The Jewel in the literary festival crown

I adore Dartington, with it's beautiful grounds, halls with high ceilings and fantastic vistas. A literary festival is about the books one goes to hear about, but to have places to retire to and mull over what has been heard is also an essential part of the experience.

Here are some of the many pictures that I took in this magical place.





















Also, here is a picture that should surprise no one: The books that I bought:

It's lacking a few though - the wonderful Waterstones staff very kindly agreed to post four that I wanted signed but couldn't be at the events myself .... Claire Tomalin, Helen Rappaport and Katharine Whitehorn will all join the collection soon!

Poem of the week

One Dartington Wondermentalist poem for the world to share ....


Windmills… what are you like?

Do you mind how I wind the windmill will?
Gyratory, vibratory, mistral–seeking blades
Sentinel shifters of airy semaphore
Windmill nimbys, nimwill wind me, spin me
Whisking up clouds for a sunset soufflé
An un-winged plane, going nowhere fast, forever…
Turbine be forever mine
Swish, swoosh, swish, swooshhhhh!!!
Oh how revoltingly Dutch.
Wind mills – (on) tall hills – (are) modern ills – (with) fancy frills
Puffing, blowing, huffing, flowing
Ghostly forms, foolishly arrogant in your ridiculous white attire
Why do your wings wave like a waffle?
A pickled onion spinning with its stick
A Spiro-graph of air-borne flight, fights…
Wind grinding pepper-pot, slow sail stew
Scarecrow comedian making a point
A lighthouse on the land, warning of approaching corn
Making flour by wind power, takes about 59 minutes! Doh!
Big sails waiting for wind kiss, sky caress, open arms
Sail this steeple across swollen sodden swamps
Slender blades generating “power”, strong stems – 3 turning petals
She loves me, she loves me not, “she loves me”
Whooshing, whirling, wheeling
Web, windy, wild, westerly
Focused on flour or flux
Though the mills of god grind slowly, they grind exceedingly small
Revolving doors
A Mandela milling the wind
Ranks of slim white sentinels saving our skins
No ill winds please, keep it sweet
The sails on the mill go round and round…
Who can mill the wind?
And, once ground, what kind of cake would it bake?
Something light and airy? Self-raising? Or f-air-y?
Windmills – do they always wind with time?
Do wind farms really make all the wind?
There once was a windmill in old Amsterdam
Where mice loved to dine on bran flakes and spam
The slow wave of the giant’s arms
Not waving, but drowning.

Dartington day four: Tuesday 15th July

My final days at Ways With Words started out in a relaxed manner. I didn't have any events in the morning and so walked to the Cider Press centre in search of a cheapish bag in which to deposit all my newly bought books. I found one (with a Puffin on one side), and a present for my father, and ambled back to the hall, glorifying in the bright sunshine that really did bring out the best of the countryside.

Today seemed to be centred around women who were intensely creative, but had periods of their lives when they were often vulnerable and miserable, if not depressed, too.
First up was Agatha Christie, whose new biography was written by Laura Thompson, was an intriguing insight to a woman, who for all her wealth and fame remained essentially disappointed with her life after the collapse of her first marriage to dashing Archie. The infamous event of her disappearance was covered how in essentials it had been a desperate ploy to get her husband back (who was having an affair) only to find that her actions made sure she never would. Her second marriage to a man fifteen years younger than herself, was by all accounts a very dependent relationship - on Agatha's side at least.
The fact that Agatha wanted to be an opera singer surprised me, because the image of a heavy set old woman is always the one that sticks in my mind, whereas she was, when young, very beautiful who probably would have been a smash hit had she ever ventured on the stage.
So, she wrote her books - including a number under a different name - and created two very different, but equally ingenious literary detectives - people who probably knew who the culprit was right from the beginning, even if the author herself rarely did. Here was a woman who didn't meticulously plan her plots, who changed her mind more often than dead bodies appear, who has come under criticism for not developing her central characters well enough, but who is still one of the most widely read authors today and who Laura Thompson felt brought people to life not deeply but vividly.

Out into the sun (yes, really!) for a quick book buying and signing session (glad to find that Laura agreed with me about Peter Ustinov being much better than Albert Finney in his presentation of the Belgian Sleuth) and then back to my (It's mine, I decree it so!) bench to hear all about Dorothy Wordsworth.

