Literary festival part deux

Writers, if they are to be really successful, should be excellent verbal story tellers as well as able to paint pictures with their written words. I'm not sure if there are writers with subjects more opposed than Sebastian Barry and John Julius Norwich, but after hearing them speak, I am utterly convinced they share the gift of the gab (as the Irish might say) and the ability to keep their audiences spellbound.

Sebastian Barry's writing is deeply embedded in Ireland and the chaotic world of his family history; his drunken grandparents, his actress mother and poet father. He grew up thinking this chaos was all perfectly normal (as John Julius Norwich grew up believing it to be perfectly normal to have a mother as wildly charismatic as Diana Cooper). He's passionate about his heritage and answered every question Joan Bakewell put to him with an intensity of thought - even if he meandered down an avenue which had nothing to do with what he'd started to talk about. He read a section of his new novel 'The Temporary Gentleman' and I was completely blown away - not necessarily by the writing (which was dynamic and brilliant), but by his wonderfully dramatic delivery. As he read the description of a boat sinking having been torpedoed, the audience held its collective breath as the words tumbled about our ears and we were all transported to that sinking skip. I don't think I'll ever read one of his novels in the same way again and I'm convinced he should do public readings more often.

John Julius Norwich is a different type of storyteller, but just as captivating. He reminds me a little of a clockwork toy - wind him up and off he goes! He spoke for almost half an hour with hardly any interruption from his 'interviewer' Paul Blizzard, charting the intricate relationships of his family history and the locations his parents found themselves during World War II. He interrupted himself at one point to ask permission to read an extract of one of his Mother's letters. 'You do what you want John', Paul Blizzard chuckled, 'It's your show!' It really was. And his impersonations of Winston Churchill are spot on - not overblown, but done by someone who really knew him. Affectionate, but with an acknowledgement of the ridiculousness. 'Darling Monster' sounds like it will be treasure trove of letters, and will further serve to fuel my passion to continue the trend, rather than relying on email at all times.

The day was topped off in rather grand fashion with Philip Pullman, who introduced the music that has informed his life, played by the Orchestra of St John's. The pieces he chose were:

- Mendelssohn: Octet, 1st movement
- Shostakovich: Piano Concerto No 2, 2nd Movement
- Mozart: Void Che Sapete
- Bach: Italian Concerto BWV 971, 1st Movement
- Monteverdi: Si Dolce Il Tormentor
- Hellmann: Away we trot
- Beethoven: Song Er schwur es mis brim
- Debussy: En bateau from Petite Suite
- Brahms: Sextet Op. 18, 2nd movement
- Schubert: Heidenroslein; An Sylvia
- Ellington: Take the A Train
- Tchaikovsky: Serenade for strings, 4th Movement

Mostly familiar composers, but many pieces I'd never heard. I will look them up again though, and a trip to YouTube might be well worthwhile.

Philip Pullman never talks much about his own writing process, but he did reveal he had to work in silence (so much so that he had a shed built in the garden when his son took up the violin) and he is in the middle of a long awaited companion piece to the 'His Dark Materials' trilogy called 'The Book of Dust'. I can hardly wait.

Literary festivals inspire

It's high time I got back into blogging. Life can be crazy busy at times and when you combine it with the fact I've not been reading that much because I've been a bit depressed, there didn't seem much worth writing about. 

Note that I've tried to qualify my feelings - although it's the worst I've ever felt, I'm fully aware it comes nowhere near what others suffer.

Anyway - the point is that life has now turned a corner and I want to write again.

It's literary festival time here in Oxford [or it was when I wrote this in a coffee shop. It's now Sunday, and the festival is pretty much over] so off I went to see Jan Morris. I feel the need to make a disclaimer: writing about Jan Morris is hard, not least because the use of sexual pronouns could become confused. The fact Jan Morris used to be a man (James) is probably one of the better known facts, but it doesn't help with the quandry of how to label her (him) when talking about events in the past when she was a he ... To avoid confusion, I plan to use the feminine pronoun throughout.

