Thoughts about things I’ve written or read or heard or seen. An attempt to stay positive in a turbulent world.
Recent Articles
The BBC National Short Story Award
The shortlist is: Richard Beard Guidelines for Measures to Cope with Disgraceful and Other EventsJane Gardam The People on Privilege HillErin Soros SurgeAdam Thorpe The NamesClare Wigfall The Numbers The stories are being read on Radio Four all this week, you can listen, or listen again, here, and the winning story and the story that...Continue reading→
Storytellers … on the road
Two storytellers, Peter Chand and Giles Abbott, have begun a storytelling journey from Avebury to London. Like itinerant monks, they will depend on the charity (or love as it has long been translated) of others for their welfare along the way, and in return they will tell stories. Their storytelling journey will also raise money...Continue reading→
The Reader: Philip Pullman and The Storyteller’s Responsibility
The Summer issue of The Reader is, as usual, full of wonderful things (I discovered The Reader over on dovegreyreader’s blog a while ago, thank you dovegrey). But the reason this issue (No. 30) is particularly wonderful to me is because of the essay by Philip Pullman called The Storyteller’s Responsibility. It beautifully describes what...Continue reading→
Literary fathers
Simon at Stuck-in-a-Book has prompted this post, with his post today. He asks who our favourite literary fathers are. I commented on his post, here, but I feel so strongly that Mr Bennet is the best literary father in my literary world that I’ve turned my comment there into a post here. Mr Bennet is...Continue reading→
South East London reading
I’ll be talking about and reading from Speaking of Love tonight at Penge Library in south east London. It’s part of The Blurb, Bromley’s June festival of Books and Reading and it’s free, but if you’d like to come you need to book. The event has been organised in association with Spread the Word’s bookchat...Continue reading→
Rose Tremain wins Orange … HURRAH!
One hundred years ago a great friend told me about Rose Tremain’s short stories, and since then I haven’t stopped reading her work. She’s written at least two collections of short stories and ten novels and today, wonderful writer that she is, Rose Tremain has won the Orange Prize for Fiction with her tenth novel,...Continue reading→
Favourite authors, at a moment’s notice …
Simon at Stuck-in-a-Book tagged me for this meme, which began on Heather’s site, Errant Thoughts. Thank you , Simon … . 1. Who’s your all-time favourite author, and why? John Fowles because his use of language is astonishing, glorious, erudite and because it teaches me, without patronising, and because he creates worlds that I never...Continue reading→
Foot Planning
In the poem called ‘Words’ for Lucy in Don’t Let them Tell you How to Grieve, there are these lines: one foot in front of the otherand don’t forget to breathe They are the last lines in a poem which is full of the words of comfort that people send to a grieving person, and...Continue reading→
Don’t Let Them Tell You How To Grieve
I read about this extraordinarily beautiful, touching, poignant, funny, sad, life-affirming, illuminating, comforting and grief-understanding collection of poems by Gina Claye on dovegreyreader’s blog at the end of April. I ordered myself a couple of copies which arrived this morning. I know we all talk about essential books, but this one is quintessential. Buy it...Continue reading→
Lost in Translation … ?
I found a clever little widget over at Bookersatz which translates your blog for you. It’s called Altavista Babelfish Translator and you can see it over there on the right and down a bit. But because the title of my blog includes a neologism the translations are hilarious. In French MATs translate as NATTES (plaits...Continue reading→
Subscribe to the Column
Search the Column
Select a Topic
Categories
Archive by Month
Archives
Subscribe on Substack
