What could be better?
A night at the museum, a smile and a new book!
Salvador our official Night Time at Museums Correspondent says ‘Jump, the stories that made me jump, I jumped, everybody jumped at the scream, jumped, I did, I jumped.
The stories that made me jump were the best. Continue reading
Philip Davis the writer of Reading and the Reader ©Calyx Pictures
I was immersed in words, in the idea of literature, in the excitement of reading, in the prospect of discovery, I was at The Arts Centre. Philip Davis was enthusiastically proposing literature as a way of exploring yourself, accepting it as a form of mental travel. Here is part of the journey he took us on. Please read the following poem aloud –
BY ROBERT FROST
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Nathan Filer (centre) ©Calyx Pictures
Luckily ‘The Shock of the Fall’ is not a kiss and tell memoir by Mark E. Smith’s dentist, but an award-winning jewel of a book by first time novelist Nathan Filer.
Written completely from the point of view of nine-year old Matthew, the book has an implied darkness from the very start.
Filer was an enlightening guest, as he described the process of writing his novel from the very first moment the phrase ‘I had no intention of putting up a fight but these guys weren’t taking any chances’ entered his head and wouldn’t stop repeating. Continue reading
Jonathon Porritt…or is it Alex McKay? ©Calyx Pictures
So, Jonathon Porritt couldn’t make today’s event. In his stead was Alex McKay from 2050.
Alex looked a lot like Jonathon and sounded a lot like Jonathon and we were all giggling at the shared joke.
Festival Director Matt Holland confided afterwards that Jonathon arrived at Swindon Arts Centre with minutes to spare having arrived that day from some far flung place. Festival attenders arrived at the venue and saw an anxious director fretting at the lack of an author so Matt and Jonathon decided to cook up a little performance to defuse the anxiety. Continue reading
Frederic Gros © Calyx Pictures
At 12:15, Wednesday 14 May. I was walking in the Brunel Centre. I had bought mangoes and rice noodles from the tented market. I had walked to pay money into the bank. I thought nothing of it. I have never thought to differentiate between my types of walking in life.
My phone rang. It was Festival Director Matt Holland. “You must come and listen to Frederic Gros!” he said. ”Hear what he has to say about Rimbaud. It is wonderful!”
So, instead of walking, I ran to my car and in 20 minutes was sitting in the Arts Centre. Continue reading
Simon Heffer is a grumpy old sod. He barely raises a smile during his hour on stage at the Swindon Festival of Literature.
Even when his assumption that the teaching of English in schools is going to hell in a handcart is challenged by teachers in the packed Arts Centre, he harrumphs “good” like he expects it, rather than he is pleased that grammar is back on the syllabus.
Too much thinking and heat reminded me of English A Level. I would prop my A4 folder between lap and desk (to look like I was taking notes) and then nod off for a while. I really could have done with those Homer Simpson’s glasses which have wide eyes printed on the front to disguise the closed eyes behind them.
But here’s the problem with chronicling. Sometimes one is in the minority of one. The rest of the audience of young and old seemed very much awake through Alex Bellos’s talk at Swindon Arts Centre yesterday about the maths covered in his book, Alex Through the Looking Glass. Continue reading
Ask anyone to name a woman associated with the battlefield and you’ll get one of three answers – Joan of Arc, Florence Nightingale, or former BBC chief news correspondent Kate Adie – a veteran of Tiananmen Square, the first Gulf War, and the war in the former Yugoslavia.
Apt, then, that Kate has written a book about the women of the first world war. It’s called Fighting on the Home Front, but if the title suggests that women never made it across the Channel, let alone to the front line, then that’s far from the truth – as the author will explain later. Continue reading
Lisa Appignanesi gives an incredible insight into the way three different countries dealt with crimes of passion in the late 19th century.
In depth research and extraction of the most arresting cases makes her book ‘Trials of Passion’ a fascinating but also surprising read.
In a general sense we learn that the French legal system flexed to deal with emotion whereas the British system steadfastly sought out the visible facts and used cold factual evidence to construct a case. Continue reading
“What’s my name?” illustrator Korky Paul demands at Swindon Festival of Literature’s children’s day.
Bit of an ego trip for a kids’ event, thinks I (Chronicler Pete), as a barn full of youngsters yell back a response.
“Snorky?” retorts Korky in mock-indignation? “Snorky Snortle?” Then he draws and colours a Snorky Snortle in super-quick time, taking leads from the children as to what kind of nose (elephant), mouth (crocodile), arms, and legs (chicken) the fictional beast should have. Continue reading
Festival Chronicle 