable – an extraordinary sunset just across that field, past those leafless trees, out over the far beyond of the chalk downland you’re driving across, so striking it seems despite all that to be almost within reach.
So you speed up a bit, look for a lay-by… CLICK FOR FULL BLOG
RIGHT NOW the Winter Olympics are being shown wall to wall on the BBC… and being an Olympic junkie I find myself watching events I have never shown any interest in before, for which I do not know the rules and which I will never participate in for the good reason that I am not… CLICK FOR FULL BLOG
IT IS A VERY ODD feeling signing a pile of one’s own books, not least because it is sometimes hard to believe you wrote it in the first place. Your name’s on it, your photograph is on an inside flap, there’s a bio somewhere which reduces your life to a few short lines, but did you write it? The… CLICK FOR FULL BLOG
I ONCE FOUND myself teaching the last day of a creative writing class on St. Valentine’s Day and suggested we have a wind-down group discussion about particular issues and problems not raised during the week. One of the students asked the tongue-in-cheek question: ‘What is literary genius and how can I achieve it?’… CLICK FOR FULL BLOG
The best moments in teaching
YOU MIGHT EASILY imagine that the avenue of pollarded and misshapen trees on the horizon in my picture are marching into battle like the forest of ents in Lord of the Rings – and that the huge, time-bleached, trunk in the foreground is one of their fallen comrades. You can find this striking arboreal procession just south… CLICK FOR FULL BLOG
Many readers, writers and publishers have been thinking this week about the lengthening shadow the arrival of e-books is casting over printed books. I know I have, wondering if my shelf of the books I’ve written is history. That’s because the latest – the iPad from Apple – has just been launched; while Kindle, the Amazon version, is… CLICK FOR FULL BLOG