In a shockingly third full Sheldonian, Jan Morris took to her stage and immediately set about charming her audience with a story about her arrival earlier in the day. Sponsored as the festival is by the Folio society, the goodie bag participants receive naturally includes one of their books. And they are heavy. 'I'm not a great fan of short stories' she said as she revealed her book had been the collected short stories of V.S. Pritchett. Stopping to chat to one of the female porters at the gate of Christ Church, she reminisced that she was the longest serving member of the 'house', having become a chorister in 1936 at the age of ten. She then came to the college to study and is now an honorary fellow. 'And in recognition of this fact' she finished, with a gleeful anticipation of the punchline to come, 'I would like to bequeath this book to the college', and promptly handed over the Pritchett to a no doubt slightly baffled porter.

The thing I love perhaps more than anything about this story is the fact Jan Morris managed to get one over on the traditional history of Oxford. True, she was a man when she went to Oxford, but that still doesn;t alter the fact she is the first female alumni of Christ Church, some 30 years before they 'officially' admitted women.

This set the tone for the rest of the event. Designed, as it was, to be a kind of retrospective, the conversation flitted across topics such as Welshness, the Monarchy, how she writes and whether it comes fully formed (thankfully, she does three drafts before she considers it finished), climbing Everest and the state of England. 

Climbing Everest was the shock for me. When she started talking about that, I imagined this to be after the sex change and was preparing to hear stories of how she was the first woman to do so, etc ... but no! Jan Morris was the Times correspondent which accompanied the party led by Sir Edmund Hillary, who reached the summit on the same day as Elizabeth II's coronation. She has therefore been part of the anniversary celebrations ever since.

I've never read any of Jan Morris's work and am therefore unable to say whether the writing matches the character of the woman - strong and opinionated, but also very aware of herself. The interviewer (Kevin Crossley-Holland) did make reference to her beautiful prose, and we were lucky enough to hear extracts read aloud by Jan herself (simply because she felt like it, it seemed) which proved this instantly. The extract of her meeting a monk high in the Himalayas on a solitary ramble during the Everest expedition was startlingly evocative, powerful and intensely moving. I look forward  to delving into her work as soon as I can.

She did drop a bombshell with the fact that this would be her last public appearance, simply because she finds the preparation and the performance of events too exhausting now. At 87, who can blame her. It does make the empty Sheldonian that much more heartbreaking though. When I planned this piece, I was inclined to blame the marketing, and I am still persuaded that the organisers would be better served in sending out the hard copy earlier. However, now that I have been to a number of events, most of which were packed out, I think the price of tickets are to blame. £11 is expensive enough, but the Sheldonian tickets went up to £50, which is extortionate. Especially if you end up buying books after the event!

To finish on a positive note - although I have come to Jan Morris late in her career, I feel that I am surely going to devour all her works in the future. She signed my copy of 'A Writer's World' and added 'Bon Voyage!' when I told her of my plans. For here is my real reason for taking up the reigns of blogging again. Five years working in one place has show me, above all, that just being an administrator is not enough for me. I want to create too, and with that in mind, I've accepted a place on the MA in History of Art at the University of Birmingham. To aid with the transition between working and student, I'm taking two months to travel around Italy. This blog, therefore, will become a travel journal, and after that document the wonders of the art world into which I am fully immersing myself. All change!

Retail Therapy

I needed to cheer myself up after work, and thanks to a friend who, forgetting she'd already given me a birthday present, refused to take her second cheque back, I popped into Blackwells on my way home and indulged myself.

Firstly I bought A.S. Byatt's 'The Children's Book'. I've been a bit wary of her work, as although I think 'Possession' is amazing, I've never been able to get through the diary section, and have given up twice in the same spot. However, it has been recommended fervently by Dovegreyreader, so I shall give it a chance, even if A.S. Byatt is a literary snob about Harry Potter ('Ms Rowling's magic world has no place for the numinous. It is written for people whose imaginative lives are confined to TV cartoons and the exaggerated (more exciting, not threatening) mirror-worlds of soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip') Humph.

Secondly I bought Mark Bostridge's new biography of Florence Nightingale. I heard him speak about this at the Oxford Literary Festival, but didn't buy it, as it was only out in hardback at the time, and I had to choose between it and Penelope Fitzgerald's letters.

So, I feel a bit better now, and am taking myself to bed to delve into a book - not sure which one yet though!

Dates for your diary

I'm just about to settle down to reading My Cousin Rachel, and thought I'd just have a look to see if dates for next years Oxford Literary festival are up, and well - they are!

So, if you feel like a week amongst dreaming spires rubbing shoulders with the great and good, make sure you've booked the week of 31st March - 5th April off work and head over to Oxford.

Never let it be said I don't do some things well in advance!