Frances Wilson was a wonderfully collected and informative speaker and spoke about the less celebrated member of the Wordsworth family. She had me captivated from the beginning with her reading of the journal entry from the day of William's marriage to Mary Hutchins.
I have to confess that when I read the journals during my Masters, I very quickly cast them aside, getting exasperated with the constant headaches and pining for letters from her brother. This talk helped me to understand why these events occurred. Separated when Dorothy was six by the death of their mother and not reunited for over ten years, when they finally met again, the bond between them was so strong that it was as if they were one and the same person.
Dorothy's headaches where borne out of the devotion she had to her brother. He suffered ill health too, and Frances suggested that sometimes it seems like Dorothy took on his ailments as well, in order that he might create great works. Not that this stopped her from being of use to her brother in the creative process too. One only has to look at her description of daffodils to realise that it was from this that William had been inspired. The journals were designed to be read by her brother, to provide him with sources of inspiration. However, Frances also made the point that they were designed to show Williams how much she depended on him. In the first entry she declare they are 'to give him pleasure' - but surely descriptions of headaches, bouts of crying, waiting for the post everyday - these could only be meant to bring pain, to show to this brother that has so callously left her to go and propose to another woman, that no one would ever need or love him as much as she did. They are meant to be manipulative.

This dependence and manipulation raise some uncomfortable questions about the nature of their relationships. There is an undoubtedly erotic bond between them. Before Frances could delve further into this, however, a wailing was heard in the distance. Was it Dorothy making her presence known, showing us how miserable she could be? Err, no. The fire alarm was going off in the adjoining part of the building. What were we to do? It certainly confused the stewards for a moment, although the rest of the audience stayed firmly in their seats. We're British. We're not going to let a small thing like a possible fire get in the way of hearing about this slightly mad and dependent woman!
Thankfully the alarm stopped after a few minutes and Frances picked up where she had left off. Incest. Did Dorothy and William ever actually consummate their intense relationship? We shall never know, for it was never written down - although one gets the feeling that Dorothy would probably have written of the experience in dream like detail. What is certain is their especial closeness and Frances drew on the parallel of Heathcliffe and Cathy and Cathy's reasons for why she couldn't marry Heathcliffe. They were already one body in as much as their soul and minds are united. To unite their bodies too would have been too powerful. Dorothy spent the last thirty years of her life in the grip of madness, the prices which she paid for the extreme devotion to her brother.

After the event I was gripped by the thought that all three of the women I was hearing about were in some way on the brink of their sanity, and all for love. Agatha was clearly deluded when she disappeared for eleven days and then spent the rest of her life wondering if she could have done something else to retain her husband's affection. Dorothy, as outlines above, went completely mas as a result of her passion. And Daphne? I already knew the answer as I sat on my bench thinking about these troubled women. Daphne never went completely mad, but as far as Justine's book shows, she not only teetered on the edge, but fell over the precipice of madness, only managing to cling on and pull herself up by the sheer force of her willpower.

So there was the theme of the day - not strong women as I had originally thought when I was booking tickets, but vulnerable, and so susceptible to the hold men had over them that it caused them to act rashly and feel the frail hold they had on sanity slip through their fingers altogether.

So, leaving Dorothy in her pain induced opium haze, I dashed out into the bright sunshine to get my copy of the book (who is keeping count of the number I bought over the four days?) and back into the hall for Justine in conversation with Lynne and chaired by Rachel Kiddey.
Justine started by declaring that in the morning she had been wandering the footpaths of Menabilly in Fowey, something she'd been doing since childhood. Thinking she'd been down every single one, this morning she'd come across a new one that crossed the old drive, and which looked just like it had been described at the beginning of Rebecca, completely overgrown and totally impassable.
Justine began by reading the beginning of her novel, which continues to bewitch me and make me want to dive into Daphne's world all over again. She also talked a little about the motivation for the novel and what was going on in Daphne's life that made her want to write a biography of Branwell Bronte - possibly the most famous failure in all literature.
Justine told her captivated audience that Du Maurier was very interested in the way fact and fiction could be blurred and how this influenced her own decision to write fiction rather than biography. Thus the scene was set for a conversation about the darkness of Du Maurier's life combined with the darkness of her fiction.

