What Books Made You?

Yesterday, I went to Bailey's Women's Prize For Fiction and Grazia present #ThisBookClub Live, a panel discussion by five notable women and readers on the two books that they believe had the most influence on their careers and lives and shaped them to be who they are today. The discussion was part of a week's celebration of reading and authors in the run-up to the announcement of the winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction on Wednesday.

Chaired by renowned author, Kate Mosse, the panel was made up of columnist and author, Grace Dent; Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty and chair of the 2015 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction judges; Polly Vernon, Grazia columnist and author of Hot Feminist; Aminatta Forna, award-winning author and Jane Shepherdson Chief Executive of Whistles.

The discussion was lively, the women were intelligent, insightful and a joy to listen to; I was especially spellbound by Aminatta Forna who I must admit I had never read and who has the most mellifluous voice that I ever did hear and smart, lucid opions (must buy her book). Grace Dent is delightfully witty as you would expect from her columns and Polly Vernon is part-girly, part fierce-honesty. Shami Chakrabarti I love, I have heard talk before and she must be one of the wittiest lawyers that has lived... (sorry cheap lawyer joke there). Jane Shepherson, an incredibly impressive business woman came across warm and bright. Kate Mosse, was just well, the narrator/chair that charmed us all, as she does in her books.

Of the two books they chose each, I had read four of ten, the rest are on my reading list now... I will list these at the bottom.

However, what the discussion really left me with, was what books had affected me in the same way? What literature had shaped my life in some way.... obviously there are numerous, but as 60% of these were wiped out of their stipulations, due to the fact that they were written by men, I at least could cut my list a little shorter. Here, after some soul-searching, are my two...

1) Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

Frankenstein was one of the books I chose to write my dissertation on; a ten-thousand word rambling on motherhood, taking in the novels of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter, Mary Shelley, as well as Wollstonecraft's pioneering text, A Vindication of the Rights of Women. My dissertation, was not as good as it should of been, crafted in my third year at university where I was a little lost in a spiral of slight depression and - as I now recognise - quite bad OCD.

However, Frankenstein sung out to me when I read it... Billed as a horror story, I thought I would not like it, but in fact, I loved every part of it. The creature's narrative especially, which is written in the most beautiful language thrilled me to the core. Shelley is so gifted in telling the story, but she also teaches through it. She teaches about the danger of unnatural creation, the danger of leaving women by the way-side, the story of nature vs nurture. To me Frankenstein, is a story about a lost child and Shelley herself had an absent mother - dead as she was. With all the impressive themes that the novel delivers, what I most gained from it at the time, I think, was the beauty of language, of description and of narrative. The narratives of the three main protagonists of the novel are all written so differently. She is a wonder storyteller is Shelley.

2) Harry Potter series JK Rowling

Ok, I ummed an ahhed about this second choice, there are novels by Toni Morrison, Sylvia Plath, Margaret Atwood and Alice Walker which all shaped my "womanhood" and how I grew up, how I learnt about feminism and how I learnt about myself. But if we are really looking at books that glare out at me through the years, that I remember and reread. It is this series. From the first book, published when I was 11 to the last which I read proudly at 21, there was ten years of growing up, of fighting with my sister about who got to read the family copy first, of learning. I aged with Harry and Hermione (kick-ass female if ever there was one) and the rest.

There are two main points that I still take from these books, even as I read them now. Firstly Rowling inspires me as a writer because of her ability to tell stories, she is a great story teller, telling tales that span years with multiple characters and plot lines... I envy this and I praise that it can be done so well. 

Secondly, it is the magic. I have always loved the idea of magic existing alongside the humdrum of day-to-day life. Those are the best stories, to me. And at times when I felt adolescent and misunderstood and later when I felt sad and I didn't know why, these stories took me to a world that I wanted to believe was true. Now, older and not wiser and as I still attempt life and still make plenty of mistakes, I like to believe and live in the magic of everyday. And when I read Rowling, she still helps me to remember this.

So tell me please... what books made you who you are?

Books chosen by the panel:

Grace Dent: 

The Pursuit of Love - Nancy Mitford

Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel

Shami Chakrabarti

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

The Biography of Eleanor Marx - Rachel Holmes

Jane Shepherdson

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

Union Street - Pat Barker

Aminatta Forna

The  Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

All God's Children Need Travelling Shoes - Maya Angelou

Polly Vernon

Lace - Shelley Conran

The Signature of All Things - Elizabeth Gilbert

All available in good book shops and online.

