Headingley LitFest

Love's Lingo in the HEART café

2012-02-12T12:08:00.003Z

Richard Wilcocks writes:

Love's Lingo, a preliminary - or if you like interim - LitFest event in the café of the HEART building on Bennett Road on Friday evening was a wonderful and very substantial taster for the full banquet to come. Becky Cherriman, the blue angel of the evening, delivered slices of heightened reality to an appreciative audience. She spoke truths about relationships close-up into our ears, intimacies conveyed in a conversational style. For me, there was just a touch of Angela Carter in her rhythmic scrutinies of old loves and fresh loves, fading pains and lasting pains.

Her poetic guest was Clare Neruda, a talented newcomer and similarly confessional: it was heartwarming to watch and listen as her confidence grew during her session, until she had us gripped. Her musical guests were Maggie 8, a duo which finished the evening beautifully.

Becky Cherriman will be with the LitFest again on Tuesday 20 March at 1pm for The Lingo of Food. The Workers Educational Association, in partnership with Osmondthorpe Resource Centre for adults with physical disabilities, and supported by Headingley LitFest, will be reuniting two creative writing groups for a delectable literary performance. She will be with both of them as facilitator.

About food - it's certainly delectable in the HEART café, and the atmosphere is just right for poetry and music. There will be more LitFest stand-alone events like this in future.

www.beckycherriman.com

Talking Myself Home - with Ian McMillan

2012-02-02T14:21:00.002Z

Note it in your Filofax, tap it into your iPhone or ball-point it into the palm of your hand - just don't forget the date and time, which is 16 March at 7.30pm, and the place with the pulpit still in it - Left Bank Leeds, the old St Margaret of Antioch Church on Cardigan Road.

You are being given the opportunity to experience the phenomenon which is Ian McMillan, who will beperforming his acclaimed verse autobiography in Headingley! Ian is poet-in-residence forEnglish National Opera, The Academy of Urbanism and Barnsley FC. He presentsThe Verb every week on BBC R3 and appears regularly on Pick of the Week, QuoteUnquote, The Arts Show, Just A Minute, You & Yours, Fry’s Planet Word, HaveI Got News For You and next spring, Coast.

He’sYorkshire TV’s Investigative Poet and Humberside Police’s Beat Poet. He wasrecently castaway on Desert Island Discs and featured with his Orchestra on TheSouth Bank Show. His rip-roaring poetry shows are legendary. Cats make himsneeze.

‘The JohnPeel of poetry’ Alec Finlay

‘Jovial Poetic Troll’ Mark Radcliffe

'It cleared me chest something wonderful' Theatre By TheLake, Kendal

'One of my all-time heroes - he’s such a talented bloke, I couldkill him’ Mike Harding

'Ian McMillan proved himself the ultimate spoken wordartist, in that he was never at a loss for them – spoken or otherwise. His showTalking Myself Home was a dazzling combination of finely-honed poems andstand-up’s repartee. When the audience weren’t savouring his metaphors (in aWish-I’d-Written-That way), they were shrieking with laughter. And what morecould you want from a poetry show?' Apples'n'Snakes

Photo of Ian McMillan by Kippa Matthews:

7.30pmLeft Bank Leeds (St Margaret of Antioch Church), Cardigan Road

£10

www.ian-mcmillan.co.uk
http://www.leftbankleeds.org.uk/

Let's share the LitFest programme

2012-01-30T10:58:00.001Z

The programme is now well and truly fixed, and the giant Heidelbergs (they're printing machines) will soon be spitting out thousands of printed leaflets and brochures, for the whole lot and for the Ian McMillan event on 16 March.

Plenty of these will be handed to the locals at the Headingley Farmer's Market this Saturday 11 February, but we need you to help by taking wodges of leaflets and putting them in places where they will be appreciated. Ring our contact number now to offer help - 07789976854 - or email heveliusx1@yahoo.co.uk

If you haven't done so already, look at the programme's online version at www.hlfprogramme.blogspot.com

Becky Cherriman's preliminary event Love's Lingo, which takes place in the HEART café on Friday evening 10 February at 8pm, has now been blessed with the presence of terrific singer Maggie 8. You can hear her at http://www.myspace.com/maggieslovelymusic

You can also see and hear Becky on YouTube - just type her name in.

Jo Brandon's Phobia

2012-01-15T17:21:00.002Z

Jo Brandon (New Shoots, last year's LitFest)writes:
Just wanted to send a quick message as I'm very excited to be launching my debut poetry pamphlet Phobia on Friday 20 January, 8pm at the Carriageworks in Leeds. It would be wonderful to see you there!

I'll also be reading as part the Valley Press Fest in Scarborough on Saturday 21 January from 2-4pm at the town library and earlier in the day there will be a signing at Taylor's very fine bookshop and tea rooms.

Both events are free.

Ian McMillan on Yorkshire Accents

2012-01-14T14:39:00.002Z

Thanks, Iggie, for drawing attention to this YouTube piece in which Stephen Fry talks to poet Ian McMillan about the richness and variety of accents here in Yorkshire.

Ian McMillan, yes the man himself in all his richness and variety, will be coming to the LitFest on Friday 16 March. The event will be in the Left Bank Centre on Cardigan Road at 7.30pm, tickets £10. All the details soon! Put it in your diary.

Love's Lingo

2012-01-03T13:36:00.001Z

In honour of Valentine's Day, commissioned and published writer BeckyCherriman will take you on a poetic journey through the vast lexicon of love. This will take place in the HEART Café at 8pm on Friday 10 February as a preliminary event for the LitFest 'proper' in mid-March.

But don't expect it all to be hearts and flowers! Becky's workis known for its honest and often uncomfortable intensity. The eveningwill also feature live music from Maggie 8 (http://www.myspace.com/maggieslovelymusic) and a reading from poet, Clare Neruda.

Tickets on the door will be just six pounds - and that includes a drink.

Becky is a writer, creative writingfacilitator and performer based in Leeds. She works regularly for the Workers EducationalAssociation, The West Yorkshire Playhouse, Artlink West Yorkshireand Ilkley Literature Festival, develops writing-related resourcesfor The Hepworth Wakefield and delivers public readings of herwork.

Successes to date include being shortlisted for the2009 DorothySargent Rosenberg Award, the 2009-10 FishShort Story Prize, and the 2011 Grist PoetryCompetition, a commission to write and perform an interactivechildren’s story at The Rotunda Museum in Scarborough on the theme of geology,publication in an anthology ‘Along The Iron Veins’ and attaining second prizein the 2010 Ilkley Literature Festival Open Mic competition. Her poems ‘Behind His Eye’ and ‘EveryBone’ will be published in the 2012 ‘Grist Anthology’.

Here is a poem about the HEART Centre written by one of Becky's students:

The Heart Centre

New rooms wrappedround an old beating heart

Wall adorned withnew, vibrant art.

Drums in thestairwell with Hettie the Cleaner

Pot plants abound tomake it look neater

Guitar, pilates ortrumpet lessons

Everything covered inweekly sessions

From young to old andthose on the dole

With Heart in theCommunity, this place has a soul

Angela Lloyd Roberts

2012 PROGRAMME SOON

2012-01-03T13:25:00.002Z

Finalising meetings are taking place, possibly while you are reading this! Nearly all the pieces have been fitted into the jigsaw.

The printed programme should be available in about a fortnight. Get in touch if you want to help with distributing it. It will certainly be on tables in the Heart Café during Becky Cherriman's evening on 10 February - see LOVE'S LINGO.

York Storytelling

2011-12-22T15:20:00.001Z

Here's a plug for kindred spirits in York: read about the storytelling festival on 3 February at http://www.skiddle.com/events/11547602/

We'll see some of the Yorkists in Headingley next March, hopefully.

Alan Bennett at Lawnswood

2011-12-21T21:13:00.001Z

Earlier this month (9 December), our most illustrious ex-resident visited his old school, Leeds Modern, to officially open its library, which is now named after him. As far as we know, the last time he was at the school, which is now called Lawnswood, of course, was coincidental with the last Headingley LitFest in March. The LitFest's box of free books from World Book Night at that time consisted of copies of A Life Like Other People's, and most of them were donated by us to the school's sixth form. He read from this during both visits - the section which deals with his use of Armley Library - and added a strong condemnation of current library closures, which he described as "wrong and short-sighted... We're impoverishing young people." There were no dissenting voices.

On 4 February, which is National Libraries Day, The Library Book will be published, with contributions from the likes of Julian Barnes, Stephen Fry and himself. This will be in support of library campaigners everywhere.

He was also eloquent in his observations on fee increases for students wanting to go to university. He told his audience of students, teachers and governors that he would not have been able to go to higher education himself if the situation had been like today, because his parents simply did not have enough money to support him: "I didn't realise then how fortunate I was but soon after I left university I realised I'd been very, very lucky."

He was welcomed to the event by Deputy Head Will Carr, who is pictured below. Some of the faces in the audience were familiar, because they belonged to some of those who either participated in, or watched, the wildly successful fourth LitFest Poetry Slam at Lawnswood. Was it so many months ago?

We are hoping that the next Slam will be just as good!

Lle desiel?

2011-11-16T09:15:00.001Z

Richard Wilcocks writes:

“Lle desiel?” is Elvish for “Are you ready?” One-timeHeadingley resident J R R Tolkien was responsible for creating the Elvishlanguage, of course. It comes in two variations – Quenya and Sindarin, orHigh-elven and grey-elven. Tolkien provided only three hundred and fifty words,but his followers have now added thousands more, so you can now take part in areasonably intelligent conversation.

Perhaps it will replace Esperanto as the world’s mostsignificant made-up language. Who knows? And before you ask, there is noevidence that Tolkien was working on Elvish grammar while he was living inHeadingley, and the blue plaque which will soon be put on the wall of the housein which he lived while lecturing at the University of Leeds will have Englishwords on it, in spite of intensive lobbying by local elves.

Elvish has a credible but rudimentary grammar, and is basedmainly on Finnish and Welsh, so I am told. Perhaps after the forthcomingLitFest in March next year (keyword is LINGO), some people will be inspired tobecome experts, because Elvish will be at least talked about by Dr RichardBrown from the English Department of the University of Leeds as part of anevent which will probably take place on a Wednesday evening – ‘probably’because the programme is still being fixed. It will appear in its final form inJanuary.

In the meantime, you might like to look at this website.

Below, the Elvish written on the One Ring:

Linda Marshall at HEART

2011-11-03T19:52:00.000Z

Mila and Craig at Café Lento

2011-10-15T12:58:00.001+01:00

Café Lento on North Lane is the place to be on Friday evenings. That's true for yesterday, anyway. Mila and Craig were terrific, with a variety of musical styles- including Bossa Nova - and songs in Portuguese. Audience loved it. They could come to the Iberian Evening (we'll probably change that as a title...) which was mooted after the show. This would take place during next March's LitFest.

Seen Michelle's Macbook?

2011-10-14T14:45:00.000+01:00

Performance poet Michelle Scally Clarke (above, pictured at Lawnswood School), well-known at the Headingley LitFest because of the dynamic part she has played at every Poetry Slam so far (look them up) has been burgled. It happened when she was asleep at her home in Harehills, and the thief, or thieves, stole her laptop. This was last Saturday, between 1.30am and 7.45am. A leather coat, a bag and some cash also disappeared.

The computer contained the only copy of a half-finished novel, a large collection of other pieces of work in progress, and also important documents. Hard luck, Michelle!

It is a white Apple Macbook, and it should be easily identifiable: the 'e' and the 'o' on the keyboard have been rubbed off because of heavy use. It has also been marked with a property pen with ink that shows up under ultra-violet light.

Know anything? If you do, contact her at the Host Media Centre on Savile Mount, LS7. Michelle will be at the Poetry Slam (there could be two of them!) next March.

Leeds Lieder rocks!

2011-10-12T12:33:00.000+01:00

Heartwarming to see such an array of fledgling talent at Leeds Lieder's Composers and Poets Showcase on Saturday! Some of them were at Headingley LitFest too - in New Shoots last March.

Click here for full review.

We Are Poets - at Hyde Park Picture House

2011-09-28T09:12:00.000+01:00

Thanks to Peter Spafford for alerting us to this:

The award winning 'We Are Poets' is in Leeds for a very special 'homecoming' screening at the Hyde Park Picture House, Sunday 2nd October, 5:45pm

Sheffield Doc/Fest Youth Jury interview with Alex Ramseyer-Bache and Daniel Lucchesi from Jack Ranson on Vimeo.

We Are Poets is on tour around the UK and after a successful opening at the British Film Institute, it is now coming to it's home town of Leeds to share and celebrate this amazing local story. Don't miss it!

Winner of the Youth Jury Award at the Sheffield Documentary Festival 2011 and shortlisted for a prestigious Newcomer Prize at Grierson: The British Documentary Awards 2011, We Are Poets intimately follows six remarkable young poets from Leeds Young Authors, a youth poetry group based in Chapeltown, as they are chosen to represent the UK at Brave New Voices, the most prestigious poetry slam competition in the USA. From their inner city lives to a stage in front of the White House in Washington DC, the poets must prepare for a transformational journey of a lifetime.

Cinematic, honest and deeply personal, We Are Poets is a moving testament to the power of creativity, community and the dynamism of young people. Anyone tempted to dismiss today's youth as politically apathetic better pay heed: here is electrifying evidence to the contrary.

We Are Poets was directed and produced by local filmmakers Alex Ramseyer-Bache and Daniel Lucchesi.

There will be a Q&A with the directors and poets following the screening and live poetry performances!

Here's what a few people have said about the film:

Sheffield Doc Fest - "A poignant, truthful and uplifting perspective on youth today and its potential. From its utterly brilliant opening, through to its moving finale, 'We Are Poets' is inspirational!"

I-D Magazine - "Lyrical, inspirational and ultra-cool...a brilliant story and a milestone in breaking down stereotypes”

Benjamin Zephaniah - “Amazing...the film itself is a poem. Poetry is an art, filmmaking is an art, it's takes great sensitivity to bring them together - this film shows us how it's done!”

For more information and to book tickets: http://www.hydeparkpicturehouse.co.uk/index.php?showing=3151#now-showing

The Zoo Story

2011-09-12T13:44:00.000+01:00

Dave (Theatre of the Dales) Robertson warmly invites everyone to a free performance of

THE ZOO STORY

Edward Albee

with

GuillaumeBlanchard

and

David Robertson

First staged in 1959, shortlybefore he wrote Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Albee'sone-act tour de force is as wryand hypnotic as ever.

