This coming October 27th, 2013 would have been Dylan Thomas’ 99th birthday, or as the very man himself would call it, his “99th year to Heaven”. Born in Swansea, Glamorgan and a pupil of the local grammar school where his father was the headmaster, Thomas was a contributor and later editor of the school newspaper. He carried his wordsmith abilities over the threshold into the adult world: he left school at the age of 16 to work for the South Wales Daily Post. His poem Before I knocked is about a child in utero and is not the only Thomas…
Author: Rosie MacLeod
It may be in a rainy and industrial city, but inside you could be anywhere; Ancient Egypt, the Bronze Age, the jungle or under the sea are just four possibilities. The Manchester Museum holds displays on all manner of things from ancient and far away worlds. It exhibits not only artefacts from the natural world but also the relics (literally, in some cases!) of human history from yester-milennia. Terry Deary, who wrote the Horrible Histories books, greets you with a welcome talk on a modestly-sized cinematic screen as you enter. What greets you thereafter is an Ancient Egypt exhibition; mummified…
Bletchley: Home of the Code Breakers. Britain: Home of the Moral Code Breakers? Why I believe it’s right to celebrate Alan Turing’s Achievements on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth. Last month, I stumbled upon a disused Daily Mail on a train to Euston, and what I found inside should be entitled ‘The Daily Hate Mail’. It was a cruel article entitled ‘Why I believe it’s wrong to pardon Bletchley Park code breaker Alan Turing for breaking the anti-gay laws of his time’ (sic!). Was this journalist even aware that without the efforts of timid, homosexual mathematician Alan Turing at Bletchley Park,…
Will Self: Kafka’s biggest fan. You may know Will Self as a Grumpy Old Man, a BBC panellist, a writer, journalist or as a critic. He is the author of nine novels including ‘The Book of Dave’, centred around an unwell taxi driver and seven short story collections, notably ‘Grey Area’. Self is also quite possibly the biggest ever fan of Franz Kafka (1883-1924) and BBC Space is currently feeding his insatiable appetite for the Prague writer. The programme ‘Will Self’s Prague Journey’ is currently available on the BBC Space website, and it follows Self as he traces Kafka’s footsteps…
On Tuesday, 16th July 2013, Lancashire crime writer S.J. Boulton visited the bright lights of Leighton Buzzard to give a talk entitled ‘Folklore and Forensics’. It is fair to say she has something of a Bedfordshire following, set to grow upon the film release of her novel ‘Sacrifice’, currently in production in Hollywood. S.J. Boulton never thought she could write professionally; “My friend Ruth was far more able, and if either of us would ever become a writer, it would be her”, she modestly tells her audience of poised and intent bookworms. Her first career was in PR, a life…
In September 2013, United States Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey will enter a second term of Laureateship. On 19th June, 2013, Seren’s Culture Editor went to see her address a mainly American audience at London’s Royal Automobile Club, Pall Mall. Composers start with chords and songwriters with an idea. In her poetry construction, Natasha Trethewey starts with a point in history and with “an historic al question that I will then attempt to answer through my poems.” Trethewey explains that she chooses to answer her self-set historical questions in order to “make peace with our own personal past and our country’s…
Getting there: Edinburgh Direct train lines from Manchester Piccadilly, Crewe and London King’s X. All train lines will call at both Edinburgh Haymarket and Edinburgh Waverly stations. Edinburgh Waverly is the further of the two by a matter of minutes. It is far more central and will exits onto the main area of Princes Street. The physiognomy of the Scottish capital is not only very beautiful but also highly atmospheric; the décor of the main street, Prince’s Street, is extremely ornate and baroque. The town clock, the gilded tops of buildings and statues would fit in perfectly in Vienna or…
The Austrian capital, Vienna -“Wien” in its target German language- has a City Airport Train (‘CAT’) service to take passengers from the airport and directly into central Vienna. A ‘CAT’ return ticket is cheap at €18 and valid for one month. Vienna is a city that changes in character as you traverse through it; some quarters are Florentine in ambience and architecture, others look extremely Eastern European, others remind tourists of Edinburgh or York and some, more modern, Viennese areas heavy in Victorian decor resemble London. Most of Vienna’s buildings are so beautiful they can be appreciated externally, such as…
