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Creativity in and out of the 70’s at Hilda’s Lounge

18 May
Hilda Sheehan with Robert Vas Dias (C) Jennifer Berry
Caroline Day talks to Sam (C) Jennifer Berry

Hilda’s Lounge took place at the Richard Jefferies Museum as part of Swindon Festival of Literature, 13 May 2016. Guests Robert Vas Dias, Sophie Duffy, Caroline Day and Barry Andrews were each in conversation for an hour.

First, confession: I was not around for the ’70s (or, for that matter, a large amount of the ’80s). I am therefore reliant on Hilda Sheehan’s ’70s lounge (located deep in the Richard Jefferies Museum) conforming to stereotypes found in BBC ’70s shows and themed nightclubs.

The result is one that I can believe: the wallpaper seems to be have been lifted straight from Abigail’s Party; a grand-looking record player, lava lamp and copious amounts of Babycham contributing to an atmosphere one can one only describe as ‘locked in time’. I’m told that Babycham is a typical part of this environment: after watching a few people enjoying it a little too much, I can see arguments for and against it.

Having been allowed time to take in this fragment of the past, we are thrown into our first guest talent. One might assume that Hilda’s guests would be there to similarly impart memories of the ’70s. This would not necessarily be the case. Continue reading →

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Detective novelist returns to the scene of the crime

16 May
©Calyx Picture Agency Swindon Festival of literature Alison Bruce
©Calyx Picture Agency Swindon Festival of literature Alison Bruce
©Calyx Alison Lansdown with car

It all for started in Swindon’s Town Hall for Alison Bruce – then Lansdown – at a film-writing course.

“I like the idea, but you need to write a book first,” was the tutor’s instructions.

So Alison went away and wrote her third book; well, her first, but it was like Star Wars where the first turned into the third in the seven book series.

I knew Alison in the 1980s when she was a presenter on local radio, presenting a rock and roll show.

I have photographed her with her Ford Zodiac car as a mechanic, as a model, and recently I ventured into her now home town of Cambridge, to interview her about the first book in the Detective Goodhew series of crime novels. Continue reading →

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Swindon’s greatest intellects clash at Think Slam

15 May
Swindon Festival of Literature – Think Slam Pictured Louisa Daveson 13/05/16 Pictures Clare Green/www.claregreenphotography.com
Swindon Festival of Literature – Think Slam Pictured John Little 13/05/16 Pictures Clare Green/www.claregreenphotography.com
Swindon Festival of Literature – Think Slam Pictured Kevin Lister 13/05/16 Pictures Clare Green/www.claregreenphotography.com
Swindon Festival of Literature – Think Slam Pictured David Burridge 13/05/16 Pictures Clare Green/www.claregreenphotography.com
Swindon Festival of Literature – Think Slam Pictured Chris Eddy (Winner) 13/05/16 Pictures Clare Green/www.claregreenphotography.com
Swindon Festival of Literature – Think Slam Pictured John Sheehy 13/05/16 Pictures Clare Green/www.claregreenphotography.com

Swindon’s greatest intellects clashed on Friday night, at the seventh annual Think Slam.

(Full disclosure: Chronicler Louisa was one of the competitors, and I am contractually obliged to describe her as one of Swindon’s greatest intellects.)

Over three gruelling rounds, seven competitors did mental battle in the Swindon Festival of Literature competition run in association with the Swindon Philosophical Society.

Swindon, by the way, is unique in having this kind of philosophical thrown-down. Until another town or city picks up the gauntlet, the competition winner is, by default, the UK’s – and possibly the planet’s – greatest living philosopher (just think the USA and the baseball World Series). Continue reading →

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Profanity and insanity – Swindon is Blessed by Brian

12 May
brian blessed_3394Swindon Festival of literatureBrian Blessed

©Calyx Picture Agency Brian Blessed

*** Warning: this report contains swearing, obviously: it’s about Brian Blessed. ***

Brian Blessed is going into Space. This is a good thing, as it is probably the only place large enough to accommodate his personality. Certainly the stage of Swindon Arts Centre cannot not hold him.

If Brian Blessed were an astrophysical phenomenon, I think he would be a supermassive black hole, because strange things happen in his field of gravity. And he’s massive. Continue reading →

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Change Everything

12 May
Swindon Festival of Litrature Pictured Christian Felber 11/05/16 Pictures Clare Green/www.claregreenphotography.com
Swindon Festival of Litrature Pictured Christian Felber 11/05/16 Pictures Clare Green/www.claregreenphotography.com
Citizen panel preparing to vote

Swindon Festival of Literature director Matt Holland gave a fist pump as last night’s author concluded at Swindon Arts Centre.

A full house, a double event (for the first time), attended by Swindon’s ‘movers and shakers’, cheering. Was this a celebrity? A high-profile fiction writer? Not this time. This was an author talking about the economy.

A festival fan had suggested the event and the festival took a risk that paid off.