Two New Yorkers strike up aconversation in Central Park. One irritates, amuses and intrigues the otherwith his life story, till the listener is caught up in a climax at once shockingand deeply moving.

You can catch it nextweekend at the following times and venues:

On Saturday, Sept 17th, at 3pm inDagmar Wood (opposite Dave's house) or in the nearby LS6 Cafe (often called the Clock), if it rains.

Also, at 8pm inCafe Lento onNorth Lane, Headingley (where there will be a licensed bar).

On Sunday, Sept 18th, at 3pm in Dagmar Wood. (Again, in the Clock, if it rains.)

Also, at 9.30pm in thegarden of 1, Grosvenor Road (Dave's place) by the light of a bonfire. (Shelter will be rigged up, if rain threatens.)

Support the LIPPfest!

2011-06-27T12:25:00.000+01:00

Readers of this blog are sure to be interested in the LIPPfest so here's information and dates for your diaries:

The Leeds Independent Presses Poetry Festival (LIPPfest) 2011 kicks off on 24 September at the Carriageworks Theatre in Leeds with a programme of readings from twenty-one poets, six workshops, symposiums and publishing talks. An independent presses bookfair will give people the chance to browse and purchase literature from a range of literature not stocked on the shelves of your average bookshop.

LIPPfest 2011 Poetry competition

Here you can download details, rules and entry form for the inaugural LIPPfest poetry competition. The competition will open for entries on April 12th 2011. Entries close on July 14th 2011. Winners will be announced at a special event at the festival on September 24th.

(Click this Link to download PDF)

This year’s judges are Pat Borthwick and Mike Barlow.

Prizes
• 1st Prize £ 250.00
• 2nd Prize £ 150.00
• 3rd Prize £ 100.00
• The Leeds Prize £ 50.00
• All prize/award winners will receive a poetry
book from the LIPPfest book fair.

All prize winners will also have an opportunity to read at the festival and will be invited to submit their entry for inclusion in the LIPPfest’s anthology of poetry. The competition is a great way to support the festival and help us to promote the poets and poetry of independent presses.

Any money raised will go into putting on further events and developing new ways to take poetry out to new audiences. See entry form for full details.

Read! Read! Read!

2011-06-23T09:50:00.002+01:00

Here's an extract from a recent issue of the official newsletter of Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School in Meanwood:

The school was privileged to stage one of the events of the Headingley LitFest when the celebrated author, Robert Swindells read and discussed his works with pupils. Swindells is one of Britain’s most successful writers of fiction for young people...

Robert Swindells, who was born in Yorkshire, has received numerous awards for his books for children and young adults. Stone Cold, a favourite with our pupils, won the Carnegie Medal and has been adapted for television by the BBC. Generations of our pupils have enjoyed reading his novels and they were delighted to be given the opportunity to hear Mr Swindells read extracts from his work.

They plied him with questions about his subjects, his writing methods, his beliefs and his income! The quality and variety of the questions asked was impressive. Pupils found his honest, entertaining and down-to-‐earth approach engaging and many of them said that he made them believe that they could succeed as writers if they put their minds to it...

We were delighted to welcome pupils and staff from Allerton High School to the event. Mr Swindells was moved and impressed by the interest our pupils had shown.

Radish Books attended and provided copies of Mr Swindells' work. Many purchased Stone Cold and left clutching copies which carried a personal message from the author: variants of 'Read! Read! Read!

C. Brown

Readathon, anyone?

2011-05-20T13:19:00.000+01:00

Peter Spafford performed in the LitFest on 20 March in one of the house events. See the earlier posts to read the report. He has just put this message up on Headingley Chat:

I`m organising a broadcast literature festival for East Leeds FM (www.elfm.co.uk) called WRITING ON AIR, June 13-17.

For the finale, we're doing an all-night reading of Paul Auster's True Tales of American Life. We're looking for a team of 10-15 people crazy enough to camp out inside the fabulously atmospheric Seacroft Chapel and read through the night in shifts. Plenty of coffee and biscuits provided.

At the moment we have a hard core, but we need more! Anyone fancy it?

http://www.peterspafford.co.uk/

Beechey Island

2011-04-01T11:48:00.002+01:00

This poem was greatly admired by a number of people at the Let Me Speak event on 22 March. Campion Rollinson has now sent it, and you can read it on Headingley LitFest Originals.

Food for thought

2011-03-28T21:40:00.000+01:00

Richard Wilcocks writes:

Food appears to be playing an increasingly important part in the LitFest. We began in a restaurant this year, compliments about the home-made cakes and dainties provided last year were commonplace, and similar praise has been drizzled upon us this time around. Perhaps we should finish in a restaurant as well. Or in a house with a good cook in residence.

This particular house event on Sunday afternoon was so successful that there had to be a repeat performance. Fortunately, the first lot through the door did not scoff everything, and there was plenty of Oyster Bay left to drink, because I was there for the second session. Lis Bertolla and Doug Sandle performed a well thought-out poetry programme, Maria Sandle sang and played guitar, and a couple called The Retrolettes sang and played the ukelele. At one point, Doug played a Jew’s Harp!

There were poems written by Lis and Doug themselves and by the likes of Geoffrey Chaucer, Jonathan Swift, John Keats, Edward Lear and Roger McGough, and occasional ventures into prose, with short extracts from Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Laurie Lee’s Cider with Rosie. Maria was particularly charming with her rendition of Junk Food Junkie, and the Retrolettes brought us Trinidadian sunshine with the Andrews Sisters’ version of Rum and Coca Cola.

The session concluded with Lis’s own beautiful poem After the Poetry Reading. Then it was time for the nosh. We’ll have to do this every Sunday afternoon now.

Words and music melted together

2011-03-28T20:20:00.003+01:00

Sheila Chapman writes:

A member of the audience said that The Shire Oak Room at HEART ‘had the enticing atmosphere of a New York Jazz Club’ on Saturday night and thus the stage was set for a very special event .

When I was researching the evening I had checked out reviews of The Fruit Tree Project jazz band (Dave Evans on keys, Colin Sutton on Bass and Alex Wibrow on drums), and came across this comment: ‘...they take on grooves and at times semi-free excitement equally to create a thrilling array of sounds’. Not knowing a great deal about jazz I was a bit puzzled by these words, but as the band kicked off the night, playing compositions by Dave Evans, I began to understand exactly what they meant. As one member of the audience (Terry Bridges) commented, they were ‘polished and consummate performers’. They entranced the audience and I, for one, found their array of sounds both thrilling and absorbing.

After a few numbers they were joined by the poet Rommi Smith, who explained that her poems for the night were taken from her pamphlet Mornings and Midnights. These poems are based on the lives of female legends such as Billie Holliday, Bessie Smith and Josephine Baker. They do not seek to tell the biography of these women, because that would demand too much ‘truth’, but rather to illuminate and narrate their lives through the life of Gloria Silver, a mythical diva whose experience and history is the backbone of the book.

Rommi’s collection of mornings and midnights poems is growing. We were treated to some poems from the pamphlet such as: Any Old Death Will Do, ‘...and maggots are the jewels against my skin’, which explores Gloria’s reaction when she reads her own obituary while still very much alive (apparently something that actually happened to Peggy Lee); and when Bessie Smith Came Face to Face with the Klan ‘... stark white hooded exclamation marks’. We also heard new poems such as Fur Coat, Moonsong Jelly, and Rain - where the musical rendition of the sound of rain in the intro was restrained, and incredibly evocative.

The poems, whether spoken or sung, were interwoven with the music with power and passion, and true musicality. Some written comments from the audience will tell you what it was like:

Words and music melted together like an ice-cream fruit sundae. But do not be misled as the core is as hard-hitting as a bullet (Glo Simons)

Moving, angry, engaged. The coherence of music & word & song was the best I’ve heard. (Murray Edscer)

Such professionalism in the execution of performance. Such knowledge in the poetry and background itself. (Jane Austwick)

It was a brilliant night. Once again some members of the audience say it all:

A moving and exciting performance ... more please. (Anon)

Overall, a wonderful & moving performance – very inspiring! (Anon)

What a fantastic combination of the spoken word and fab music. (Bev Robinson)

Rommi so soulful. (Selina)

This event was absolutely outstanding. (Jane Austwick)

An inspiring evening and wonderful to have this on our doorstep! (Anon)

Inspired – a great addition to a literary festival. (Beatrice Schofield)

As Murray Edsecar said: "This was inspirational. ... an entrancing evening."

The Fruit Tree Project: Mornings and Midnights by Rommi Smith is published by Peepal Tree Press, Leeds (2005, 2008)

Ben Okri in Headingley

2011-03-28T14:03:00.003+01:00

Richard Wilcocks writes:

On Saturday afternoon, we were privileged to meet one of world literature’s most beloved, spellbinding and unclassifiable voices, a poetic dreamer and an explorer of new realms who believes in the power of the imagination and storytelling to change the world. To state that he was very welcome is a substantial understatement. The audience that filled the Shire Oak Room in the Heart Centre hung on every one of his words, as he spoke in jest and in earnest, about this and other worlds. Old, young, resident, student, visitor, familiar, unfamiliar – all of them were there.

We were some of the first people in the country to see his new book as well – A Time for New Dreams – which gives his view of what is happening now, from environmental issues to the economic crisis, and which tells us how we can transform ourselves and address the problems. It is in the form of poetic essays, distillations which have titles like Poetry and Life, On Childhood and Healing the Africa Within. He read from several essays at various stages, including The Romance of Difficult Times and Dramatic Moments in the Encounter between Picasso and African Art.

With fine sonority, he read poetry and stories, then gave very full answers to questions asked him by myself and the audience; most of this will soon be up on YouTube if all goes well.

He spoke about his early career and the publication of his first novel – Flowers and Shadows – at the age of twenty-one and about his relationship with music. Music is encountered in many of his writings, music of all kinds: popular, classical, European and African. One of the surprisingly few questions about The Famished Road from a woman in the audience was about its structure and the use of what she described as ‘leitmotifs’, which led to further discussion about linear compositions and those which might be described as spiral, with the same points visited over and over again.

I asked him about the way critics tend to compartmentalise him, and about the label of ‘magic realist’ which he is made to wear, a label which is irritating because it limits perceptions, about the first impulse which starts him writing, and about the mythologies from which he draws, mythologies which are crucial for creative processes because of the insights and extra dimensions they provide. A myth should not be approached purely out of nostalgia. References to Ancient Greek and Roman myths and history were included in the read-out sections of A Time for New Dreams, for example:

The Aeneid reminds us that great civilisations can be built on great failures. It also reminds us that adversity is not the end of a story but, where there is courage and vision, the beginning of a new one, a greater one than before. (p39)

Success makes us fly with unreal wings and more often than not, like Icarus, takes us to close to the sun. (p40)

‘Sometimes the way up is the way down,’ Heraclitus said. (p42)

He mentioned that he had arrived by train, and that many of the trains going in the opposite direction to London had been full of people travelling to the big demonstration against the government’s cuts. At my request, he related his views on improving our personal and collective conditions to this event.

The audience, he remarked afterwards, was “one of the best I have had”, responsive, sympathetic and good-humoured, with an array of particularly intelligent questions. That’s Headingley for you! He responded to an audience request to read from his essay on Picasso and African Art:

When he saw the masks he was shattered by the original flash of lightning, with its zigzag out of nothing. A howl and a laughter as mysterious as the map of Africa clouded his mind.

In that moment all of Ancient Spain died and was resurrected in a new form. (p65)

He gave a generous amount of time to talk to each one of the many people who bought books (thanks again, Radish!) for him to sign. Ben Okri, we loved you!

See him on YouTube here.

Here is a selection of written comments:

Ben Okri spoke and the pictures unfolded around the room. (Catherine Corr)

Wonderful to have this fantastic man come to Headingley. (Anon)

Just wonderful to get an idea of the depth and breadth of his vision and his wonderful contribution to the world. (Anon)

Highly enjoyable event. It was especially good that Ben Okri did not just read poems, essay extracts etc but that he embodied poetry in his manner of speaking and behaving. (Anon)

Wonderful. Expressive range of ideas, thoughts and challenges (Carol Gleisner)

Cocktail in the Café

2011-03-28T09:24:00.003+01:00

Richard Wilcocks writes:
Trio Literati provided plenty of gourmet material on Friday evening. Everything was professionally prepared and served up stylishly.

The key word for it? Zingy, like the excellent cocktail, which had something of everything appropriate in it, along with an ingredient which can not, should not be identified. The venue – Hawker’s Green Café in the Heart Centre – was ideal, lacking only a few directional lights, but that didn’t matter because this was delicious entertainment for a discerning audience.

I arrived from the evening with Persephone Books in the nearby library, accompanied by the speaker and several others, to find people already browsing on the delicacies on every table, waiting for the main courses from the group. Here is an idea of what they were like:

The first course was poems from Wendy Cope, June Carruthers, Philip Larkin, Stevie Smith and Frank Polite. Frank Polite? His Carmen Miranda was beautifully, fruitfully performed by Maggie Mash. We saw the pineapples and the bananas. The second course was about acting, stage uncertainties and thinking on your feet as the boards are trodden, with pieces by Nicolas Craig, Hugo Williams (Richard Rastell in Waiting to Go On... “they recast the suit”), George Burns (on faking sincerity), Victoria Wood (advice to the Piecrust Players... Rosencrantz and Guildenstern on a tandem) and Hillaire Belloc.

The poem with the longest title was performed during the third course – On seeing a collection of ironmongery in the Tate Gallery labelled “Woman” – written by Richard Rastell’s father, performed by his son. Other poems were by Frank O’Hara, Steve Ellis, Helen Burke, Roger McGough, and William Carlos Williams (The Artist, an inspired choice).

After a chatty interval, there were substantial servings in fourth and fifth courses of Paul Munden, head chef Carol Ann Duffy (Big Sue and Now Voyager), Roger McGough, Liz Lochhead, Lee L Berkson (the shade of Humphrey Bogart appeared), Linda France, Louis McNeice, Margaret Hobbs, Peter Spafford, Elizabeth Alexander and Alfred Brendel, who turns out to have been a closet poet as well as a rather famous pianist: his The Coughers of Cologne proves that he was rather good at it as well.

By the end, we were all happily pogged. Jane Oakshott, Richard Rastell and Maggi Mash (pictured below) were exquisite. See their website here.

An evening with Persephone Books

2011-03-27T15:08:00.001+01:00

Mary Francis writes:

Persephone Books reprints neglected novels, diaries, short stories and cookery books by women writers such as Dorothy Whipple and Katherine Mansfield. They are all carefully designed with a clear typeface, a dove-grey jacket, a ‘fabric’ endpaper and bookmark and a preface by writers such as Jilly Cooper, Adam Gopnik and Jacqueline Wilson.