#The100DayProject, #100DaysofWriting, Day 15

What Future for Words?

This is the first in a series of posts Ì have written on the Cheltenham Literary Festival. I tried to blog #live-ish from the event, but bearing in my mind I'm rubbish at filing my blog copy when I have a laptop and three free hours...trying to do it between talks and book signings and dinners was a little difficult.. and I was a little lazy.

The What Future For Words? debate was sponsored by Warwick University and asked just asked that questions and furthermore, what the challenges and opportunities facing a new generation of writers in the shifting cultural landscape were. 

Chair Roly Keating of the British library was joined by writer, AL Kennedy, publisher Gail Rebuck, spoken-word artist Amerah Saleh and games writer and novelist Rebecca Levene to discuss the future of writing in the UK.

Six Things to Learn from Maya Angelou

A week ago last Sunday, I went to the Royal Festival Hall to attend an event put on as part of the London Literature Festival; Maya Angelou: A Celebration. It was a beautiful evening with actors, speakers and notable guests reading parts of her autobiographies and poems, as well as talented musicians performing some of the hymns and songs that she did.

For an English Literature graduate, with a minor in history including a lot of the American Civil Rights movement, I came very late to the gifts of Maya Angelou. I first discovered her through my incessant love of other peoples soundbites - namely quotes- about two years ago and just loved everything that had been attributed to her, so I read up and I read her and it's safe to say she was a word and mentality guru.

Her biography reads pretty stark and also shows incredible resourcefulness and talent.... Born Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4, 1928, she was raped aged eight by her mother's boyfriend, was then mute for almost seven years and went on to work as a cook, madam and sometimes prostitute, nightclub dancer and performer, opera singer, coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and journalist in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonisation of Africa. She was an actor, writer, director, and producer of plays, movies, and public television programmes. Today we talk of multi-tasking, but she was a pragmatic polymath, a Renaissance Woman of the highest degree. Here is what we can learn from her life, work and treatment of others

I Love Big Brother: 1984 at the Playhouse Theatre

George Orwell's 1984 is probably one of the texts’ that has most affected me in my life. I cannot say I have always loved it or that I did not struggle with its politics and deceptive language the first time I read it at 14 or 15. I loathed having to read the sections of O’Brien's book certainly. But I understood it and its suggestions burned deep within my psyche as a teenager, in a mind already troubled by pigs that looked like Stalin (aged 13). It was the beginning of my fervour for dystopian novels that lasted a few years, perfectly echoing my cynical teenage ways and I read my way through Atwood and Huxley, Burgess and HG Wells. 

Since GCSE coursework, I picked it up a couple of times at university for references but never read it properly again. Somehow it haunted me and the less than pleasant nature of the subject and the gruelling energy required for digestion somehow stopped me from rereading it. It's been 14 years. 

When the Headlong production at the Almeida Theatre received rave reviews, I knew I wanted to see it (it was at the Nottingham Playhouse prior to this). I knew that its relevance in today's screen-filled, observed world was almost not worth mentioning to the educated; I just wanted to see how it would be produced. Would it still shock and make one question everything. Or was I just older and less cynical now, hardened against Orwell's didactic warnings. Ready just to observe the way it was interpreted. Was I hell. 

I finally got tickets to the production when it transferred to the Playhouse Theatre on the Embankment and went in with no pre-conceptions with my standard theatre friend D. Light Wednesday viewing we knew it would not be,

“Will we be very depressed do you think, afterwards?”

“Most likely,” I answered, “but in the good way, the Byronic way, the I’ve just got angry about the world, but at least I’m involved way.. You know.”

The thing is, relative to Orwell’s message in the novel is, it did not depress me. Relative to my viewing of the great 1984 film Nineteen Eighty Four with John Hurt and Richard Burton, it did not either. This play is sharp and certainly encourages reflection, but it did not out and out depress me.

The creators, Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan have created a nimble yet intelligent adaptation. The set by Chloe Lamford is fabulous and so simple, one backdrop really, until Room 101, with a small bedroom partition as the sluttish “room with no screen” in the place that time stood still. The use of lighting, sound and video projections is also perfectly apt for this production, used wisely and well. Cracking through the senses at the exact points necessary and propelling Orwell’s far-too cliché-cluttered Room 101, back to its original terrifying form.