Lynne confessed herself nervous when the book arrived on her doorstep, mainly because loving both Daphne and the Bronte's work for so long, that she felt a little protective over them. Reading it, however, she loved it and thought that the fact and fiction combination was a clever way of getting the personality of this person across. The spectre of Rebecca glides through the narrative and we find ourselves very much accessing Daphne's thought processes.

Justine spoke of the magic that was a part of Du Maurier's work. Linked as she was to the Llewelyn Davies' and Peter Pan Daphne couldn't help but recognise the malevolent nature magic sometimes has, and this crept into her novels at times. Also the unusually close relationship she had with her father created a tense atmosphere, and there is an element of incest in her novels that seems to spring out of that.

Justine was also affected by the magic, and the sense that writers can be haunted by those writers of the past. Justine bought books on the Brontes which had Daphne's own notes in them, and when researching Menabilly had stayed in the Gamekeeper's cottage with her son and dog, both of whom felt the presence of the two old ladies that had lived there .... ghosts are all part of the everyday when one gets involved with Daphne it seems.

I havn't dwelled on the questions part of any event thus far - mainly because it was impossible for me to listen and take down the essence of what was said at the same time. There were a couple of questions this time around, however, that really stuck in my mind.
Someone, presumably after hearing about the du Maurier connotation of 'menace' asked whether Justine thought pink a particularly dangerous colour ... which sort of brought the whole panel to a standstill ... until it transpired that this woman thought the cover was pink. Hmm - it's not really, it's a very deep red, which anyone who was read Don't Look Now will know is a particularly poignant colour. Lynne then came out with an interesting aside, which was that she often looks for patches of colour so she can quilt something that has a particular link with the book she's read. She can't find the red of the cover of Daphne for love nor money. (This question about red also answered a question I had had upon seeing the American hardback cover, which has a picture of a woman walking through some gates with a red umbrella. I couldn't for the life of me see the relevance of this, but I certainly do now!)

The other question that stuck out made me exceptionally glad that I was out of reach of the microphone ... a woman struck up with the fact that she had a deep mistrust of fiction that uses biography as its base, thinking that there was a terrible danger of creating a person very different from the one that existed. She wondered why an author couldn't just come up with a character of their own. Justine answered that it was what Daphne has herself done in quite a few of her novels, and even some that aren't direct biographical lifts have an element or two of biographical fact in them.
As I said, it's fortunate that I wasn't anywhere near a mike, or I might have launched into a rant that would have done nothing to help, and would have probably ruined the event! Having done a Masters in Life Writing (biography and autobiography) I know that the purest way of writing about a person is to write a factual account. However, I think there are times that this doesn't work. Some people have lived too full a life to make a full cradle to grave biography work (Henry James is a prime example). This is where fiction comes about .... if you're writing a novel about an actual person, it frees you up to focus on a small portion of a person's life, and you can create a whole new myth around them, so that people will go to the biographies. Fiction doesn't ruin the idea of biography, it merely enhances it.

Anyway, enough of my ranting. I didn't say any of this, not even when I heard the woman outside having the same conversation with a group of other people in deckchairs. I'd have probably frightened her!

Meanwhile, I had my last supper and then there was just time to have a last wander around the grounds before going to bed.

Ways With Words was a wonderful event, I've fallen in love with Dartington and you can bet I'll be back next year!

Dartington day three: Monday 14th July (part two)

Appologies for the weekend lapse. Graduation went well, and I'll post some pics later on. For now, it's back to Dartington, and after the brief respite with carrot cake on Monday afternoon, I was thrown back into the great hall with Kay Dunbar talking to Rebecca Abrams and Poppy Adams .....

Kay kicked off proceedings by sending a frison of alarm running through the hall by announcing that one of the worst jobs of festival director was when people had to cancel. Fortunately for us it wasn't the event we were waiting for, although people who came to hear Sandi Toksvig's desert island books must have been a little surprised to find that she has morphed into John Sargeant. Such is literary festival life!

So, happily ensconsed in my window seat again, I espy Ian Mortimer and Simon Montefiore happily chatting in the third row. I like it when speakers come to other events.

This was an interesting talk where two first time novelists had merged their great scientific knowledge with fiction and produced works that were bound to get people thinking. The notion of being able to trust the narrator came into conversation fairly early on, with Poppy Adams describing how that security is taken from us as the novel progresses and how her English readers are more willing to forgive being mislead than her American readers - used as we are to eccentrics.
Rebecca Abrams' novel focusses on a flawed character too - a doctor so wrapped up in his career that his home life suffers. As the mothers who have just given birth start to die at an alarming rate, it is hiw world, rather than his narration that starts to become unreliable. Both authors have a responsibility to the fact, but the way in which they are presented doesn't always have to be the way that people would automatically see them.
Book buying time again, and by this point I was feeling disticntly guilty about this, so could only justify buying both by having one signed to my mother. It'll end up on my shelf after she's read it anyway!