Founder Nicola Beauman was due to talk to us on Friday, at Headingley Library, about the origins of Persephone, how books are chosen and about some of the authors. Unfortunately, Nicola then had a pressing commitment across the Atlantic, but in her place came one of her team, Miki Footman.

Miki told us something of the beginnings of Persephone - of how Nicola Beauman, while researching for her own book - A very great profession: the women’s novel 1914-39 - realised how very many titles from that period were out of print. She founded Persephone Books in 1998 to reprint (mostly) women writers and (mostly) of the inter-war period - and now has 90 titles in print.

Persephone is an unusual publishing house. It has remained small and independent - and its books are distinctive. For those who love the feel and the look of a well-produced book, they are a delight. The quality paper and the jacket, the typeface and those beautiful endpapers - and also the wonderful binding (apparently called Dispersion Binding - I hope I have that right) that enables the book to lie quite flat when open, without any cracking of the spine.

There is now also the Persephone Classics series, with illustrated jackets, which may appeal more to those who are slightly unnerved by a plain dove-grey cover.

Waxing lyrical about book production is wont to provoke some puzzled looks from e-book enthusiasts - and, indeed, it was a surprise to hear from Miki that nowadays Persephone is not only producing audiobooks (very worthwhile) - but is venturing into the field of e-books also, in response to at least five email requests per day. So it seems there is definitely a demand for these titles, written so long ago, to be read with the current technology.

Miki told us a bit about working for Persephone. The staff consists of just five people, including Nicola, and the office where they work is also a shop, in Lamb’s Conduit Street in London, where passers-by are ‘encouraged to come in and take notice’. It sounds a delightful place to work, with everyone doing a bit of everything ... actually, Miki referred to painting the toilet floor as one job she’d undertaken recently!

Persephone also produces a free magazine twice a year. Called Biannually, it contains articles, reviews, details of forthcoming titles and any events - and usually a short story.

So how do Persephone choose their titles? They concentrate mainly on books that reflect women’s everyday lives. Their titles are ‘realistic, not idealistic,’ ‘more accessible, more domestic’ and they see the feminism in them as ‘softer’ than that from the other feminist publishers. They try to have many different genres, they do include books by men (generally ones concerning women’s lives) and they don’t overlap with other publishing houses. They also have to love every book they publish. There is no hope of a book selling well ‘unless someone is passionately behind it’.

Miki talked about some of their titles, such as the best-selling Miss Pettigrew lives for a day. There were Monica Dickens and Marghanita Laski - names I knew - and others, like Mollie Panter-Downes, that I did not. Nor did I know about Noel Streatfield, other than as a writer for children, or Betty Miller, mother of Jonathan. And I must read some Dorothy Whipple sometime .... she is a favourite of Nicola’s, it seems.

The session ended with lots of interesting questions from the audience - and only the slightest whiff of controversy as to whether their list might be a little middle-class and why works such as Phyllis Bentley’s Inheritance (that featured in one of the LitFest events last year) were still out of print. Or might it be that such works simply don’t fit with the criteria? But it was obvious there was a lot of interest in the great work that Persephone is doing in rescuing some splendid titles from obscurity and bringing them to our attention.

Many thanks to Miki. Thanks also to Radish Bookshop, who regularly stock Persephone titles, for bringing along some books for us to buy. And for anyone who couldn’t get to the talk, do take a look at www.persephonebooks.co.uk - and maybe, if one day you have some spare time in London, why not visit that intriguing shop in Lamb's Conduit Street?

I wish I was in Dublin then

2011-03-26T11:14:00.000Z

Brendan Behan

Flann O'Brien

Patrick Kavanagh

Sheila Chapman writes:

I was at Flux gallery again last night (Thursday) as part of my, not all onerous, LitFest duties. As I entered the room, (is it a hall, a Tardis or a wedge of cake?) the stage was being set for a great evening. The usual Flux Gallery hospitality was on display and we were ready to be treated to a night on the theme of A Literary Dublin, which is appropriate as Dan Lyons is a Dubliner who brings the literary life to Leeds.

First of all there was music from Des Hurley, Chris O’Malley, Jim Doody and friends and songs from Jim too - unaccompanied of course.

Jim Doody introduced the theme of the film, the literary life of Flann O’Brien, Patrick Kavanagh, and Brendan Behan in the Dublin of the 1950s/1960s. Dan Lyons then stood up and apologised for the poor quality of the film – picture and sound – and its tendency to stop at random intervals. But he thought it was worth watching. Of course he was right because what it lacked in packaging it more than made up for in content.

The film, in the form of a documentary, was narrated by Anthony Cronin and he guided us through a feast of song, humour and history where the main characters spoke for themselves and were amply supported by contributions from friends and family and by the Dubliners and Dublin of yesteryear.

I had meant to take copious notes about the film but, as the lights were turned out, I realised that this was a bad plan and so I am relying solely on my impressions and memories for this blog.

The first thing I remember is that Bloomsday, that annual Joycean pilgrimage around Dublin, was instituted by the characters in this film, although it seems that Brendan Beehan never actually got started as there were shots of him sound asleep (head flung back, mouth open) in a car. I think the others just dumped him. They then went on to follow the route of the funeral procession, succumbing in the end to some mysterious ailment which caused them to urinate copiously (against the nearest wall), laugh uproariously and generally fall about.

This set the tone for the rest of the film showing, as it did, the way in which the lives of these three literary greats were defined by their surroundings, their passion for the written word and their increasing involvement with alcohol. In one scene a very courteous Irish civil servant, when talking about Flann O’Brien referred to this as ‘his little problem’.

Flann O’Brien, real name Brian O’Nolan, wrote under many pseudonyms including that of Miles na gCopaleen, (Miles of the small horse as a member of the audience helpfully translated) who was a columnist for the Irish Times famed for his satirical wit. O’Brien though, struggled to be accepted as a serious writer during his lifetime although he did eventually leave the civil service to write full time. It was suggested that he was negatively influenced by the fact that his novel, The Third Policeman, was not accepted for publication although it is now an aclaimed piece of work.

Brendan Behan was a Dubliner who came from a family with a strong republican tradition, his uncle wrote the Irish National anthem and his mother said that ‘she didn’t like the English’ - several times. She also sang during her interview and much was made in the film of Behan’s fine singing voice. Beehan also spent time in Mountjoy gaol and there were sequences from the Quare Fellow which was based on his time in the gaol. There were also extracts from interviews with Eamon Andrews who tackled him about his drunkeness on television with suitable unapologetic ripostes from Behan.

In contrast to Behan, Patrick Kavanagh was a country boy who was born in Monaghan and came to Dublin only later in life. His early poems were based on his country experiences and in one sequence he was shown walking through a field and picking up a small bird, which was so comfortable with his touch it just nestled in the palm of his hand. Kavanagh lived in one of the old Dublin Georgian terraces and he had rigged up a large wing mirror on an outside wall angled to show who was calling so he could decide whether or not to answer the door! After a major operation Kavanagh experienced a renaissance in his writing when he was resting by the side of the Grand Canal in Dublin – the same place which inspired Lines written on a Seat on the Grand Canal, Dublin.

These three greats swept aside the heavy shadow cast by Yeats and brought about a renaissance in Irish writing. Their lives reflected the creative brilliance of their minds and their enduring love for ‘a pint of plain’.

Des Hurley, of the Irish Arts Foundation made an inspired choice with this film.

A Literary Dublin was a partnership between Irish Arts Foundation and Headingley LitFest.

Eamonn Hamilton brought a display of Irish Literary books to the event

Dig deep to mine gold

2011-03-25T12:48:00.004Z

Sally Bavage writes:

Lawnswood Poetry Slam yesterday (Thursday) evening was, once again, a heart-warming affair attended by a packed crowd of friends, family and supporters. A slam features a broad range of voices, styles, cultural traditions and approaches to writing and performance. We got that range.

Welcomed in to the school hall by the talented Lawnswood Steelpans band, Amanda Stevenson, Head of English then introduced us to our compere for the night. Local performer and poet Michelle Scally-Clarke came yet again to lend her support to this extraordinary event. Her own poetry lays bare her turbulent journey from care, to adoption, to motherhood, to performer – and she encourages the teenagers who go to her preliminary workshops to dig deep and find their own ‘Sense of Self’. She worked with the students for six weeks before the slam, nurturing their talents and offering them her own inimitable style of encouragement. Her hard work paid off. She mined gold.

Extraordinary? Yes! To hear so many young people talking about their sense of alienation, angst, loss, love, abuse, sadness, differences, families, gangs, revolution .. was a stunningly powerful experience. And not just talking either. Some found singing, or rapping, even to their own musical compositions, a way of releasing their innermost feelings and thoughts. To see the determination on the faces of those on stage, sometimes with shaking paper betraying their nerves, then see them changing visibly as confidence flowered and the power of their own words took them on a journey to a place where they were heard and respected – that’s what made it an extraordinary night. Some were just on the brink of teenage, others were old beyond their years, but a cross-section of boys and girls from all walks of life were bound together by their commitment to ‘be heard.’ Or be seen – the dance troupe who welcomed us back for the second half were a visual version of showing the power of the words to which they danced.

All the ‘slammers’ received medals for taking part, and received the applause, whoops and hollers from an appreciative crowd. Three special performances – for Best Performance, Best Poem and Best Personal Achievement – were awarded. Thanks should go too to the judges Richard Wilcocks (Headingley Litfest), Richard Raftery (staff) and Priya Lota (Slam Champion 2010) as well as Stella Litras and Jegbe for the musical support. All the names of the performers are given below but credit must be given to Michelle Scally Clarke, who managed to inspire such confidence from these young people that they laid bare their ‘inner well’ of honest confessional. A night to remember, for performers and audience alike.

Theo Bennett

Toni Busby (Best Performance)

Kirsty Crawford

Imogen Chillington

Amy Dawson

Fatima El Jack (Best Personal Achievement)

Polly Foster

Kieran Gately

Tanaka Guzuwe

Jasmine Joseph

Eva Moran

Teo Nistri

Ruvimbo Nyakubaya

Joel O’Mara (Best Poem)

Dione Sheehan

Zoe Kempe Stanners

Shannel Tata

Rosa Weiner

Huanna Witter

Richard Wilcocks adds:

Every year the thought crosses my mind that the most inspiring poets and singers of the entire LitFest can be found at Lawnswood School, at the Slam. This year, the thought was particularly strong. So fresh, so unpretentious, so spontaneous!

Fatima’s poem about the Arab Spring, or to be more exact, the Egyptian Spring, with its audience participation, was simply astounding, bringing a whiff of the hope and excitement in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Toni’s rich alto voice and her ability to convey real emotion in her own compositions made me think that surely she will be famous one day, and Joel’s honest, open and kind poetic attitude put many adult versifiers to shame. But then, all of the contributions were more than worthy of praise.

Below, Michelle Scally-Clarke with three award-winners:

How do you picture an author?

2011-03-24T13:02:00.002Z

Richard Wilcocks writes:

Bob Swindells, the author of Stone Cold, Abomination, Brother in the Land, Daz4Zoe, Follow a Shadow, Room 13 and much, much else read from his work and answered questions from about two hundred Year 9 students at Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School yesterday (Wednesday) morning in an event described by Assistant Head Cathie Brown as “a triumph”. His audience was wonderfully attentive as he read from Room 13, which he later said was his favourite, and ready with questions of all kinds when he talked with them for more than an hour afterwards.

The students were probably most familiar with Stone Cold, the story of Link, a boy from Yorkshire who tries to find work in London but who becomes homeless, and who is then stalked by a serial killer. He spoke about how he had done the research for the novel, writing to organisations like Shelter and actually spending time wearing shabby old clothes sitting on a bench at night amongst real down-and–outs by the Thames. He had encountered some callous, even dangerous people, but also some kind ones, like the man who had walked past him carrying a takeaway meal, who had turned back and left it beside him without saying a word.

“I took ideas from stories in the news, and was thinking of Dennis Nilson, who murdered a number of young people in his flat.”

I asked him whether he was still got at by tabloid journalists for his choice of ‘strong’ subject matter. I remembered one particular screech from someone at the Daily Mail along the lines of “What are we doing to our children?”

“Not so much nowadays,” he said. “All of that happened when I was awarded the Carnegie Medal for Stone Cold. I am not usually that high-profile. It does not bother me.

I am often stimulated to write by things which make me angry, like the fact that there are homeless teenagers sleeping in doorways when there is no need for it. I am angered by the existence of nuclear weapons as well, and the mad threat to use them.”

He talked about when he was arrested for taking part in an anti-nuclear protest which involved getting chained up with others, then padlocking the chains to gates outside the Ministry of Defence. The police cut him free using bolt cutters. When he refused to pay the twenty-five pounds fine (those were the days!) he ended up in Armley Gaol. This was an extremely interesting tale for the audience, with plenty of follow-up questions. An author in a prison cell!

“I don’t know how you picture authors in your minds. Perhaps you think of someone wearing a dressing gown and drifting about the house with a cigarette in a long holder.”

Bob Swindells has officially retired from school visiting, so it was terrific that he agreed to come over to Leeds for the Headingley LitFest. He was much appreciated by the students and teachers.

New Shoots

2011-03-23T17:48:00.002Z

Richard Wilcocks writes:

You could feel the electricity in the Shire Oak Room as talented poet after talented poet impressed us, introduced by the efficient Jo Brandon, all of them from the Cadaverine stable. In the photo, see Ian Harker, Amy McCauley, Joe Hobson and Mike Honley. Young blood!

First Joe Hobson read us his selection, all of it tightly-structured, jammed with taut metaphors and startling word-choices. He struck me as a domesticated, rural sort of person, closely observing fuchsia bushes in the garden - touchstone scrolls against all that night.....we blink in full view - and looking at a garden spider as if it was a newly-discovered creature - his many legs folded in his terminals.... towing some memory up a thread - and also as someone who can capture a character in a few words – I’m dizzy as a teaspoon... all buttonholes, no buttons.

Ian Harker started with a real tree which had been cut down by his neighbour, then moved on to an invented fire tree. After fire came earth, a Bronze Age earthwork by the sea which fascinated him, dug out laboriously in ancient times – the earth struggles, and we fight it back. He referred to the mysterious Wodwo from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and returned to Medieval times in a poem inspired by an aerial photograph of his parents’ house which revealed marks and shadows in the field next to it – evidence of feudal strips. I liked this one best.

