Daisy. Cute name. Comprehensive school accent. Jeans and a ponytail. Young. And a secondary school teacher who found time to write a book, a clever book – Seven Myths About Education – full of well supported, understandable arguments. All very welcome and refreshing.
Her conclusion, it seemed to me, is that Knowledge is a Good Thing. And teaching knowledge for knowledge sake is not only a good thing but essential. Continue reading
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
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
It’s not an admission you’d expect from the 16th Sexiest Woman In the World (FHM Magazine, 2003) but if you meet Nell McAndrew in the school playground, chances are she’ll be sweaty and smell slightly of mackerel.
The original Lara Croft, Tomb Raider – she was the face of the arcade game franchise three years before Angelina Jolie claimed the ponytail in the movie spin-off – and the fourth most popular contestant in the first series of I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, Nell was at Lydiard Park to talk about her new book, Nell McAndrew’s Guide to Running. Continue reading
Chicken going about her business at Lower Shaw Farm ©Calyx Pictures
Aims of a lit fest:
I’d done numbers one to three (a lot) and written (a lot) about the experience. Now it was time to come up with my own composition. Which was, as it turns out, something to do with chickens and beards. Continue reading
So I decided the night before the Think Slam that I was going to do it. Do it. Do it.
That needed to be said several times as the only time I previously entered the Think Slam, I came last. But that’s me. Utterly nail it or completely miss the point. I am not an inbetweeny kind of woman.
So on Thursday I finally had three solid ideas in my head for the three times three minute pieces, and checked on the off chance that there was a place left in the competition. There was. Okay, I now had one chronicler piece to write up that day. Check. Two for Friday. Check. And three think slam talks to hone for Friday evening. Oh gawd. I really don’t like life to be simple.
And to really make it interesting, I woke up on Friday to a nasty headache.
At 1pm, after chronicler Pete shoved some painkillers down my throat, I began to write. I spent three hours on the first talk and an hour on the next two. I work quite well under pressure, fortunately. The chronicler pieces would have to wait.
After Sandrine Berges’s interesting talk on unsung hero Mary Wollstonecraft, it was time for the Think Slam to commence. Continue reading
Do your research, says legendary literary agent, Carole Blake.
Carole’s event at Swindon Arts Centre on Thursday night wasn’t appropriate advice for all writers – poets, people happily writing for fun, journalists, non-fiction, niche – but this gem universally rings true, whether you’re writing a CV or pitching your precious first book to an agent.
And it’s easier than ever. Check out most agent’s website and they’ll give you a step-by-step guide of what they do and don’t represent, in which format to submit your work, etc. And, of course, you need a cracking book that they like and think they can sell. Continue reading
As with many notable historic women, Mary Wollstonecraft is an overlooked hero.
Sandrine Berges, a French professor flown from her home in Turkey for the Swindon Festival of Literature, has a mission to raise Wollstonecraft’s profile.
Wollstonecraft was a British writer and philosopher who wrote what is probably the first feminist tract.
“Wollstonecraft would have been shocked at how slowly things have moved for women today,” said Sandrine, arguing that Wollstonecraft’s values have still not been fully realised.
The eighteenth century writer and philosopher lived a pretty racy life for a women in that age. She did not deliberately set out to provoke society – she came from a respectable family abeit with issues – she simply wanted the freedom to live the life she wanted to lead. She had two lovers, fell pregnant, fell in love with another man and fell pregnant again. She married the father of her second child but lived apart from him so they could both maintain their independence. They shared childcare of the first child. Sadly for her and for early feminism, she died days after the birth of her second child. Continue reading
Festival Chronicle 