Economist, journalist, and Oxford college principal Will Hutton is angry. He bangs the lectern with his glasses, and gesticulates madly. He even uses profanities with clear intent.
The man who wrote The State We’re In now thinks we’re just “in a mess”. The audience laps it up. Continue reading
By the mid-point of the Swindon Festival of Literature, my brain can usually do with a good rest.
The organisers work us Festival-goers hard: getting up up before sunrise on day 1 for the Dawn Chorus, then making us think, and be creative, and think some more for the next six days. Continue reading
Roman Krznaric
“A smart professional type was sobbing quietly in the corner of my train carriage. So many of us are carrying an intolerable burden. Be kind.”
So tweeted TV celeb Dan Snow, 6 May, and Swindon Festival of Literature retweeted, apropos of nothing, other than what a lovely sentiment and what an awful dearth of empathy there seemed to be around the election.
On Friday, philosopher Roman Krznaric shared how he lost his empathy at the age of ten, when his mum died. And he wanted it back.
This isn’t just a ‘what I did on my holidays and you might laugh/learn from it’ kind of tale. Roman has begun a rather civilised – (for what else could it be than one filled with hugs?) empathic revolution with the Empathy handbook, Empathy Library, Empathy Museum and Empathy Bus.
The Empathy Bus features a ‘human library’ where, instead of books, actual humans can be ‘read’; a chance to talk to people who have a completely different way of life to one’s own and, as novelist Harper Lee said: ‘step into their skin and walk around for a while’. Continue reading
Chris Tutton
This was Chris Tutton’s second visit to Swindon. Six years ago he led a session in the Museum and Art Gallery.
Today [Friday 8 May 2015] he read from his new collection, Angles of Repose, and then offered up the stage to the audience to read their poems. Chris gave performance tips and advice.
‘Just let me know when I’ve read for 40 minutes’, he asked and began with talking muscles, dreams of the sea, off-the-cuff remarks, grown-up regrets, and magpie memories. His asides and introductions to the poems were funny and dry, I was never quite sure why he was telling us this stuff, then I’d find myself laughing. Continue reading
The sticky subject of simplifying modern literature for an American audience was discussed during an interview with author Vanessa LaFaye on Friday.
Sticky, because Vanessa is an American living in the Wiltshire. And sticky, because the author is being forced to choose between her preferred nuances within the novel, and commercial success in the US market. Continue reading
Matt Holland, Anna Whitwham and Paddy Fitzpatrick
For me, this was the most fascinating event of the Festival so far.
A lecturer in Masculinity at Royal Holloway University. A boxing trainer.
One with a refined accent, defined cheekbones and flowing clothes.
The other, dapper in a pork pie hat, glittering wrist watch, Irish.
Both were considered.
While I won’t necessarily watch a boxing match, I’m drawn to trained fighting; the Muhammad Ali ideal of ‘dance like a butterfly, sting like a bee’, the marriage of grace and intelligence with brutality. Blood and brains.
The eye-opener about boxing, as seen by trainer Paddy Fitzpatrick, is the universality of successful boxing – the rules can be applied to anything. I’ve heard the same said about dancing, mindfulness, overcoming anxiety, virtuoso musicianship, performance and success in any walk of life. Politics, especially politics. Continue reading
Patrick Gale and Eve McBride
“Mental illness overshadowed my life growing up. Our characters can go just like that from mental illness. I think that’s why I became a writer. I could escape into other people by writing.”
He was in conversation, yesterday, with novelist Eve McBride, fellow truth teller and lover of dogs.
“I suspect we both want to talk about dogs,” said Patrick earlier on Twitter; Eve’s Twitter name is 2bluedanes. “I have a dog in all my books,” said Patrick. Eve’s book, No Worst, There is None, explores the healing of grief from all angles, including by dog. Continue reading
Bruce Fogle
6 May 2015. Discovering a place in the natural world at the Swindon Festival of Literature or: Don’t Judge a book by its cover.
“I dressed and went for a walk – determined not to return until I took in what Nature had to offer.” – Raymond Carver, This Morning.
Suffering for my art – yet stoic in the execution of my Festival Chronicle duties I arrived at Swindon Arts Centre in a sodden and sorry state after the third drenching of the day and it was still only midday.
I’d been dispatched there by Festival Chronicle HQ to cover the Swindon Literature Festival appearance of Bruce Fogle – and if the name sounds familiar you’re not wrong – but more of that later.
Bruce Fogle is a former zoo worker, practicing vet and best-selling writer. Not on the face of it the kind of ‘thing’ that would be high on my list of things with which to engage – I’m not exactly at one with the natural world at the best of times. And especially not after mice in the conservatory, rats infesting the loft and more than the occasional frog startling me in the garden. Or maybe that’s more a case of me startling the frogs. Anyway. This all goes to prove the old adage about not judging a book by its cover – literally in this case because, despite my trepidation, Mr Fogle’s talk turned out to be an enchanting prequel – his words – to his book Barefoot at the Lake: A boyhood summer in Cottage Country. Continue reading
Sandi Toksvig with Matt Holland
I do love a good book event. The interviewer and interviewee on stage in comfortable chairs, normally with a table between them. Sometimes there are flowers and glasses of water. There’s always a pull-up thing behind them advertising something else. And last night I got the chance to see Sandi Toksvig in action, doing what she does best, talking at a hundred miles an hour on a myriad of subjects from being short to the King of Sweden. Her latest book, Peas and Queues, is about manners and how to behave properly. Apparently, Sandi got the idea from chastising her daughter who was eating with her elbows on the table. Sandi told her to get her elbows off, her daughter asked her why. She had no idea why. The book topic suits Sandi with her clipped, upper-class accent; I expect her to be a font of all knowledge onthings like this. Her accent tells me so. Continue reading
Festival Chronicle 