Amy McCauley, who is doing a Poetry MA at Manchester Met, produces short, very short poems, many of them with a Biblical link of some kind. Mary, Mother of God appeared several times, seen from very original viewpoints. I liked her thought that a cow would make a good pope because life should be taken slowly. Birth and conception was a theme, and also the Immaculate Conception – the pearl is formed and released by the dark spring. Another theme was family, with poems to a brother and to parents. She also mused on reaching the age of thirty... no comment.

Mike Conley, a twenty-six year-old teacher, reminded me in his images of the legendary Ivor Cutler (did he listen to him on the legendary John Peel radio programme?) but his delivery was all his own as he gave us a surreal narrative (Aquarium) set in an A&E involving a tank of goldfish. I really liked Ophelia’s view of Hamlet (he taught Hamlet to his Year 8 students) and his revelation that she had her lady in waiting drowned so she could go to her own funeral. This was in the form of a discovered letter signed ‘Mrs O. Fortinbras’.

After an interval involving, so it seems, plenty of networking, King Ink appeared, first of all in the figure of Michael Hann waving a whisky bottle filled with what may have been more than cold tea. He was a sort of cod lecturer raving about the split between Freud and Jung, complete with sanctimonious statements, platitudes and bits out of psychology textbooks. He was at his best when not stumbling about too much, when we could pick out something relatively sober from what became a deliberately incoherent dream sequence.

I was occasionally reminded of a more nightmarish Samuel Beckett, but perhaps that was not the intention. He was followed by John Chadwick as a burlesque mime artist, with a beautifully rubbery face and a mobile beret. Broadcast platitudes and exhortations connected with democracy, the rights of consumers, being independent in thought and much else were accompanied by frantic mouthings. Gute Nacht! Gute Nacht my sweet little demographics! said the background voice as the mime disappeared. Right.

The third apparition also harangued us. This was Tim Marshall as an ostrich-feathered, turbaned Russian professor (oh these damned foreign intellectuals!) with a stream of condemnation and advice – sooth yourself with twenty-four hour TV... beware of greed economics and botched sociology! We were urged to watch out for the use of Freudian ideas in any focus groups we might be invited to join, and watched a Powerpoint full of subliminal suggestiveness, with quickly-flashed images of, for example, a cut-off limb, a Hitler rally and paintings by Joan Miro and Francis Bacon.

It was a wild pantomime, a bit clunky and ready for revision – this was its premiere – but rather wonderful. King Ink can come again!

Let Me Speak

2011-03-23T08:56:00.003Z

Vivian Lister writes:

On a daffodil sunny spring afternoon, a group of twenty writers entertained and delighted an audience of friends and visitors with a mixture of poetry and prose that was by turns sad, edifying and funny.

Some of the work touched upon themes of tragedy and loss as in the beautiful elegy for the long dead seaman John Torrington who at just twenty years old died of TB, malaria and lead poisoning (Beechey Head by Campion Rollinson) or the poignant empathetic description of a frail widower examining a ‘biscuit tin of memories’: Coconut creams of holidays on tropical beaches/Chocolate bourbons of times in France/ and Lemon Puffs of Acid words /when Mary was alive (Memory Box by Jenny Jones).

Others focused upon capturing and describing very personal experiences and events. In Collide, for example, the poet ( Howard Benn) strives to pin down those very painful ephemeral thoughts and feelings as ‘fragile as glass’ that accompany lost love, whilst in vivid prose B. McLinley describes the hazy thought patterns of the drinker.

Here is the brisk concreteness of Beans on Toast- by Chris Woodhead:

- Open the tin with a crocodile snap

- Pour into the pan with a little tap

- Into the toaster with bread nice and thick

- Whilst watching the clock with a tick tick tick

And here the lyricism of Marlene: She walked slowly towards the beckoning waves –young, beautiful, full of sadness, beyond control

This wide range of subject and style was welded together by a singleness of purpose - the writers’ desire to create something true and authentic. Each individual had performed that magical language trick of transforming an experience whether of a single event (a day out in Wales , dancing , catching a teapot, a foster child’s temper tantrum, falling asleep) or a series of life shaping incidents ( first 78 to lifelong love of jazz, the day of the Bradford Valley Parade fire, moving from rural Tanzania to urban Leeds) into exact and honest words and went on to deliver them with courage and openness.

The performance was as inspiring as the material . At the end of the programme, a member of the audience said, "Thank you for having me" and I knew exactly what she meant. The speakers supported each other, creating an easy and relaxed atmosphere - all the more commendable when you know that they came from two separate creative writing groups, Osmondthorpe and Headingley, and that the first joint run through had been two hours previously.

Becky Cherriman, the WEA tutor of both these groups was pleased that the joint venture had worked so well, although she stressed the welcoming nature of both these groups. Some people have been attending the groups for several years and they form a supportive centre, always open to people and ideas so that nervous newcomers quickly feel at home She also talked about the tremendous support of helpers for people with physical disabilities at the Osmondthorpe group particularly Mary and Jenna.

Talking to members of both groups revealed just how much they valued the creative experience of their weekly meetings. Here are just a few typical views:

It’s wonderful to find a way to express yourself creatively , to try something new – and also to make new friends. And the group is local and easy to get to (Jenny)

I like to try out different genres of writing and it’s great to learn from the different backgrounds and experiences of others in the group. (Howard)

Writing and sharing my experiences helped me to deal with lots of situations in my personal life.(Steven)

The afternoon ended with a rousing ‘seize the day’ poem by Carl Flynn urging us all to experience our lives to the full, to treasure our friends:

And all the sorrows , all the joys

The chance is yours to make the choice

I am sure that I wasn’t the only audience member who felt inspired by the spirit of these performers to do just that!

In summary, I shall steal the words of an audience member, Mary Heycock. She wrote: A very entertaining and heart warming experience. I loved every minute!

And so say all!

Beast with Five Fingers

2011-03-23T08:35:00.002Z

June Diamond writes:

Monday’s event at the Cottage Road Cinema appealed in so many ways. I’m a sucker for old horror films , and we also had local history and significance.

Janet Douglas began by telling us a vivid tale of the early life of the author of the original short story on which the film was based. In We Were Seven, William Fryer Harvey describes how he grew up at Spring Bank House in Headingley, in a Quaker household full of books and stories. His grandparents kept to the old ways and the family eschewed violence in every form, down to not burning a guy at Bonfire Night. It is no surprise that he read Edgar Allan Poe under the dining room table.

It also made sense to learn that he became a doctor, conducting a particularly gruelling amputation to free a trapped sailor during the First World War. This dreadful episode wrecked his own health, but was retained in his imagination.

Janet’s lively and evocative introduction led brilliantly to the film. They really don’t make them like that any more, from the excellence of Peter Lorre, to the pace and atmosphere that contributed so well to the grisly story. A terrific evening.

RW adds: We are approaching the hundredth birthday of the Cottage Road Cinema, the oldest operating cinema in Leeds, which opened as The Headingley Picture House on 29 July 1912. The first Leeds cinema was The Assembly Rooms in Briggate (opened 1907) which is now a refurbished space used by Opera North.

So how many would you get right?

2011-03-21T16:41:00.000Z

Do you think it's too hard - or not? This is the quiz which was on the tables at the launch on Friday. Some people scored high marks without the benefit of Google. Thanks to Mary Francis for putting it together.

1.    Who wrote ʻThe Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christʼ?

2.    What is the name of Peter Robinsonʼs detective character?

3.    Don Quixote, Cervantesʼ famous hero, hailed from which part of Spain?

4.    Although much better known for her novels, she was also a friend of Charlotte Brontë and wrote the first biography of her. Who is she?

5.    Nigerian Chimamanda Ngozi Adichieʼs first novel was ʻPurple Hibiscusʼ. Can you name her second one, winner of the 2007 Orange Prize?

6. Who wrote ʻSouth Ridingʼ, recently produced (in shortened form) on TV?

7. Who was the author of ʻTestament of Youthʼ?

8. How are the two authors from questions 6 and 7 linked?

9. Who wrote ʻOde to a Nightingaleʼ?

10. Who is the Scottish author of both contemporary and science fiction, whose name changes with genre by the use of the initial ʻMʼ?

11. Name the Egyptian author of ʻThe Map of Loveʼ who is also a political and social commentator and who reported directly from Tahrir Square, Cairo, recently? Or - name the most famous work by Naguib Mahfouz. [Bonus point if get both answers]

12. Name any novel by Jonathan Coe.

13. From which Kingʼs Cross platform does the Hogwarts Express leave?

14. The name of Kathryn Stockartʼs 2010 bestseller that features the lives of three women, two black and one white, in the Mississippi of 1962.

15. ʻOur Kind of Traitorʼ is the latest title by whom?

16. Can you name the famous Spanish poet who is author of the play ʻYermaʼ, currently on at the West Yorkshire Playhouse?

17. Famous detective series, based on books by R.D.Wingfield, filmed in West Yorkshire.

18. Name Ben Okriʼs most famous book. [Bonus point for his latest novel, of 2007, also.]

19. What is Jonathan Franzenʼs latest, highly acclaimed, title?

20. Which of these titles is not an Agatha Christie mystery? (a) 4.50 from Paddington (b) The Mystery of the Blue Train (c) Death on the Tracks (d) Murder on the Orient Express.

Shark

2011-03-21T15:25:00.004Z

Richard Wilcocks writes:

Wes Brown lived in Burley, when he was even younger than he is now (early twenties) and his novel Shark is largely set in the area, which in case you don’t know is right next to Headingley. This evening event took place, appropriately enough, in a large front room in a house in Burley not far from the narrow bridge on St Michael’s Lane. He was interviewed by Mick McCann, author of the encyclopaedic How Leeds Changed the World. They are both in the photo. See Mick's Guardian article on Leeds writers and their rebel-rousing influence here.

Shark, described in its blurb as ‘a story about the dispossessed and how they get by’ has John Usher as its main character. He is an ex-soldier who returns to his boyhood home (in Burley) to find that things have changed drastically. Wes made it clear that he was an admirer of mid-twentieth century writers like Alan Sillitoe and that he hoped Shark would be seen as a genuine working-class novel which came out of real-life experiences, including his own. He talked about his early years, his father’s work as a professional wrestler and bouncer, and how he had spent ages with a guide to pool and snooker, because John Usher spends much of his time in pool halls. “It sounds very authentic to me,” observed Mick McCann, and after we had listened to Wes reading from the opening pages, I think most of those present agreed. Usher’s language is spiced with the right obscenities, and his tough talk could be taken at least partly as a consequence of the time he spent in Iraq.

There were comments from the audience about this and about the flashbacks which deal with Usher’s time in uniform. How can you write about the horror of war if you have never been in one? Well you can, it appears: Stephen Crane’s late nineteenth-century short novel The Red Badge of Courage, which is set in the American Civil War, was greatly admired by citizens who had been soldiers because it sounded credible and authentic. It’s often difficult to interview soldiers, Wes agreed, because traumas and painful memories can be internalised, leading to numbness.

Wes spoke about his interest in the actual shapes of word and sentences, and about how he connects various colours with pieces that he writes, which was picked up by a psychologist in the audience. It’s a benign condition.

There was plenty about influences, the names of Bellow, Updike and De Lillo cropping up frequently. The language has to sound just right, really streetwise. Wes has his own ideas about phonetics , and they work:

“So what abaht that?”

“I’ve got past that. Truss me on’t this, arr know what I yav to do and I’ll do it.”

“Iss too risky for me.”

“Av taken bigger.”

“Who does Fran think abaht all this?”

Wes explained that he is untrammelled by what is sometimes known as ‘political correctness’ and that opinions and statements that issue from the mouths of characters who have been in contact with organisations like the EDL (English Defence League) are just some of those that he has heard in real Burley and in real Leeds. “It’s not my racism. It’s for the readers to judge,” he said. “I didn’t write a manifesto.”

People lingered well past the end of the allotted hour, and a significant number of books were signed and sold by both authors.

Personally Speaking

2011-03-21T12:28:00.002Z

In the photo, Maggie Mash as Miss Brodie is speaking to Lynn Thornton as the headmistress in an extract from Muriel Spark's novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

It was difficult to squeeze into the capacious front room where the second house event took place, in spite of the fact that the chairs were “smaller than last year”. Knee-in-the-lower-back situations seem to have been rare, however, and the huge audience was very appreciative throughout – a happy genie that did not mind being bottled up. It was wonderfully entertained by Wordsong and by a number of guest performers.

Wordsong consists of Maggie Mash and Lynn Thornton with pianist John Holt. Their programme was divided up into five sections. Early family influences had poems by John Siddique, Philip Larkin (yes, that one), Carol Rumens, Grace Nichols, Lis Bertolla and Peter Spafford; Education and friends had a tale from Gervaise Phinn’s recollections, Juan taught me by Lucy Newlyn, extracts from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark and Lynn Barber’s An Education, W H Auden’s O Tell Me the Truth about Love (music by Dankworth) and a poem by local lad Terry Simpson – Did Those Feet in Ancient Times Walk in Woodhouse?

Love and marriage featured the work of Wendy Cope, Vicki Feaver, Sophie Hannah, Dorothy Parker, Carol Ann Duffy, Bob Dorough and Imtiaz Dharker, Beliefs and attitudes began with an excerpt from Climbing the Bookshelves by Shirley Williams, continuing with Liz Lochhead’s Mo, Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins, Mystic Fiddler by Terry Simpson, My Carbon Footprint by Lynn Thornton and Nigel Wears, arranged by John Holt, and a chunk of Trollope’s Barchester Towers.

Adrian Mitchell’s Human Beings was the only poem in the final section, and the show closed with Cole Porter’s Anything Goes

Efficiently organised and superbly performed!

Songs about love and shipwrecks

2011-03-21T11:16:00.001Z

Richard Wilcocks writes:
There was far more love than shipwrecks in this event, the first of those held in people’s houses. Backed by a window framing a sunny garden scene, Peter Spafford read his poems and sang his songs with aplomb, displaying some of his many talents to excellent effect. He began with a poem inspired by a graveyard visit, and also by a recollection of Stanley Spencer’s 1926 masterpiece The Resurrection, Cookham. Tombs were flung open and the dead became quick as Peter asserted a passionate love of life which became increasingly apparent as his one-man performance progressed.

He sat at the keyboard to tell the story of a doomed ship in Cornwall, then moved on to the necessity of writing things down:

That idea you had yesterday

Write it up, write it down......