From the beginning of the play the presence of a crowd of people, unrecognisable characters who seem to be discussing Orwell’s novel, work as an impressive narrative tool... almost Brechtian, I thought, so aah... yes we are observing fiction here... This became more confusing as the play went on as characters in the “book club” seem to also be part of Winston’s life and unravelling. Nothing new there you may say, multiple roles, but it felt more uncomfortable, like they were sort of living part of his story as they discussed it, or had already lived it. Was it a novel or a case study or a history book, we may never know.

 

 

The lead actors, Sam Carne as Winston and Hara Yannas as Julia were also affective. Though both far too attractive, from what I remember of the novel, this did not affect your belief of them. Carne particularly plays Winston as the reluctant hero that we all know him to be. With a stuttering sort of character, never knowing whether he is in or out, or what he knows, seized by fits of passionate hatred and lulls of quiet dissonance.

The themes we know and love are still there. The demise of language into newspeak, something which thankfully worries me less now as it did 14 years ago, as I see more and more words enter our dictionaries; no snobbery against the #selfie please and thank-you. Yes, doublethink, well we know this can happen.

Screens, screens and watching us ALL THE TIME, for the paranoid luddites this will certainly ring true, for the normal person who browses the internet, this will feel like a nagging headache. Yes we should be careful. Even in the room with no screen they are seen. 

 Love. Is it there? I wasn’t convinced in this production, but then I never have been. From the moment I first read 1984, I did not believe in the love between Winston and Julia. She is his soapbox, his humanity, the one who shoves him from the comfort of thoughtcrime to out and out treason and hatred of Big Brother. But love, I don’t know. In this production, she very obviously personifies human desires, wants, needs, all the things banned by Big Brother. Chocolate and sex she is... To be honest, I always thought Orwell was a little unfair on Julia; he seems to hate her and love her equally. She is brave but where is this directed. Can we really believe that someone in that circumstance would only care about their animal wants while risking so much... but that’s just me.

A particularly resonating scene of the production for me was the two minutes hate, a government form of brainwashing by whipping the subjects into a frenzy of hate against the party enemies by showing them shocking footage. This is something where live action beats the page and although we all know about extremist regimes that practice this. It was recognising similar traits in our society that shivered down my spine. Hatred of particular groups or people is all too easy when we are looking for someone to blame.

Room 101... the terror, the torture the mind. This was also a chilling scene as I said. The set resembled a mental institute and reminded the audience or certainly me of the egocentric nature of our fear and our rebellion. Especially exaggerated in this production,

 “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”

Well, yes and this is the route of all the fear of Big Brother, if he can change in our inner thoughts, then we are doomed.

I do not know how the creators of this production managed to fit so much into 90 minutes. Even those with no knowledge of Orwell’s novel would comprehend and consider the messages in this play... Go see it. It’s a must.

1984 is at The Playhouse Theatre, London
Running until 23^rd August.

England, My Profoundly Bizarre Place

Last Wednesday was St George's day and despite being a proud, patriotic (3/4) English woman, I wasn't aware of it until I went on Twitter at 9am. It was also Shakespeare's 450th birthday, a fact I was more aware of due to the million e-mail newsletters I receive from theatres and cultural blogs everyday. A proud day for England some might say.

Yet, this year, as every year I couldn't help but think about the lack of energy surrounding St George's day. Sure there are celebrations going on.. Apparently there was a parade.. but does anyone really care about this day of Englishness? Compared with the international celebrations that St Patrick's Day brings and the intensely patriotic celebrations of the 4th July in the USA and apparently (according to the Dutch intern in my office) Kingsday in Holland among many others, St George's day barely resonates in England.

To be honest, I'm not sure why it is. Perhaps St George's cross has been hijacked too many times by far-right fascist, sexist arseholes hell-bent on narrow-minded, misinformed destruction. Perhaps the English still harbour guilt over years of oppression of the empire. Whatever it is, we're not really allowed to be English anymore. 

It's not that I'm not proud of being British, I am. My blood is a quarter Irish with streaks of Scots and I've Welsh relatives, but I've been brought up in England. My grandparents hail from Newcastle and Manchester as well as Dublin. My father is a born and bred Saarrff-Londoner and my mother grew-up in Surrey, as did I. 