The speaker, Christian Felber ‘flown in from Austria by way of Portugal’, is not an economist, he tells us. In fact he’s rather cross with modern economics (as cross as such a kind, smiley man such as Christian could be). Modern economics – and there is no other kind, it’s a very new discipline – is heartless.  He tells a joke – a student worries to a university professor that he cannot decide the course to study. The professor says to follow his heart. The student thinks then says, ‘business ethics’. The lecturer says, ‘then you will have to make a choice’. Economics only cares about itself and how much money is made – ethics is seen to have no relevance to it. It mixes up means and goals and forgets money is a means to an end, not the end. Continue reading →

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Beautiful and useful – The Saffron Tales

11 May

unspecifiedIn the 1930s, a country made a PR faux pas – it asked the rest of the world to call it Iran, the name used by its people, and not what the Western World named it, Persia.

In English, Persia is the sound of exotic mystery, the Arabian nights. It sounds luxurious. Perrrsia, the noise a cat makes when it’s happy; Iran sounds like someone fleeing. The relationship the West – and certainly Britain – currently has with the country is undoubtedly problematic and unhelpful as to our associations with the newish name, especially after the revolution of 1978 and the rise of Islamic militancy. And the capital city of Tehran is not one that evokes history or millennia of culture, as this afternoon’s author Yasmin herself describes it, ‘one of those Middle Eastern cities thrown up without thought or design.’

So former Middle Eastern human rights campaigner, now cooker writer, Yasmin Khan, wanted to reclaim the Persian magic of her mother’s homeland. It happened by accident; in 2012, when the Western-imposed sanctions on Iran hit hard, her grandfather died and she went to stay with her grandmother in the lush lands of the Caspian Sea where she spent some of her childhood and holidays, away from her home in Birmingham. For something to do she asked to be shown some recipes, and while she cooked she heard the family memories that went with them. Continue reading →

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Red Ken is among friends at Swindon Festival of Literature

10 May
DSC_2783 Ken Livinsgtone at Swindon festival of Literature

©Calyx Ken Livingstone at the Swindon Festival of Literature

“The reason I keep getting into trouble is that I’m always saying what I believe.”

At the height of KenGate (are we calling it KenGate?) I saw a funny tweet, retweeted by Swindon Festival of Literature author and comedian Dom Joly. It imagines Ken Livingstone on Mastermind:

“Your name?”
“Ken Livingstone.”
“Your specialist subject?”
“Not bringing up Hitler.”
“Your time starts n––“
“Hitler.”

There was a time (last week) when it seemed that Ken couldn’t stop talking about Hitler. So how long would it be before he brought up Adolf again? Within the first minute? Not at all? Read on to find out! Continue reading →

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Is there life in the old dog yet?

10 May
D J Taylor

D J Taylor (left) with Matt Holland ©Calyx Picture Agency

10th May 2016

DJ Taylor – on the life of Literature in Britain – The Prose Factory

 The purpose of this chronicle is not to offer up a review of D J Taylor’s latest tome The Prose Factory – a 200,000-word examination of the life of literature in England. Bigger and better folk than I have already opined on its success, or otherwise, of achieving its objectives. But, as Taylor’s entertaining and humour-injected talk today was centred around it, we should look at it.

Looking at The Guardian’s review from earlier this year, I was drawn to their comment that “Taylor is firmly on the side of ‘ordinary readers, always on the look out for ‘snootiness’.” I like that because I consider myself to be an ‘ordinary reader’. Continue reading →

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Sharon Blackie on the path out of our modern wasteland

9 May
Sharon Blackie

Sharon Blackie ©Calyx Picture Agency

“The world is in crisis”, says Sharon Blackie, author of If Women Rose Rooted, and possessor of one of the calmest voices I’ve ever heard.

I’m here as an unofficial representative of the Patriarchy, which quickly becomes an uncomfortable place to be as Sharon opens with a lighthearted tale of the rape and subjugation of the well maidens of ancient Celtic myth.

They used the water from the wells they guarded to nourish the land, so the legend goes, and so the land nourished us in turn. But then menfolk were invented, and we ruined everything. Continue reading →

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Jo Marchant on “the beer goggles of medicine”

9 May
Jo Marchant

Dr. Jo Marchant. Photo ©Calyx Picture Agency

I can remember the exact moment I first became fascinated by the idea of the mind being able to cause physical changes in the body. I was eleven, and I’d just watched Michael Ironside use his brain to force a man’s head to explode in the movie Scanners. The following day I went in to school and squinted really hard at the teacher. He asked me if I needed new glasses.

Real life often finds a way to be both less exciting and more interesting than Hollywood fantasy and it turns out that our brains contain a hidden and little understood power after all.

Jo Marchant has a BSc in genetics, a PhD in microbiology, and a black belt in jiu jitsu. I have a Scottish ‘O’ Level in Biology. Fortunately the science ninja also possesses a storyteller’s knack for unfolding a narrative in way that makes it easy to follow. She’s written a book called Cure: A Journey Into the Science of Mind Over Body which is essentially an examination of the placebo effect and the scientific study of this phenomena. Continue reading →

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