Because the ink of memory runs thin in the rain

He sang about love, then moved away from the keyboard to read about it: “These are love poems in a very broad sense,” he told us. He speculated on the origin of the name of the Hello Bridge which crosses the River Cover in the Yorkshire Dales. Did lovers once meet there? Yes they did, centuries ago.

My favourite was a song which seems to have come from a viewing of the film Waterloo on DVD, the version starring Rod Steiger as Napoleon. Two farms were destroyed in the battle – Hougoumont and La Haye Sante. Tacticians might focus on how one or the other was crucial to holding the line against the Bonapartist forces, but Peter Spafford focuses on two lovers who grew up around them. He sang partly in French to a French tune – Jean Petit qui danse – and ended with there’s rubies in the dew. Beautiful!

Towards the end of the session he was flipping through a ring binder containing the brief poems he has written for every year of his life, which I recognised from when he was in Café Lento a couple of years ago. He invited audience members to call out a year. 1968 brought forth a bearpit, 2005 a view from a high point in the Malvern Hills, 1973 his loss of virginity (in a dream, to an Indian goddess in a church), 1995 a delicious strawberry eaten in Portugal, and 1963 the death of his dog Bilko, when he (Peter) was seven years old. “Were you seven when you wrote that, daddy?” came a child’s voice.

“No no,” he replied. “I wrote most of them in 2005.”

>Peter performs with Edible Tent. See www.peterspafford.co.uk

Launch of Sky Burial by Genny Rahtz

2011-03-20T15:56:00.001Z

Sheila Chapman writes:

Flux Gallery is an enticing place: its walls are not parallel and they fly away from you at the front door into an expanded space laid out and lit by Julie with her artistic eye, and decorated with Dan’s excellent photographic art work. With wine, nibbles, sandwiches and great music from Des the Miner what more could you ask for, except the launch of a poetry collection, Sky Burial, by Genny Rahtz.

Genny was featured in the renowned A Rumoured City: New Poets from Hull which was published by Bloodaxe Books Ltd in 1982 and which featured a foreword by Phillip Larkin. She was supported last night by three of the other poets whose work appeared in the book and as T.F.Griffin explained in his introduction, they spent those years in Hull under the tutelage of Douglas Dunn and in the shade of Philip Larkin.

Ian Gregson’s poems included surprising juxtapositions of ideas and images as he invited us to consider a corpse and a parrot in the same room, and the The Paper Bag as the self which, as it falls from your grasp 'grazes its lips on the empty pavement,....mimes its unheard words’

Cartoonist influences were captured in poems such as Queen Victoria as an Owl ‘because she did actually look like one’ and The Elastic Band, where the English Empire is ‘snagged on peaks’ and ‘... snapped back in our faces’. Other poems considered the isolation of the individual (Traffic Island Desert) and Thomas the Tank Engine as a Cyborg at puberty. Ian continued the cyborg theme in The Breast where Jordan’s breasts are cyborgs who are trying for a new start away from her and ‘...have secretly acquired an agent’

Douglas Huston treated us to a sometimes humorous and always interesting selection of poems, some in rhyme and some in free verse. In School Report an ageing school boy reflects on the past where a teacher was encased in his ‘black gown’s folded wings’ and indulged in ‘weapons grade rages’ and in Lines on Man’s dereliction ‘disintegration is where the big time starts’. Other poems included Report from up the Lane, The Quick One, Once Upon a Time (‘beyond mortgages’) and the Weather Regrets. A poem, Poet Laureate Ritual Bath Murder, which is a skit on Ted Hughes poetic style and lifestyle, was received with great gusto by the audience especially when, after the murder, the poet ‘...went off to do things with your wife’.

Genny Rahtz told us that since childhood she has been greatly influenced by American writers and by books about them. It also became apparent through her reading that she is influenced by cultural rituals such as sky burials. These burials take place where there is little or no wood to burn a body and the ground is undiggable so graves are not an option. The bodies are dismembered and offered up for buzzards to feed on and in the title poem of her collection she imagines her own sky burial where her brain

‘... is scooped out / and folded with ceremony / into my crushed skull’

... ‘as a feast for vultures, / kites, ravens.’

Genny also treated us to three animal poems: Rat Catcher, ‘I am my own rat catcher. / I let the beast go ... I allocate whole days to him’; Lambing, ‘You watch the sun rising as you walk home .. and fear that crows will come for the eyes of new born lambs.’; Desert Lion. ‘could you have known ... one day, Tate and Lyle / would embalm your story / on their syrup tin?’ She also read, in her simple and unassuming style, other poems from the collection including: Soft Fruit Harvest, ‘the sound of canes rubbing / as I pull and let them go, ... I think of elephants / stripping leaves from acacia trees’; Self Portrait, ‘I thought my true colours / required paint / and heavy paper’;

Before reading Geometry, Genny explained that there is scientific proof that our ability to navigate and judge spaces is hard wired into our heads; the poem starts with children in US cities who ‘... learn asymmetry of 3D grids, / kaleidoscopic patterns / of concrete, metal/ glass’ and moves on to an isolated Amazonian tribe who know ‘... from childhood how timber falls / how shapes and angles / work in practice. They read / the time language of shadows’.

Genny spoke of her mother, who died thirty years before her father and who, because of that, was rather overshadowed in the present activity and memory family life. In the poem My Mother Wendy – she says ‘I should light a candle / before it gets too dark’

Finally she paid homage to her beloved American painters and writers in Sky Windows celebrating ‘the long grain / of Wyoming voices in Annie Proulx, / the laconic / slow transatlantic roll / of Black Mountain poets.’

Sky Burial by Genny Rahtz (Flux Gallery Press 2010)

An absolute delight

2011-03-20T11:32:00.000Z

Sally Bavage writes:

35 Years of Loitering by Ray Brown was an absolute delight – a tour of a creative life in interviewing and writing plays for mainstream theatre, articles for magazines, radio scripts… the list was extensive, the many snippets both amusing and thought-provoking.

Ray was born and brought up on the edge of Thorner and although he has lived locally for most of his life he still feels like the ‘boy on the edge of the village’ wearing the ‘cloak of alienation.’ He has the quirky perspective of someone who can observe the ordinary and discern the extraordinary. Who else would be radicalised by the accounts department of Butlins? Or move from an apprenticeship at Heathrow to an early academic career in Psychology?

Kurt Vonnegut “wrote fiction in order to tell the truth” and this philosophy has informed Ray throughout his long professional life. From first writing about an early (and unsuccessful) attempt to seduce his eighteen year-old naïve but “pretty” self (his own choice of adjective) – possibly by Quentin Crisp on later reflection – he found his voice for both the serious and the comic. The miners’ strike of the 70s was a significant benchmark in his perspective, as was the later civil war in the place once known as Yugoslavia, which he observed at first hand from many trips to a region he continues to love and visit.

He made his first visit to the region in 1985 and soon fell in love with the country and its people. He has returned once or twice a year ever since. In his play ...is normal! which was at the West Yorkshire Playhouse 2003, he worked with two actors to present a funny, moving and compelling mixture of fact, fiction, performance and dramatic readings which also featured music and voices recorded live in former Yugoslavia. “The title is a quote,” he told us. “It’s what everybody said in response to questions about the war and its horrors.”

In an early part of his career, writing for the groves of academe – including ghost writing a textbook he was later asked to peer review - he also taught locally, wrote pub guides, articles for magazines and scripts for successful plays performed nationwide. A spell of creative writing residencies in prisons, psychiatric hospitals, British Rail workshops included a poignant one in a local hospice. He clearly painted for us a picture in words of the black humour of chemotherapy patients who raised hairless eyebrows at revelations in the writers’ circle or else raised their hair (wigs) to reveal, in another way, their life history.

Radio scripts have formed a significant part of his life for decades and he treated the audience to some excerpts from shows on topics as diverse as flight and … duffle coats. Music became a key medium in his delivery of the message, and a delightful conflation of the jazz trumpet of Humphey Lyttelton with the sound of the machine attaching toggles to the likes of the 555TM duffle as worn by Jack Hawkins in The Cruel Sea was masterful. Who amongst us did not call up an abiding memory of duffledom?

He spoke movingly about writing Living Pretty, the life story of Alfred Williams, who was his neighbour when he lived in Kirkstall in 1981. It is based on the autobiography which he co-wrote, To Live It Is To Know It, which moves from a childhood in Jamaica to retirement in Leeds. It tells of an ordinary man made extraordinary by resilience, intelligence and good humour. Alfred spoke in a blend of Jamaican patois and other dialects, but Ray was able to represent his speech with great authenticity, because dialect and the way people speak is one of his obvious fortes. Alfred Williams once cultivated a plot on Burley Model Allotments, and there was once (and still is) a plan to put it on outside the allotments hut.

His politics have always informed his work, although an over- bold use of a clip of the voice coach of Margaret Thatcher when prime minister persistently being told to lower her voice led to a period in radio wilderness. Not that this changed his perspective: his commitment always to use the interview and music links to “tell the truth” remains undimmed. Ray has, and continues, to shine a light on life from his position “on the edge of the village”.

Valediction for John Jones

2011-03-20T11:27:00.001Z

Richard Wilcocks writes:

This valediction is for John Jones, who died in December aged eighty-four. He was a long-term resident of Headingley and a strong supporter of the LitFest from the moment it started. His interests and areas of expertise were many and various: he lectured for many years in the Fine Art department at Leeds University, where he was in overall charge of studio instruction and where he created and ran a course in the history of film, an artist who thought deeply about life drawing and a brilliant conversationalist.

He was very knowledgeable about literature in general, and was especially interested in the works of James Joyce. He had an impressive collection of Joyce’s work, and exhibited a series of his own illustrations to Ulysses.

He collected Victorian optical toys and magic lantern slides, and was the founder of the International Magic Lantern Society. Last autumn I was suggesting to him that one of his magic lantern shows, on the damage done by the demon drink, could be performed as part of this year’s LitFest. I am sure it would have been greatly appreciated.

In 2009 he took part in what has become an annual short story evening in Café Lento: his contribution was part of his autobiography, which he had recorded on a number of audiotape cassettes shortly before he suffered a stroke. He spoke about the year in the States in 1965 during which he interviewed artists including Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Louise Bourgeois and Yoko Ono. His interesting account of Yoko Ono’s stay with him (with her then partner and her daughter) in Rochester Terrace, and of the happening which she organised at Leeds College of Art in which she was tied up in a large black bag, was written up in local newspapers in 2009, then picked up by media around the world.

A year ago, for the third Headingley LitFest, he contributed with Gaby Jones to one of the first house events, in his front room in Hollin Lane. Gaby and John are pictured below at this event, which was called Déja-Vu. Gaby spoke of her return to the villa by Lake Como which she had known as a small child, and John spoke (again, on tape) about when he was a young soldier in 1945, who had been conscripted into the Royal Engineers and sent to recently-liberated Ostend in Belgium.

His obituary, written by one of his devoted ex-students, the cartoonist Steve Bell, can be found in the Guardian online.

So, farewell to an old friend.

Launched

2011-03-19T13:43:00.002Z

Sheila Chapman writes:

The LitFest launch happened in HEART last night in the Shire Oak Room, a ‘large spacious and bright space’ (Bill Fitzsimons) which had been thoughtfully set out by the HEART volunteers and staff. The room was filled with people who sat at round tables clutching their drinks, raffle tickets and a ‘golden ticket’ entry into the free book draw for one of the twenty-four copies of Alan Bennett’s A Life Like Other People's. As Richard Wilcocks explained, the LitFest had received these books courtesy of World Book Day. He also read out his valediction for John Jones, which will appear on this blog separately.

So, we were off to a good start and James Nash, our compère for the evening, explained to us that the literary quiz on the tables was to be completed as a team effort by each table and the results announced at the end of the break – more of this later.

We settled down then to hear the Word Birds, a group of female poets - Sue Vickerman, Jean Harrison and Sue Butler - who were accompanied by a male musician, Robin Fishwick.

Robin started us off with a Song for Headingley and after songs about Croatia, Croatian Wedding Song, and Hungary, he finished with Green Man, a song inspired by standing at the pedestrian crossing outside Mike’s Carpets in Armley. He played a timple (have I got the name right Robin?) and also a tenor recorder through which he hummed at the same time as playing. This produced a very different sound which, as Ruth Wynne said, ‘was adventurous, interesting and original’.

Sue Vickerman’s first poems reflected her time in China: she mused on the fragility of the skyscrapers which have grown up during current economic boom – something which has particular resonance given the devastation of the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan. She then treated us to a series of poems drawn from her experience as a life model which she thinks allows her time to muse and compose poems and ‘hang out with artists’. She spoke of the continuing rounding and softening of a woman’s body charted by an artist as he draws her through her developing pregnancy, and ‘the nicotine finger ‘of the drawing instructor as he gets intimately close to demonstrate the lines and angle of her body and her ‘pelt rises’ . This Bird weighs her words carefully and builds her evocative images to entrance and enlighten her audience.

James Nash rounded off this first half with a humorous and well observed poem about his experience as a gooseberry in The Lounge cinema. He had gone there with two friends, who were a couple, obviously, and their casual intimacy, when one of them stroked the other’s leg, set him off on a desperate search for a leg of his own to stroke.

The audience worked hard during the break to complete the quiz. There was a great deal of muttering, sly glancing over shoulders and desperate argument and counter argument. Was A Touch of Frost filmed in Leeds , or was it Banks? I don’t know! The results were announced. Had anyone got the maximum twenty-two?. No. Twenty-one? No. Twenty? No. ... sixteen? Yes! A draw! Two tables were entitled to the prize - drinks for the whole table. But were there enough drinks to go round? Yes, phew, what a quiz.

There was more of the Word Birds for the second half. Jean Harrison described her place poems as ‘not romantic’ and yet there was romance in her description of a Zen garden where there were bushes with ‘meditative shoulders’ and in the ice-cream chimes which made a fragment of Greensleeves run through her head for days. Sue Butler who has lived all over the world, spoke of the hardships of Russia in 1937, of joyriding in someone else’s glasses and of using poetry as a weapon, particularly against her rich and handsome brother. Sue Vickerman spoke of her return to Bradford and the tree outside her new Bradford flat ‘which will never dapple anything’ and of her days as a student in Headingley when she was a ‘rock dove’ The evening was rounded off by more music from Robin and by a very welcome sonnet of love from James Nash.

The audience set off home clutching raffle prizes, books and drinks. As one of them said ’Thanks for a lovely evening! Nice blend of words and music!’ (Sue LS6)

The evening was filmed by two students from Leeds Metropolitan University (Joe and Matt) who also conducted interviews with performers and some members of the audience.