By the evening my brain was completely wiped, and so a little relaxation was called for. Off I trotted to a poetry music caberet called 'Wondermentalist'. Who could fail to love something like that, when people come out with lines like 'I lost my heart by the river Dart', 'Where would we be without laughter...? Plymouth', and my ultimate favourite 'I've got nothing against Totnes. Anywhere twinned with Narnia is great.' There was also an audience poetry collaboration ... Kay has put it up on her blog and it will be my poem of the week, because it's wonderful!

Thus ended a very long, but exceptional day. Looking forward to tomorrows with Justine's events - now there's one book I won't have to buy!

Dartington day two: Sunday 13th July

I write this sitting in a deckchair. Yes, I'm in one again - I don't think you'd ever find me out of one, except for the necessity of going to talks! Today has been my calm day - how suitable for a Sunday. With only three talks to take in, I could get to know Dartington better.

The day dawned extraordinarily sunny - given how cloudy it had been the evening before. Out I bounded and into breakfast and then sat (guess where) with The Telegraph on my lap, browsing through it and having to dig my sunglasses out of my bag for the first time in a long while, before heading off to find The Duke's room for Lynne's talk at 11.30.

Lynne spoke eloquently about her life before blogdom, and what made her start in in the first place. She also divulged her tricks of the trade, and showed us her very heavily annotated copy of Daphne. I was flabbergasted by that - as someone who regularly writes little notes in her books, or underlines certain passages - the front page was literally covered with tiny handwriting. Lynne is (as if I didn't know this from reading her posts) someone who puts a great deal of thought into what she writes about the books she reads.

Question time came about and Kay Dunbar (chair of Lynne's talk and Ways With Words director - see her blog for WWW details) suddenly decided to introduce me and ask about my own blog. Needless to say this wasn't planned, and annoyingly I was a bit thrown and didn't actually say anything meaningful and only afterwards thought of all the pertinent things I could have said. The main one being that my prime motive for creating this second blog is because after four years of higher education, I really miss the discussion of books that was such a frequent occurrence during my university years. I would be the first to admit that this hasn't really gone according to plan, but I'm working on it!
Lynne finished with showing us proof that she really does what her blog description says, and brought out a couple of quilts, and some really cool socks. Neglected to take pictures, but they really were beautiful. She'd also brought along some books, and charged us to take one and send a review if we wanted. Needless to say, I took one, and will be reading it in the following week.

So, where next? Why, a walk about the gardens listening to poetry of course! This was a great treat, because the gardens are so beautiful, and we walked round parts I'd not previously visited. The sun shone out, Lucy Lepchani and Miriam Darlington declaimed wonderfully and a good time was generally had by all.

From this point I had nothing scheduled, so ambled to the box office. Jonathan Dimbleby had sold out, but Jonathon Fenby was talking about 2 millenia of Chinese history, and I thought that might be interesting. This still left me with a couple of hours, and oh dear - the second hand shop whispered to me, and within I found a few more things to tempt the pocketbook. Thankfully they were only £1 each, and one was the Claire Tomalin biography of Katherine Mansfield which i had been eyeing up in Waterstones. I saved seven whole pounds!

The Jonathon Fenby event was interesting, but it didn't grip me, and I don't suppose I was in the mood for Chinese ruthlessness after the splendour of Dartington all day. Still, there's usually one disappointment when one goes to so many events, and I'm glad it happened early on.

I am now ensconced in the bar, outside unfortunately, as the inside is all booked up ... Fade to black and jump forward an hour ... Ok, I just got a bit sidetracked by people sitting at my table. Hey - this is what makes literary festivals great (apart from the events obviously). Striking up conversations with whomever is beside you at the time seems to be a form of extreme sport here. Sit down, and talk. Or stand and talk if you're in a queue. Whatever you do, don't sit in silence, because you never know who you might meet. Take my previous hour lapse for instance. The person that sat down was none other than Sam Leith, editor of the book section of The Daily Telegraph, and we've just spent an hour talking about books in general, blogs, writing techniques (pen or laptop) and the greatness of this festival. Thoroughly fascinating and it only came to an end with Sam and friend rushing off to see Paul Kingsnorth.
It's half nine in the evening and I'm going in search of the sunset and then back to my room - I've got an especially busy day tomorrow!