I'm proud of being English as well as British and I think we should be. So I thought I'd round up my 11 reasons I'm happy to be English today and what we should cherish and celebrate. 

1) Accents

Is there a place that per square mile has as many different, strange accents as England? From Geordie to Sarf-London, from Manc to middlesborough to the West-Country. From Cockney to Scouse to Yorkshire. I love it and I love them all.

2) Music 

The quote in the title of this post was from Gene Simmons, of Kiss, an American who said:   

"England is a profoundly bizarre place that has produced thousands of bands the world has worshipped."

This is something we continue to do. Producing an eclectic mix of great music, talented musicians, internationally adored bands and fantastic producers and DJs. All with that hint of humour behind them that is ever-present in English culture. 

Glastonbury is still the best festival in the world.. despite Coachella's posy pretension and fucking sunshine ALL THE TIME. In 2012 four out of the top five best-selling albums in the US were British (English actually except Niall from 1D). I'm not saying you have to love all our exports, but appreciate what the country can do.

3) Sports

Yeah we never win the football, yet still we soldier on believing . The English invented many games that they are now rubbish at. Yet still we back our own, still we stoutly support sports that we would generally never watch or understand if our own are doing well.

We celebrate very Englishly too, quick celebration, the pub and back to work the next day. Not like other countries I could mention...

Recently the Olympics has been our greatest achievement, the (British-I-know) team and the great English city of London showed the world. However one of the best days of my life involved Johnny Wilkinson and the England Team against Oz, a fabulous drop-kick in extra-time, all on one miserable November day in 2003.

I went to a very good party the evening of this match back when I was 17.. I remember we worried for weeks that if England lost, no boys would come and we'd be left drinking Breezers and snogging each other. Luckily it ended up being a night to remember and one of my friends even lost her virginity; poor lad was full of beer and emotion and dear sweet Johnny, so she got rogered against a garden shed... it was like the summer of love all over again.

4) Fashion

I just love the creativity of the English with their fashion. I love how they are not scared to look a little scruffy around the edges. We're not as chic as the French or Italians, we're not as glowy and blowy as the Americans, we're not afraid to clash or dress something up or down or layer or over accesorise.

Also, every town in England has a slightly different style and I love that and I love noticing it as I travel.

I love our designers best of all. If I could live in Williamson, Dame Westwood and Burberry, I'd be fine. Throw in some Hunter Wellies, M&S, Sweaty Betty and Topshop and a a lot of Vintage and who needs anything else. And yes, I do mean all together.

5) Laugh English

I altered this myself.. The English humour is the BEST. Will never be beaten. Look at comedy, look at literature. Look at our attitude towards life. All with a pinch of salt and a derogatory comment or a harmless joke. Love this.

6) Blitz Spirit/English Attitude

I really don't need to write much for this... it's the small things and the large. Call it what you will, if you find the Blitz spirit thing too much of a cliche.. It's putting ones head down and getting on with it, cracking a joke here and there, supporting others without asking for any reward. Sometimes we think we've lost it, but it's always lingering under the service there.. ready for use.

7) "A Nation of Shopkeepers"

The origin of this phrase is a little misleading as thought it is always Napoleon who is quoted:

"L'Angleterre est une nation de boutiquiers."

Belittling the English in one fail swoop with his dismissal of our commercial-based power. He believed the English would be weak in the war as they had no land power, only naval and commerce. However, it was in fact used first by Scottish philosopher and economist, Adam Smith, often sited as being "the father of modern economics", he extolled the virtues of the free market.

Either way, it is in this I am proud, we are resourceful and entrepreneurial and we like to buy and sell things... it is what we are good at. From little village shops, to great department stores to international brands and web based retailers. I am not saying that a completely commercial world is a great thing, but this need to consume and sell and find another little niche is just so English. It does upset me when I see great chains destroying village high streets, but we need those as well. Again, it is the attitude.

8) English Country Garden (and Village)

Idealised in the Victorian period when the cities finally overtook the countryside in terms of population in Britain, an English Country Garden became the rural idyll for town folk. Nowadays we still love the picture of England's green and pleasant land in our heads, even though that is rarely what we see.

Similarly with village life, we love the idea of the English village full of strange people and their dogs. Broadcast has covered it since it started, from the Archers to the Vicar of Dibley to the Great British Bake-off.