Below - two of the Word Birds - Sue Vickerman and Jean Harrison

How to get published

2011-03-17T15:10:00.003Z

Sally Bavage writes:
How to get published was the theme for tonight’s session of the fourth Headingley Litfest, held in the Claremont room at the brand new Heart Community Centre on Bennett Road. More than forty people crammed in to a packed and lively session to hear Isabel Losada give some wannabe authors very practical advice about getting their literary baby into the welcoming arms of an agent or publishing house.

Realism not idealism is the key, she insists. “You must believe passionately in your book and persevere to find the right agent or publisher who likes your work.”

George Orwell claimed that the secret of being published was ‘brevity, clarity, precision’ – something Isabel emphasised through many pragmatic examples. There are some tough questions to ask yourself first so that you can be very clear with any would-be agent:

Who is the book really for?
What section of the bookshop would you find it in?
Does it engage the attention of the reader from the first paragraph?
What is the unique selling point of this book?
What books are similar? (so you can describe it)
How would you sell it? (produce a marketing plan)

Isabel has published six books; her latest The Battersea Park Road to Paradise will be out in paperback in May 2011. You must be a self-critical editor who has the courage of their convictions and ignores the (wildly differing) opinions of friends who would each ask you to change something different. You also need resilience to bounce back from the inevitable rejection letters and the confidence to just keep going.

And you won’t make your fortune, unless your initials are J K. Sadly, ninety percent of authors earn less than working on a checkout till, and the average advance of less than three thousand pounds is hardly the step to financial heaven – although J K Rowling was told in one rejection letter that “You’ll never make any money writing children’s books.”

Isabel herself got quite a few rejection slips for books. “We’re too mainline for you” and “Covers too many different subject areas” or “Put it on the shelf and put it down to experience” were some; the comments were conflicting and could have been demoralising unless you have the iron determination to just keep going. She has and she did – her books have now sold one hundred thousand copies in sixteen languages.

Isabel has worked as an actress, singer, dancer, researcher, TV producer, broadcaster, public speaker, comedian as well as staying committed to her writing. She brought a number of these skills to a lively session, trying to sell us a broom (“handcrafted bristles, lovingly grouped, woven together for months” – you get the idea) and singing a line from a Madonna number. As one feedback quote said, “Informative, fun and inspiring!

If you are interested in her books that focus on the pursuit of happiness through the development of human potential through the media of nuns, men and the Dalai Llama, to name but a few, then take a look here.

Close up at Café Lento

2011-03-16T11:55:00.003Z

Sally Bavage writes:

The second event of the fourth Headingley Litfest – A Sense of Self - was held at Café Lento on North Lane. A well-mixed crowd ranging in age from the teens to the seventies were treated to half a dozen tales. True or false: you decide. Autobiography or whimsy? Lost youth - in the tale from one ex-social worker - or lost youth from presenters remembering their glory days?

Café Lento was packed with close to 30 local residents happy to listen to the background jazz (a foretaste of the Music Festival in Headingley from 13 to 19 June this year) and drink in the stories as well as the coffee. A warm atmosphere as old friends greeted each other and new ones struck up conversations with their neighbours who were, well, close up.

Was a Facebook search for a first, lost love the reminiscences of a man reflecting on the path his romantic life had taken, or the story woven by a talented raconteur and wordsmith? (Proprietor Richard Lindley)

Did the Revolution (of about three decades ago) come to a small Pennine town, welcomed in by flyposters who ‘drove their chevy to the levee’ (actually a Morris Minor with a faulty tail light) on the way to the local factory? (Moira Garland)

Was Pete Townsend really second choice for The Who, supplanting the first choice from the Isle of Man whose drummer friend told the tale? And what a tale – of stagefright, flying drumsticks and a brief stage appearance with the renowned bandleader Ivy Benson. (Doug Sandle)

Not a daffodil but a bog asphodel made an appearance, giving us commentary on the booted walkers passing by. (Mary Mayall)

No boots on the next walkers, just trainers needing repair and a cuppa in a twee teashop on Haworth Main Street as cold rain sheeted down and the lives of the Brontës in the Parsonage Museum prompted debate. (Lis Bertolla)

Finally, a tale of evacuation – no, not from a war but from a horse called Oliver on a mission to contribute something less than mysterious - and steaming - to a Leeds city centre reading of the banns announcing a production of the Chester Mystery Plays. (Richard Wilcocks)

A mixed bag indeed, and gently enjoyable for the range and scope of the stories. How much was invention, how much recollection – will we ever know?

Oscar Wilde adds:

A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.

Below, Doug Sandle reads:

Gujerat met Sicily

2011-03-15T12:36:00.002Z

Salvo’s Salumeria is intimate and full of atmosphere – more so yesterday evening, when Hansa came. It was, of course, the first event of the LitFest.....let’s hope they all go as well as this one.

Gip Dammone introduced Hansa Dabhi, who is quite a storyteller as well as a great authority on cooking and the Hindu Philosophy of Food and Lifestyle: she spoke about her exit from Uganda, just before the dictator Idi Amin got into his stride, and about how she took the first steps towards setting up the now-renowned all-female vegetarian Gujerati restaurant down in the middle of the city, which many of her audience, I suspect, have visited.

We were looking at the starters which had been delivered to our tables as she described them in detail and gave their names and ingredients in both English and Gujerati – Bateta Vada, Pau Bhaji and Patudi. You’ll find the recipes in her second cookbook. She went on to talk about how expensive the medical services were back in Uganda – the Western sort that is. Her family always had the spice box at hand for cuts and colds: a sore throat, for example, could be cured by adding a teaspoon of Cumin seeds (Jeera) and small pieces of dry ginger to a glass of boiling water. After it has cooled down and been strained, it should be taken twice daily.

Sicilian-style pasta with aubergine and tomato was the main course from Gip Dammone. This was followed by a dessert which Hansa said was easy to make. She demonstrated the truth of this in front of us. It was Fruit Shrikhand – her version of a popular Gujarati yoghurt curd dessert with tropical fruit, garnished with cardamom.

There was more on the use of the spice box for the treatment of everyday ailments (from husband Kish) and plenty of copies of the second cookbook (Hansa’s, more than just a restaurant....It’s my life!) to be signed and sold.

Gip Dammone looks rather like Dizzy Gillespie, and he indulged us by playing recordings of sessions by the great jazz trumpeter, along with performances by Louis Jordan dating from the late forties. A man of taste!

Rommi Smith at Heart - evening of 26 March

2011-03-09T14:02:00.000Z

Richard Wilcocks writes:
Poetry and Jazz is something which brings back memories of the sixties, which immediately dates me, of course. How well I remember my late teenage haunt, the old Peanuts Club, upstairs at the Kings Arms behind Liverpool Street station, where the likes of Mike Westbrook and Mike Osborne played and the likes of Bill Butler, Jeff Nuttall, Mike Horovitz and even myself blasted forth. Blending poetry and music (Coltrane-related Jazz a lot of the time) was a big scene in the sixties - I remember watching Danny Abse doing it with aplomb, and everyone knew that over in the States it happened in every smoky café. But enough of the nostalgia....

It's still going strong, and one of its most stunning practitioners in these parts is Rommi Smith, but to be accurate, we can't just say poetry and jazz in her case. She is a brilliant poet, musician and playwright whose work fuses spoken word and music. She has been performing since the age of fourteen and has achieved a reputation for sharp, socially conscious poetic imagery coupled with astute harmonies and jazz, funk and soul rhythms.

She has done so much that it is difficult to do her justice in a few paragraphs. My most recent view of her (through a camera lens) was in Leeds Civic Hall at the awards ceremony last October for the 2010 Leeds Peace Poetry Competition. For the second year running, she was the chief judge. After insightful and sympathetic comments, she called each winner in the primary and secondary school categories individually from the audience, and each one stepped forward bravely to read. Applause swelled, cameras flashed, smiles spread. If only all teachers (and judges) were like that...

Rommi performs her work regularly, both nationally and internationally at arts, music and literature festivals. Rommi’s work has been broadcast on various media, including the BBC - print and audio versions of Rommi’s work are featured on the BBC website. Google her now!

During the bicentenary celebrations for the abolition of the slave trade, she was Poet in Residence at the Houses of Parliament, and she is currently in residence at John Keats's house in London. Use the link on the right to read more about her - there's plenty.

And if you haven't done so already, get your ticket for the evening of Saturday, 26 March, when she performs with the excellent Fruit Tree Project in the Shire Oak Room at Heart in Bennett Road. It is going to be something which will be remembered for a long time, so make sure you are there!

You heard it here first

2011-03-04T09:22:00.001Z

Richard Wilcocks writes:

When Beryl Bainbridge (who sadly died last July) spoke in the New Headingley Club in 2009 (second Headingley LitFest, click on the link on your right), she read from her novel in progress The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress. She dwelled at length on the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on 5 June, 1968, a key part of the plot. He had just won the California primary election for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, and investigators later tried to identify a mysterious young woman seen in the hotel pantry, wearing a polka dot dress. In the book, her name is Rose.

This is now just about published, to be released at the beginning of June this year close to the anniversary of the shooting by Sirhan Sirhan. It can be ordered from Radish Books in advance if you want to be the first on your street to have read it. Reference is ISBN-13: 978-0316728485

Strangely, the official blurb does not mention the assassination. It reads as follows:

In the rainswept summer of 1968, Rose sets off for the United States from Kentish Town to meet a man she knows as Washington Harold, in her suitcase a polka-dot dress and a one-way ticket. In a country rocked by the assassination of Martin Luther King and a rising groundswell of violence, they are to join forces in search of the charismatic and elusive Dr Wheeler - oracle, guru and redeemer - whom Rose credits with rescuing her from a terrible childhood, and against whom Harold nurses a silent grudge. As they trail their quarry, zigzagging through America in a camper van, the odd couple - Rose, damaged child of grey postwar Britain, and nervous, obsessive, driven Harold - encounter a ragged counter-cultural army of Wheeler's acolytes, eddying among dangerous currents of obscure dissent and rage. But somewhere in the wide American darkness, Dr Wheeler is waiting.

Thanks, Radish

2011-02-28T17:25:00.001Z

Headingley has still got a library, but no real bookshop since Bookz closed down a few years ago (no offence, Oxfam Books...) so it is wonderful to be attended upon by the excellent Radish bookshop, which is situated far from the delights of God's Own Suburb in the alternative universe of Chapel Allerton. The Alan Bennett freebies which we were given by the World Book people arrived there, along with several cardboard boxes containing other titles. Apparently, Nigel Slater's Toast is popular in those parts.

Prominently displayed near the checkout desk this afternoon was The Battersea Park Road To Enlightenment, by Isabel Losada, who will be speaking/performing at the Headingley Heart Centre on Wednesday 16 March on How to get published, and who intends to sign copies of her best-seller not only at the event but also the following morning at Radish.

Remember Bookz? It was piled high with cheapo and remaindered tomes, but there was also plenty of good stuff. Pity it foundered. All the more reason to have a LitFest in the area. Let's fly the flag!

Below, Sally Thums at Radish:

When the Wind Changed

2011-02-18T14:42:00.002Z

The excellent Leeds-based Theatre Company BlahBlahBlah took part in the second Headingley LitFest in 2009, premiering their show When the Wind Changed to delighted parents and children in the library. It's still going strong:

Throughout March the Blahs will be spending a day at a time in schools across Yorkshire, performing When the Wind Changed four times in the morning for Reception children, each performance lasting half an hour. In the afternoon they will do two performances of their show Max for Yr 1 / Yr 2 children, each show lasting forty-five minutes.

When the Wind Changed is a story about a girl whose face gets stuck by the wind when it changes. All manner of people's faces have been stuck by this mysterious wind. When Gran realises that wiping that look off her granddaughter's face isn't going to work, her only advice is to "wait for the wind to change again". They wait... and they wait... and they wait. And then the wind begins to blow...

Max is based on the Maurice Sendak picture book Where the Wild Things Are. Max has been up to mischief and is sent to his room without any supper. We sit with the children around a blank canvas which becomes Max's bedroom that turns into a forest. They travel with him in and out of weeks to Where the Wild Things Are. The children meet Wild Things seven times bigger than themselves and must help Max find ways to tame them without hurting them.

If you can make it, you are invited to dip into the day and see the participatory work in action. Visitor places are limited to three a day. You can book your place by contacting Cas Bulmer on 0113 274 0030 or at cas@blahs.co.uk. Please give plenty of notice so that the necessary arrangements with the schools can be made.

Publish your own?

2011-02-09T17:30:00.000Z

For fun and profit? Depressed by rejection slips? Fed up with being a would-be? You could come in with the tide - read this - or you could cheer yourself up on Wednesday 16 March when Isabel Losada addresses us in the Claremont Room at Heart. See the programme. More on Isabel later.

Our part in World Book Night

2011-02-01T11:49:00.002Z

Headingley LitFest has been chosen by World Book Night to receive forty-eight free copies of Alan Bennett's A Life Like Other People's. These will be delivered about a fortnight before the LitFest starts, and as we have just received the news, we have yet to decide the mechanics of distribution. The official World Book Night is on Saturday 5 March.

Alan Bennett is, just in case you don't know, one of our local literary heroes, who attended the school which is now known as Lawnswood, and who lived over his father's butcher's shop opposite the Three Horseshoes pub, now known as Royale Dry Cleaning.

Lesley McDowell wrote in the Independent in May:

Alan Bennett's memoir of his parents' marriage and his mother's battles with depression is clear-eyed, touching, occasionally waspish, not always charitable, and ever honest. The discovery in later life that his maternal grandfather committed suicide is, he tells us, the kind of thing a writer longs for, to spice up a dull, normal family story. But, of course, no family is ever really dull or normal, and no family is ever "like other people's", however much one might strive for it to be so.

You can read the rest by clicking here.

Reviews from anyone else are welcome.

Congratulations

2011-01-27T11:50:00.000Z

Congratulations to Jo Shapcott from Headingley admirers for winning the general Costa Book Award. Individual winners are selected from five categories: novel, first novel, biographical work, poetry volume and children’s book. These winners are then put back into the competition and an overall winner comes out – with a prize of £35,000. This year, Jo Shapcott’s Of Mutability took it, narrowly beating Edmund de Waal’s memoir The Hare With Amber Eyes.

Help us with publicity

2011-01-27T09:04:00.000Z

The LitFest programme leaflets have now been printed. If you want some to give out, please email here. You could also ask for the pdf of the programme, then send it on to people in your address book.

