My first impression of the Hay Festival was that it actually feels like it’s indoors, with only a few select squares of grass to remind us that it’s not. My second impression was that it is surprisingly easy to get lost, considering I’m someone who tends to be able to find my way around new places quite easily. I think perhaps that’s because it is so full of people that you spend half your time trying not to bump into anyone, rather than actually looking around you, but it’s certainly a great place for people watching! Continue reading
Month: May 2016
Book Review: Snowdrops by A.D. Miller
‘Snowdrops’ is a Moscow slang term for the dead bodies which end up buried under snow, revealing themselves as it eventually begins to melt in the spring. The book is written as a confession from Nick, an English lawyer who has spent some years living in Moscow, to his fiancée. It is also a justification, an explanation of what happened and an attempt to understand why. He is brutally honest and, from the beginning, you sense that something went badly wrong, but it isn’t until near the end that all is revealed. Continue reading
The Return Of The Ancient Mariner
A Guest Post written by Dylan Moore
It’s not often that Cardiff Bay plays host to an actual ship. Since the barrage sealed off the capital’s inner harbour from the open sea, some of Cardiff’s maritime history has been forgotten. This year’s Coleridge in Wales festival is all about rediscovering aspects of life that have been jettisoned, downplayed or simply lost, and the arrival of the Matthew (a replica medieval ship) was a potent symbol of something old that is also a harbinger of something new. Continue reading
Re-inventing the Mabinogion
If you live in Wales for any length of time, you cannot avoid noticing the love of storytelling that has filtered down through centuries of tradition. The Mabinogion is the name given to an assortment of Welsh legends dating back to a pre-Medieval era of mythology and Arthurian romance. Seren books commissioned 11 Welsh writers to re-write these tales for a modern audience, bringing them to life in twenty-first-century Wales. Continue reading
Book Review: My Own Dear Brother by Holly Müller
My Own Dear Brother is a powerful depiction of life in occupied Austria during the Second World War. But it is not a book about war, or a book about occupation. It is a book which makes you realise that anyone is capable of anything, that evil comes not only from outside, but also from within. And it also demonstrates the brutal and unfair treatment of the vulnerable members in society. Continue reading
A Day At The Cheltenham Poetry Festival
Kevan Manwaring
My day at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival included everything from a thunderstorm to a talking parrot. The first event (which I enjoyed the most) featured Kevan Manwaring performing poetic pieces from his book Lost Borders, interspersed with a selection of traditional folk songs sung by Chantelle Smith. They began in Scotland, with poetry inspired by a walk along Hadrian’s Wall, and moved further afield to Ireland and then America, returning finally to the UK once again, exploring the borders between worlds. Continue reading
Three Great Authoresses: Brontë, Austen and Eliot
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen and George Eliot are three of Britain’s greatest women writers, but which one is your favourite? Which one do you think is the greatest? You can add your own vote to the poll at the end of this post.
I attended an event at the Stratford Literature Festival last weekend, with a panel of three biographers. Paula Byrne (The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things), Val Dodd (George Eliot: An Intellectual Life) and Claire Harman (Charlotte Brontë: A Life) each presented the case for their favourite authoress. Continue reading
The Power of Poetry on Prescription
Do you read as a form of escapism? Or perhaps you read to calm yourself down at the end of a busy day? Stressed, Unstressed: Classic Poems to Ease the Mind is an anthology of poems selected specifically to help those who are going through tough times (a form of “bibliotherapy”). I attended a fascinating event organised as part of the Stratford Literature Festival, to hear more about this concept. Dr Paula Byrne (academic and founder of ReLit charity), Dr Andrew Schuman (a medical doctor and poet) and Deborah Alma (aka The Emergency Poet) discussed the growing trend in taking literature seriously for its medicinal value in relation to mental health. Continue reading