Wystan Hugh Auden was a northern English poet born in 1907.Though he was born English he later became an American citizen. Amusingly, this is the direct mirror image of a contemporary, ‘British’ poet also known by his first two initials: T.S. Eliot was conversely born American and later gained British citizenship. Auden led something of a nomadic existence. Born in York (pictured), he spent a childhood in Birmingham between terms of boarding education in Surrey. He spent his adulthood in America and died on mainland Europe, in Vienna. As a poet and thinker, he wrote of and was plagued by…
Teesside novelist Pat Barker (a female ‘Pat’) is perhaps best known for her Regeneration Trilogy, which is set in the First World War and follows the lives of men deeply affected by shellshock. For a reader who follows Barker, her first novel, Union Street, can be regarded as an overture to this author’s strong ability to write in a mesmerisingly addictive style to achieve graphic and horrific accounts of real events. Union Street is, like Regeneration, firmly rooted in historical events. The novel set in the North East (and in an unspecified town, possibly in Durham or York) at the…
NB: Article penned in September 2012. Does anyone remember the Brit Awards ceremony in circa 2003, when Coldplay performed? No? Well then I will remind you, at the risk of showing my age. Amid the inevitable arpeggio Coldplay introduction that becomes the infectious riff/predictable loop (delete as appropriate), the broadcaster’s cameras focussed on Chris Martin’s spidery hand. On it was written the statement ‘MAKE TRADE FAIR’. This was a reflection on the Fair Trade movement that began in the last decade and has since come –largely- to fruition. Calendars (not those calendars), recipe books, new food ingredient legislation and of…
When autumn arrives, the crunchy red leaves underfoot sombrely remind me it will not be long until I have a red poppy displayed upon my person. Wilfred Owen is a key figure in World War One poetry. He is primarily associated with fighting on frontlines and writing cerebral poetry inspired thereby. But he also spent a lot of time in Edinburgh; he was treated for shellshock in Craiglockhart psychiatric hospital alongside Siegfried Sassoon, who was suffering the same condition. The novel Regeneration by Pat Barker is based upon this particular one of Owen’s life experiences and so too is the…
It’s twenty years since Nirvana released their second studio album, Nevermind and a nineties revival is said to be imminent. How very fly. We at Seren have a soft spot for this decade and celebrate with our annual nineties night every February. The nineties decade was famous for three pops; sugary musical pop, Push Pops and –my personal favourite by a long shot- Britpop. The nineties saw an unstoppable rise of anthemic guitar bands, particularly emerging from London and Manchester- or as it became known in this musical movement, Madchester. I never understood why London Britpop acts did not adopt…
Shortly before 1818, a group of Romantic poets and writers travelled from Britain to Geneva. The party included Mary Wollstonecraft Goodwin (later Mary Shelley), Percy Bysshe Shelley (later the husband of Mary) and Lord Byron. Finding themselves in the Swiss Alps and thick snow, what better way to spend an evening in such an idyllic setting than…a disgusting novel-writing competition?! Yes. The Romantics decided to hold a competition to see who could compose the most grotesque and repugnant work. Under Byron’s and Percy Shelley’s view that a woman may not up to the job of writing morbidly, Mary Shelley unabashedly…
Please note the time of going to press: February 2012. The Brontës- a sisterhood of gothic writers. The daughters of a solemn Irish reverend, the three sisters grew up at the family home based in Haworth, Yorkshire, although the extended family remained on the Emerald Isle. The Brontës wrote in a time before women could vote and many worked as scullery maids who would be fortunate to earn £6 a year. The educated trio of sisters attended a school for the children of less wealthy clergy members and their love and ability for writing began as a childhood game.…
Hollaback is a global campaign designed to end street harassment. What is street harassment? ‘Street Harassment’, as defined by the website www.stopstreetharassment.org, pertains to ‘any action or comment between strangers in public places that is disrespectful, unwelcome, threatening and/or harassing and is motivated by gender’. That is not to say one’s simply ‘being male or female’ but rather appearing non-conformist to their gender (or similar) in the eyes of narrow-minded harassers. The Hollaback! movement recognises street harassment as a verbal or physical assault aimed at anyone based on an unlimited number of ‘reasons’. Either way, it is illegal. 80% of…