Don't forget to add the LitFest if you use Facebook: click on the icon top right.

Don't miss Peter Lorre

2011-01-21T14:42:00.001Z

Richard Wilcocks writes:

Peter Lorre appears in the LitFest’s showing of The Beast With Five Fingers at the Cottage Road Cinema on Monday 21 March at 7.30pm. He stands out, almost inevitably, from the other actors in a strong cast, and not simply because of his reputation: he is genuinely one of the greats. The screenplay, taken from a short story by W F Harvey, one-time resident of Headingley, is a little daft, but there’s the horror genre for you. It’s still very enjoyable.

His voice . . . face . . . the way he moved . . . laughed - he was the most identifiable actor I have ever known. (Vincent Price)

His ‘real’ name was László Löwenstein, and the languages of his youth would have included Hungarian, German, and probably Yiddish, because he was born in 1904 in Rózsahegy (now Ružomberok in Slovakia, then in the Kingdom of Hungary) to a fairly well-off Jewish family. He was educated in Vienna and became a bank clerk to please his father, in spite of his fascination with theatre.

Membership of a theatre group which specialized in improvisation led him to stages in Breslau (now Wrocław), Zurich and Berlin, where he became famous for his interpretation of Danton in Georg Büchner’s Danton’s Death. Bertholt Brecht took a great linking to him, and cast him in his Happy End and Man Equals Man. In 1931 the film director Fritz Lang cast him as a psychopathic child murderer in his first talkie, which had the short title of M. This caused something of a sensation, and Lorre began to be careful about typecasting. However, although he starred in a fair number of German films after M, people remembered it rather too well, and in 1933, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, who was deeply interested in the power of film (just like his master Hitler, whose favourite film was Lives of a Bengal Lancer) sanctioned the use of Lorre’s image on a poster advertising the anti-semitic The Eternal Jew. Lorre was supposed to look like a typical Jew. Sinister, that is…

Lorre took the hint and got out. In England, he quickly teamed up with Alfred Hitchcock to become a villain in The Man Who Knew Too Much, then sailed to the United States to star in Mad Love and to become the Japanese sleuth Mr Moto. His international reputation, which was substantial, escalated to stellar heights when he appeared in Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon. After the War, still sensitive (rather late in the day) about typecasting, he appeared in The Beast With Five Fingers and similar films. He finished his career with a series of character parts in the likes of Around the World in Eighty Days.

Ben Okri booked for the LitFest

2011-01-06T12:24:00.011Z

Ben Okri, one of the most acclaimed African writers within the postcolonial tradition, will be speaking on the afternoon of the final Saturday of the Headingley LitFest (26 March) at the brilliantly refurbished Heart centre in Bennett Road.

Often described as a 'magic realist', Okri's novels and poems are written in English but draw heavily on Yoruba myths, stories and culture. Praised for his experiments with new literary forms, he is probably best known for The Famished Road, which won him the Booker Prize in 1991. In this, African and European literary traditions meet, in a story narrated by a 'spirit-child' who moves between the worlds of spirits and human beings, observing the chaotic history of his country. There is plenty in it about corruption - economic and political - in modern Nigeria, and about the devastation brought by war.

I was told stories, we were all told stories as kids in Nigeria. We had to tell stories that would keep one another interested, and you weren't allowed to tell stories that everybody else knew. You had to dream up new ones.

The oral storytelling tradition of Africa is a powerful influence, and Okri has added Ancient Greek legends, Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Dickens to the list. Those who want to do some background reading before 26 March in addition to our guest's work might like to read the classic Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard. Okri's poem The Awakening, written to mark the Millennium, appears on this Oxfam Cool Planet website, and you can find a full bibliography and biography on this British Council website.

Tickets are not yet available for this, or any other event, because the programme's final details are still being sewn up, but if you want to express on interest in the Ben Okri event, email your details.

Other guests include Rommi Smith, who works to fuse spoken word and music, the writer, singer and former television producer Isabel Losada, who will give a presentation on how to get published, Nicola Beauman, the founder of Persephone Books, which specialises in rediscovered inter-war novels by neglected women writers and a flock of female poets called Wordbirds.

Three people with the surname Brown will take part – Dr Richard Brown, who will talk about novelist and critic Storm Jameson, Ray Brown, who will talk about his plays for radio and Wes Brown, who has had his first novel published in his early twenties.

Veteran writer for teenagers Robert Swindells (Stone Cold, Brother in the Land) will speak to Year 9 students at Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School, other high schools will hold poetry slams and the Flux Gallery will show a film about Irish writers and also host the launch of poet Genny Rahtz’s collection Sky Burial.

There will also be 'house events', following last year's successes, on Sunday 20 March. Apart from the Heart Centre, things will take place at the New Headingley Club, the Lento Café on North Lane, the LS6 (Clock) café on Headingley Lane, the Flux Gallery on Midland Road, Headingley Library and local high schools.

*Now read about what happened:

http://headingleylitfest.blogspot.com/2011/03/ben-okri-in-headingley.html

2011 Programme

2010-12-22T12:36:00.000Z

The details of the 2011 programme will be with you soon - just a few loose ends to tie up at the moment. Looks exciting!

It's the Monster not the Doctor

2010-12-01T11:35:00.003Z

Just down the road from Headingley is Kirkstall, and in March, on an unspecified date, Frankenstein's Wedding Live in Leeds will take place in the abbey ruins, thanks to the BBC. Wonderful idea!

Let us hope that the publicity is clear about the difference between Doctor Frankenstein and the creature he created, the one who messed up his wedding.

Mary Shelley had Doctor Luigi Galvani in mind when she wrote the original. He spent his time sending electricity into frogs' legs, but does not look like a character in a 1930s film. See below. Neither Mary or Luigi ever lived in Headingley, but they might have been tempted to move here if they had received the appropriate relocation package.

The LitFest programme will be finalised soon, and it might include the film The Beast with Five Fingers, which would be shown at the Cottage Road Cinema on an evening which did not coincide with the extravaganza down at the abbey. This is all about playing on keyboards, or not, and has no connection with the Leeds International Piano Competition.

The theme of the next LitFest is A Sense of Self. First event (at the moment) is a short story evening (personal, unpublished, between ten and fifteen minutes) at Café Lento on North Lane on Tuesday 15 March. Final events will be on Saturday 26 March.

Galvani, the inspiration for Frankenstein.

Chinua Achebe at Leeds University

2010-11-23T11:46:00.004Z

Richard Wilcocks writes:
It was not part of our LitFest, but a few of the people - mainly students of course - packed into the Rupert Beckett Lecture Theatre yesterday evening could be counted as known LitFest supporters, and the university could be described as being on the edge of Headingley...

It was unforgettable. There was the great man himself, Professor Chinua Achebe, "the father of modern African writing", reading some of his poems to a rapt and highly reverent audience in a quiet, slightly quavering voice. Many had brought with them copies of his books. Generations all over the world have studied Things Fall Apart. He was introduced by Professor Martin Banham, who remembered his last visit to Leeds 46 years ago as part of a celebration of Commonwealth literature and who stressed how lucky we all were because Leeds was one of only two places where Chinua Achebe would read as part of his visit to Britain.

Amongst the poems was Vultures, probably the best-known, not least because it is in the AQA Anthology for GCSE English Literature in the Poetry from Other Cultures section - see this BBC website and listen to a reading accompanied by a slideshow. It was deeply moving to hear this disturbing poem from the poet's own mouth, at last.

Nelson Mandela's name was mentioned afterwards by a colleague in the audience who had first read Things Fall Apart in Uganda, and there is a definite link. Mandela read Achebe's work while incarcerated on Robben Island, and commented later that he was a man "in whose company the prison walls fell down".

LitFest poetry

2010-09-20T17:59:00.000+01:00

Local and more than local poet James Nash has contributed to the last three LitFests most significantly, and is going to do so again, we hope and trust. He has an excellent line in sonnets. Take a look at this one, which is reminiscent of Auden and Shakespeare at the same time. Could he have just read the accounts of how the Sarkozy government is getting at the Roma in France?

And on poetry - one of the LitFest's poem-notices (below) can be seen on a stake stuck in the soil of the flower garden opposite Sainsbury's in the Arndale Centre, visible to everyone who has just used the zebra crossing. People read it, too. I saw someone doing that. He smiled.

this is the garden: colours come and go,

this is the garden:colours come and go,
frail azures fluttering from night's outer wing
strong silent greens silently lingering,
absolute lights like baths of golden snow.
This is the garden: pursed lips do blow
upon cool flutes within wide glooms, and sing
(of harps celestial to the quivering string)
invisible faces hauntingly and slow.
This is the garden. Time shall surely reap
and on Death's blade lie many a flower curled,
in other lands where other songs be sung;
yet stand They here enraptured, as among
the slow deep trees perpetual of sleep
some silver-fingered fountain steals the world.

e.e. cummings

Fresh and new

2010-09-02T14:33:00.000+01:00

Some of the new work urged into being by, or 'discovered' during, this year's Headingley LitFest is now online at Headingley LitFest Originals.

Get in touch (heveliusx1@yahoo.co.uk) if you want to add to it.

Good to see you

2010-08-21T21:02:00.001+01:00

Good to see Cadaverine on Woodhouse Moor today, which is Unity Day. A large area was covered with marquees and stalls, music boomed through canvas, several thousand people milled around, many with children, and dogs were much in evidence, possibly because there was a dog show, at which most of the beasts seemed to win red first prize rosettes. Throwaway barbecues were not in evidence this year.

Arts Council funded Cadaverine, which is for under twenty-fives in theory, should be making some kind of showing next March in the fourth Headingley LitFest. Its efficiently organised 'Talk Tent' today was popular and strangely earnest and sober...

Check this Guardian article for a feature on Cadaverine which includes an interview with its founder, Wes Brown.

Below, Becky Cherriman reading her poetry:

Merchant in the cloister

2010-07-26T17:35:00.006+01:00

Richard Wilcocks writes:

There was a tiny touch of Opera in the Park about this performance. It was July, it was outdoors, it was nearly the weekend and the couple in front of us were eating lobster washed down with Prosecco. The audience, on camping seats, was much smaller than the gigantic music-loving throng at Temple Newsam, of course, but pretty substantial for the square of lawn in the ruined cloister. Which brings me to resonance and the quality of the sound…

I think challenging is the word. I’ll stick the knife in here – a vicious thing to do with Theatre of the Dales, an undoubtedly superb bunch of performers - well-known to all at the LitFest - which deserves all the bucket loads of positive comments it normally receives – aaagh those planes! Every few minutes, they came over, on course for the airport, timing their interventions for speeches we were straining to hear anyway.

After the interval, most of the planes had arrived, but the sabotage continued: hysterical jackdaws in the tower screeched, and just as Antonio was baring his chest for Shylock to take the pound of flesh, a motorbike with some kind of sawn-off exhaust system could be heard cruising up the Kirkstall Road and back again.

You could see that it was difficult enough to project in the old cloister anyway – it might seem to be a friendly space but it isn’t a wooden O, many nuances were lost, and the actors were constantly trying hard to send the words across even without the threats from the sky. Wouldn’t it have been better to do it in the round, or simply closer to one of the walls? Or on higher staging?

Anyway, I genuinely enjoyed it as a package, along with most others: it generated plenty of momentum and was strangely satisfying because it was what people call traditional, with good-looking Renaissance gear made by students at Yorkshire Coast College. Because many in the audience, I am guessing, know this play, it was all right: we could always fall back on lip-reading. Shylock wore a yellow hat, which was authentic, and was a proper villain from four centuries ago, played most impressively by David Robertson, the heart and soul of Theatre of the Dales and a reminder that great actor-managers are still thriving.

It was delivered as a historical piece, so that we could see across the centuries and place it firmly in its context, when Renaissance Christians, following on from their Medieval counterparts, perceived the Jews, the murderers of Our Lord, as revengeful money grubbers. Violent revenge was all the rage on the stage in the late sixteenth century, and a Jewish villain must have seemed like a sure-fire device, even though Shakespeare is unlikely to have met any Jews in his life. Irish villains on the stage hadn’t really caught on in his day, in spite of nasty recurring wars in Ireland, their equivalent of our Afghanistan. I bet he met a few Irishmen.

Antonio (Stephen Anderson) should have been rather more unpleasant, although he was definitely grumpy – and melancholy of course, but it’s a hard one to crack. Is his habit of racist spitting simply conventional behaviour or a product of depression caused by the loss of his ships and merchandise? Freud might help here. Bassanio (Will Tristram) was a suitably shallow gallant with a seemingly effortless aristocratic presence. Portia (Jennifer Jordan) and Nerissa (Beth Kilburn) were most entertaining – the first like a fairly modern and hard-faced businesswoman and the second as her efficient PA in period dress.

The fairy tale section with the caskets was well split up (intelligent direction from the internationally-inclined Serge Alvarez), with an amusing Moroccan prince (Stuart Fortey) who lingered after his rejection to give Nerissa the eye. The period atmosphere was enhanced by the use of Comedia-style masks at one point. All that stuff happened in the past, didn’t it? Never again, eh? In 1938 in Berlin, the thespians of the Hitler Youth put the play on as straight anti-semitic, while in the same year their Young Communist counterparts in Moscow put it on as straight anti-capitalist. Today, if producers look for a message, it is an anti-racist one, centred on the “Hath not a Jew eyes…” speech. This was the implied message of this production, I think.

Serge Alvarez, who has been directing in France and England for the last couple of decades has another Shakespeare on his horizon - an adaptation of The Tempest to be performed in English, French and Spanish in Valparaíso, Chile.

The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare performed by Theatre of the Dales at Kirkstall Abbey, Leeds on 23 July 2010

Into the woods again

2010-07-12T14:18:00.000+01:00

Dagmar Wood was just perfect for Midsummer Night's Dream last year. Puck and various other characters could insert themselves into the interstices of a large tree, the lovers could run through real, untrimmed bushes and Titania could choose her mossy bank from the many on offer. The audience made do with plastic garden furniture. It's more of a clearing surrounded by trees and then by century-old houses than a real urban wood, and it can be found, if you are sharp-eyed, just off Grosvenor Road in Headingley.

It has become the stamping and vamping ground of the Headingley-based Theatre of the Dales (scroll down to read more about this lovely crew), which this year will be performing The Merchant of Venice. Performances will take place on the 14th, 15th, and 16th July, and at Kirkstall Abbey on the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd July.

Now read this Guardian piece.

Feeling competitive?