I love this about England, love the ideal of it even if it's not true. Love a village and a garden.

9) Travel

Sir Ranulph Fiennes, one of England's Finest Explorers

We may not bother to learn any other languages as we simply assume that English is spoken the world over, but we do know how to travel and we are good at it. (Brits Abroad not withstanding). Travel broadens the mind and as we live on a very small island it is important that we do this. We have forever, not always with the best results.. but we're better at it now. You can't be proud of your own nationality if you don't go and see others and see what's great about theirs too. And no, most of Spain's beach resorts in the summer-holidays do not count as a trip abroad.

At the least travel round Great Britain and see all the wonderful places there are to see.. yeah

10) Literature and Poetry

Sure we're the nation of Shakespeare and Byron and Keats, Dickens and Mary Shelley, Austen and the Brontes. However, our modern offering is just as impressive: Abi Morgan, Hilary Mantel, Mendelson, Ishiguro and McEwan. It's an endless list. 

A pride in both the past, present and tentative future of our writers and poets is still very much part of our heritage.

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

From: The Soldier - Rupert Brooke

Hurrying to catch my Comet

One dark November day,Which soon would snatch me from itTo the sunshine of Bombay,I pondered pages BerkeleyNot three weeks since had heard,Perceiving Chatto darklyThrough the mirror of the Third.

Had made my taxi late,
Yet not till I was airborne
Did I recall the date -
The day when Queen and Minister
And Band of Guards and all
Still act their solemn-sinister
Wreath-rubbish in Whitehall.
These mawkish, nursery games:
O When will England grow up?

Crowds, colourless and careworn
It used to make me throw up,

 From: Naturally the Foundation will Bear Your Expenses - Philip Larkin

11) Art and Expression

Just do it. Most of all what I love about England is its ability to move forward and adapt and enjoy the times. We begrudgingly moan for a minute and then embrace a new culture, just like that and our Englishness is about embracing the subcultures and the new creative movements and celebrating the diversity. We've always been a small country that has filtered our experiences of the world and its people into our own ethos.

And that's it my little eccentric English friends and others... love England being English and British and I love the world... 

Please note as well... these are my prides.. yours could be totally different...

All images are not (c) me - except a couple of Instagram ones

Literary Role Models for Girls 1: Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lingdgren

This is a new series of posts that looks at literary icons for children, teens and tweens. Fed up of the idolisation of pop-stars and celebutantes who aren't always the best examples for the nations daughters (though I'm not saying they should be), I wanted to look at the girls and women that inspired me as a child and taught me that I could be anything I wanted.

Before Lisbeth Salander made everyone Scandimanic, there was one Pippi Longstocking; a nine-year-old with super human strength left to live alone by her sailor father with a horse and a monkey. Recogniseable for her ginger pigtails and freckles, she is rude and adventurous possessing little formal education, yet having all the necessary life skills to look after herself.

Whilst living alone in a multi- coloured mansion with only animals for company and no grown-ups to tell one what to do may be every child's dream, it is the spirit of Pippi that stays with you to adulthood. Sparky, prone to truth stretching and the antithesis of the traditional little girl ideals of dolls and cooking, she has been encouraging fun and good clean mischief for over sixty years.

The children came to a perfume shop. In the show window was a large jar of freckle salve, and beside the jar was a sign, which read: DO YOU SUFFER FROM FRECKLES?

"What does the sign say?” asked Pippi. She couldn’t read very well because she didn’t want to go to school as other children did.

"It says, ‘Do you suffer from freckles?’” said Annika. 

"Does it indeed?” said Pippi thoughtfully. “Well, a civil question deserves a civil answer. Let’s go in.” She opened the door and entered the shop, closely followed by Tommy and Annika. An elderly lady stood back of the counter. Pippi went right up to her. “No!” she said decidedly. 

"What is it you want?” asked the lady.

"No,” said Pippi once more.

"I don’t understand what you mean,” said the lady.

"No, I don’t suffer from freckles,” said Pippi.Then the lady understood, but she took one look at Pippi and burst out,

“But, my dear child, your whole face is covered with freckles!”

"I know it,” said Pippi, “but I don’t suffer from them. I love them. Good morning.” She turned to leave, but when she got to the door she looked back and cried, “But if you should happen to get in any salve that gives people more freckles, then you can send me seven or eight jars.” 

― Astrid Lindgren, Pippi Longstocking