Oh ... here's a link to Sam's blog ...It's partly ego that causes me to put this up, but I'm so proud to have been linked to by a proper journalist!

Dartington day one: Saturday 12th July

Snatching a few minutes from work, here are my thoughts on my first day at Dartington - it was written that day, and I'm keeping it as such, so that even though the days have gone by now, you still get a feel for what I was doing and when!



As someone who has never been to a literary festival apart from Oxford, the idea of taking a few days off (or ten, if your hardcore and have nothing else in the way) and travelling to Devon (or anywhere else in the country) is a new one to me.

Yet here I am ... sitting on a Penguin deck chair (The Garden Party, not The Big Sleep) being ever so British and forcing myself outdoors in the threat of rain. I can hear the whistle of a steam train as it makes its journey past the river Dart, and having found my accommodation - by a swimming pool no less (why didn't I think of bringing a cossie?) I have ventured out to explore. And I love it.

Not knowing when I would arrive - trains being what they are - I didn't buy any tickets for today, but am now happily in the possession of two to hear about Lydia, Bloomsbury Ballerina and Idina Sackville - The Bolter, which I'd seen reviewed on Lynne's blog, and was fascinated by. I'm trying to resist the temptation of the Waterstones bookshop to my right and I'm going in search of food. Breakfast was a long time ago!

*****

Food was found and proved to be both delicious and expensive ... I added to my cash depletion by going into the second hand bookshop and finding a first edition of Enchanted Cornwall amongst other things.

Off I went to join the queue to the barn, and ran into someone I'd met at Port Eliot. I then spent two hours listening to the tales of women who were both strong and yet lacked the ability to stick with their lives when the going got tough. Frances Osborne's talk about her maternal grandmother, Idina Sackville was both fascinating and moving, and you could tell that she was in danger of being overly moved whilst in the middle of speaking. I bought her book, although Lydia was left where she was - a good move as it was about the size and weight of a couple of bricks.

It was then about six pm, and since I'd got a ticket for the evening event, I sought food. I ordered a salad (cheapest thing on the menu, although that was the only time I used that rule!) and pressed myself on two ladies who had a spare seat. Which turned out to be rather a good move. They were chatty and friendly and if I hadn't already bought my ticket I might have been tempted to give Robin Ince a miss. Off I trotted though, and was very glad I'd followed my instinct.
I had decided to sit in one of the windows, climbing up the bench steps without the grace of a mountain goat. This perhaps wasn't the best move, as I was in danger of repeatedly falling out of my seat as Robin gave us a variety of readings from strange books he had picked up in charity shops. Everything ranging from Mill and Boon to pet guides on rabbits (which included advice on the best way to kill it when the time came). This was all truly bizarre, but great fun too.

The end of the first day had come, and I walked back to my room. Dartington really is a great place to hold events like these - the history of the place combined with the wonderful stories that are told make it truly magical.

I lost my heart by the river Dart

I'm back from Dartington, full of stories and laden with books. It was such a fantastic time, and I'll be writing it all up very soon - although this weekend will be manic, as I go to Norwich to graduate tomorrow, and then have a busy weekend celebrating with friends.

Have no fear though - I will be writing all up, not least because I met Sam Leith, book editor for the Daily Telegraph, who said he would link to my blog from the paper's website. I've got to live up to that now, havn't I!

In the interim, go over to Lynne's blog to read all about the events so far - she's been racing around like the busiest bunny on earth, and has already written some fantastic posts.

Off to Way With Words

There's a place in Devon called Dartington Hall,
Where the things you hear are bound to enthrall.
I'm off on a train to be there with delight,
To sample the pleasures by day and by night.
Dovegreyreader is there - she's a bookworm, by gum
And once more Justine is giving 'Daphne' a run.
So drop what you're doing, come one and come all,
And get stuck in to the Way With Words Festival!


With deep apologies to anyone reading this .... It goes to prove I'm not meant to be a poet! If all goes well, I may be reporting from the festival, but if not, I shall write up after the event, and make sure to take a shed load of pictures!