2010-06-15T09:13:00.000+01:00

Richard Wilcocks writes:

One day, Headingley LitFest will run a poetry or short story competition, mark my words. Until then the talented readers of this blog, both the bridled and the unbridled, will have to submit their work to others. How about the Brontë Society? We've got the Brontës in our memories and in our sights (Professor Bob Barnard, author of A Brontë Encyclopaedia and a biography of Emily Brontë spoke to us during the first LitFest) so why not find out about the Society's recently-launched essay, short story and poetry competition?

Naturally, the work must have some kind of Brontë connection. You can get hold of the rules and an entry form by clicking here.

It's not all winebibbing

2010-06-03T10:19:00.001+01:00

Those of us who attended Martin Wainwright's talk at the Yorkshire College of Music and Drama in March during the LitFest - and others - might be interested in his brief but sensitive background piece on the Cumbria shootings which was published in the Guardian. This puts the horrific story of random killings into some kind of context: Whitehaven and other places on the edge of the Lake District have had more than their fair share of tragedies in the fairly recent past, for example a pit disaster in 1947 which killed 104 miners. Martin is drawing on his encyclopaedic knowledge of the True North, without doubt. The article can be found by clicking HERE.

Another reminder that festivals of literature are not all about an equivalent of winebibbing, examining novels as if they were rare vintages, or clapping the local scribblers, though we do plenty of all that. Real life and real death come into the narrative. I am now thinking of Wallander's creator Henning Mankell, a master of crime fiction who is able to concentrate all human frailty and most of the world's evils into the town of Ystad, and who has now been taken into Israeli custody (as far as we know at the time of writing) for the crime of being on a Swedish boat (the Sofia) which was part of the flotilla attempting to bring humanitarian aid to the people of the Gaza strip. He was intending to broadcast directly by satellite connections to the Hay Festival, but apparently the signal was blocked. I bet he's there next year. Hay that is.

Finally...

2010-05-11T18:10:00.001+01:00

Herbert Read is well-known to teachers, at least to art teachers, or should be. His Art and Society, first published before the War and on all good educational reading lists ever since (I hope and trust) is strong on the need for art in education, and on the virtues of simplicity, which conveys a feeling of truthfulness.

Moon’s Farm is simple, or appears to be at first, like a freshly-raked Zen garden. It was written for the Third Programme in 1955, and is described as A Dialogue for Three Voices, which on 27 March at the Yorkshire College of Music and Drama were those of Maggie Mash, David Robertson and Murray Edscer, who moved about with scripts in hand, looking… chilled, in the old sense, with hoods up, wearing sensible clothing, the sort that would keep the Yorkshire breezes out, the sort that reminds us that Read came from a line of Yeoman farmers. Theatre of the Dales (in association with Trio Literati) made sure that the atmosphere was coolly meditative, hypnotically beautiful.

David Robertson said he was delighted to work with T Lit again, because he has helped on the production side of many of their shows. He’s a pretty versatile performer, with plenty more than Voice 2 in Moon’s Farm on his programme list. TV credits include Emmerdale, Heartbeat, Cold Feet, Coronation Street and Waterloo Road, and in 2008 as King Duncan in Tim Albery’s production of Verdi’s Macbeth with Opera North.

Earlier in the evening, we heard him with Maggie Mash in 84 Charing Cross Road, the twenty year correspondence between Helene Hanff and Frank Doel. He had deftly pruned it and he sensitively read it. Maggie Mash once again reminded us that she does accents superbly, on this occasion an accent from the northern part of the United States. Difficult! They so often get us wrong (think Dick Van Dyke) and vice versa, but she sounded like the genuine article, and I should know, with a daughter-in-law from transatlantic parts. Maggie, appropriately, sounded a little prissy, and the Fifties attitudes were well conveyed by both actors.

The selection of recently discovered letters which preceded the two main courses of the evening was an excellent starter, well prepared by the chef, again David Robertson.

After the show, Herbert Read’s son Ben, a denizen of Headingley and Senior Lecturer in Art History at the University, addressed the audience, replying to a few of my questions and providing the last voice of this year's LitFest. Issues were clarified, but mysteries remained: how, for example, could a man describing himself as an anarchist receive a knighthood from Sir Winston Churchill? The coffee beans stopped arriving, said Ben, when this happened. They had previously been regularly dispatched to Yorkshire from Soho, sent by a group of Sicilians. They were anarchists, and upset.

Below, Ben Read:

David Peace, LitFest Headliner

2010-03-31T13:37:00.001+01:00

The large audience in the New Headingley Club on Saturday afternoon was overwhelmingly sympathetic and pleasantly inquisitive. It really impressed the amiable David Peace, the LitFest's headliner, and I know that because he said so. At the end of the questioning sections, he made the point that his audience at the last Ilkley Literature Festival last autumn had been relatively dull.

This one was not, and it was also very different in its make-up from the audience in the library on Friday for Frances McNeil. We have had a good 'spread' in all our audiences this year in terms of age and gender.

The double focus was Occupied City, the second in the (as yet incomplete) Tokyo Trilogy, and GB84, on the Miner's Strike, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the finale of which is about now. After a brief introduction, the author read from the first part of Occupied City before engaging in a public conversation sat at a table with me. He read the final words of GB84, from the chapter entitled Terminal, or the Triumph of the Will. The questions from the floor came thick and fast.

It would be daft to attempt to cover all of the questions and answers on the blog, but here is a very brief taste of what was said.

On music and song titles: he talked about his time in a band when he was an Ossett teenager, and its influence on his thought processes, perhaps paraphrasing Noel Coward's famous quote that it is extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

On the often-recurring Wasteland theme: yes, he had studied T S Eliot's poem in the sixth form as part of the English Literature syllabus, and it is one background influence.

Many stretches of Peace's novels sound poetic, especially when read out loud. Is there a poetry volume in the pipeline? Sometime perhaps...

On main literary influences: West Riding realists like Stan Barstow (also from Ossett) and David This Sporting Life Storey and more recently the American master of the staccato sentence, crime writer James Ellroy, but also Roald Dahl. He remembers being turned on to writing through the stimulus provided by Fantastic Mr Fox, which must have brought a flush to the cheeks of any primary teachers present. "I enjoy reading a great variety of prose and poetry." he said. "Even Ezra Pound."

On the often-recurring theme of police pouncing on innocent people: he spoke about the example in Occupied City of Sadamichi Hirasawa, a watercolour artist who had died in prison forty years after being convicted of the mass murder by cyanide poisoning of almost the entire staff of the Teikoku Bank in Tokyo (The Teigin Incident). A campaign to clear his name is still going on. The real poisoner could well have had something to do with the infamous chemical and biological warfare research unit which the Japanese operated in occupied China during World War Two - Unit 731.

On researching, writing and teaching: researching for GB84 took place in Japan, where it is easy to get hold of archived copies of The Times and The Telegraph, but not other relevant newspapers, and teaching adults English (TEFL) is not like teaching in, say, a local comprehensive.

On the title of the last chapter of GB84: yes, of course, Terminal does echo the famous Germinal by Emile Zola, also about a long-lasting pit strike, and carried everywhere by The President in GB84. Germinal, however, is a name with many resonances, sending out messages of rebirth and the spring. At the end of GB84, there is no rebirth, just defeat by a triumphalist authoritarian state.

On the theme of child murders in 1974... how deeply has becoming a family man with children affected your writing? Substantially, was the answer. "I did not have children when I wrote it... I regret the swan's wings now."

There were people present who remembered the ferocious Battle of Orgreave, and who had been involved with food-runs for the families of strikers. One woman's statement of her memories was particularly moving. Others had had something to do with the Red Riding television series, and no, David Peace is not just about to write a screenplay...

I think he was charmed by the Headingley crowd. He liked the idea of a constant supply of tea and home-made cakes, the New Headingley Club and the general atmosphere.

Below, Richard Wilcocks with David Peace.

Have a go!

2010-03-30T19:35:00.000+01:00

Mary Francis writes:
On Saturday, Chris Mould, author and illustrator, entertained both children and adults with his lively talk, his slideshow of illustrations and characters and then his drawing, in front of us, while he talked and while the audience put questions to him.

His career began with illustrating other people’s picture books, before he began to produce - writing and illustrating - his own works, including the wonderful Something Wickedly Weird series. He has also worked on pop-up books and we learned how the illustrator works first and then the paper engineer comes on board and it becomes a collaboration. This was fascinating - and we saw a version of a pop-up book currently in production - one that was originally going to be much longer in size, before the recession struck!

The finale had him drawing as we watched - amazing was the speed with which the piratical character appeared before our eyes! In answer to the many questions on the subject, Chris emphasized that you can draw with all sorts of unlikely materials - he uses Bic biros, Tipp-ex pens and cans of spray paint amongst other things - and the importance of ‘having a go’ and not being ‘precious’ about drawing.

Sleuth

2010-03-29T12:39:00.002+01:00

Two veterans (I must be careful with that word, but here it carries not a smidgeon of denigration) entertained a large audience (another extra chairs job) in Headingley Library on Friday evening - for Headingley's Female Sleuth.

Frances McNeil, whose pseudonym is Frances Brody, is the author of four novels and the winner of the Elizabeth Elgin Award for best new saga of the millennium for Somewhere Behind the Morning. She has written many stories and plays for BBC Radio, and scripts for television. She concentrated mainly on Dying in the Wool (ISBN 0 780749 94 1871), her first crime novel, for this event, because the female sleuth is in it - Kate Shackleton. Her research for this period piece included interviews with textile chemists, retired police officers and experts at Armley Mills Museum. Does this not sound authentic?

He took over the entire house with his inventions and experiments. She wondered they weren't poisoned after he used her pots and pans for God knows what type of dyeing mix. He'd stir the dye stuff in with water, using her wooden spoon, boiling it up to dissolve it, more than once causing an explosion.He claimed the fastest green dye in England. He dyed her grey cape forest green and insisted she wash it. It was her fault when the tub turned emerald. Then it was a new type of gas-fired machine for close-cropping the cloth...

"I came to Headingley specially to find a house for her," Frances, a denizen of Crossgates, told those present. "I found a beautiful one as well, just right for someone who has to make frequent journeys to the city centre.

Murder, mystery and family secrets have always fascinated me and featured strongly in my writing. Kate Shackleton sprang to life from our family album, circa 1920. She came carrying her camera, looking at me, looking at her."

Maggie Mash is the audio reader for Frances, and a trained actress who knows about this side of things, in depth. In addition to dramatic readings, she explained that audio books are not just for people with sight problems, but that they are increasingly popular for people to use while working at home or driving a car. She talked about the accents she can do and not do, giving the example of Geordie, which she can maintain for only a limited period. Norfolk is not problematic for Maggie: on one occasion she was pulled into an adjacent studio to add the real thing after an American reader had made embarrassingly bad attempts at it. American actors rarely get accents from England right (Ain't that a fact, Gor Blimey Mary Poppins?) and, of course, vice versa.

Here, the reliable Fairtrade and green indie bookshop Radish must be mentioned - they supplied a selection of titles afterwards. Dying in the Wool sold out.

Below, pictured with two bottles of Domaine Romanée-Conti 1976

The Seventh Sense

2010-03-29T11:44:00.000+01:00

This was on Thursday after the Poetry Slam at Lawnswood. A contrast! What has impressed me during the LitFest is the diversity of our audiences, which have encompassed many groups living in Headingley and outside it. The Seventh Sense - A Sense of Place was performed by Lucht Focail and Friends, and was organised in association with Irish History Month. The theme was perfect for the occasion. It wasn't all Ireland, though there was a reading of a poem in the ancient Erse language (Sean Dún na nGall) by Annie O'Donnell, and I listened to Yeats's The Lake Isle of Innisfree (eternally good for a recitation, that one) for the second time this LitFest, from the same eloquent mouth. Bel Connolly read Moiza Alvi's very relevant The Laughing Moon with sensitivity, Linda Marshall read her Headingley Rocks and Síle Moriarty referred to one of the places she comes from in The Mermaid in Birmingham.

Dancers from the Joyce O'Donnell School of Irish Dancing took the floor a couple of times, accompanied by Des and Kevin Hurley and the evening closed with a welcome reading of Seamus Heaney's Bogland by Síle. Here's her apt poem for the occasion, which was printed on the back of the programme -

Place names carry history:

the trail from Kirkstall to Monkbridge;
the slow wind of pack horse to wagon
tracked earth to tarmac;
the greedy dissolution of Kirkstall
on Cromwell’s report
and the later distaff despoliation of Ireland;
the estates of Cardigan and Beckett
summed by semis and terraces
and the oaken wapentake
quenched in the Skyrack;
the Norse mermaid of legend
sanitised by Starbucks now
drinks latte and mourns her breasts;
the lane at the Three Horseshoes
opens the Wetewood
which killed a prince of Abyssinia
with cold miasma;
the Lounge, eclipsed by the Arc
lingers in local politics
while the Cottage Road,
a refugee, has screened since 1912.

These place names carry history -
they start with capital letters.

Síle Moriarty 2010

Lawnswood's excellent rhetoricians

2010-03-28T13:07:00.007+01:00

They just grew on that school stage - into new, self-assured beings! Talented as well, at least as talented as the adults in other LitFest events, and in some cases more so. The Lawnswood Poetry Slam was much more than an extracurricular frivolity (and there's too many out-of-touch people who think that arts events are frivolities generally, look out for creativity-numbing cuts after the election), it was essentially educational. These kids do not stunt their creative growth on PS3s, obviously. All the poems, songs and dances were original, many of the words were learned by heart, and the emotion all around us last Thursday evening was absolutely authentic. Nothing contrived - it came from the heart. I saw a teacher crying, and not from stress this time!

Judging the event was a great pleasure for myself, Richard Raftery and Donna Cartwright, and as I said at the time, you couldn't put a whisker between some of those kids. I nearly described them as contestants, but they weren't really. This is not the Slam Factor, and none of them were really doing it for any kind of prize.Michelle Scally-Clarke was as charismatic and inspiring as ever - a great teacher of rhetoric, you might say.

Rhetoric is the ancient art of communicating effectively with language. It was the basis of education for young people for many centuries, so it is old, old as well as new, new. Lawnswood has been slammed (in the crass tabloid sense) recently. These lovely slammers went some way to putting the record straight, because it was obvious on Thursday evening that Lawnswood students are terrific!

Below, Michelle Scally-Clarke with some of the slammers:

Phyllis Bentley on Tuesday

2010-03-27T19:05:00.003Z

Dave Russell from Leeds Met made plenty of assumptions about his substantial audience on Tuesday in Headingley Library - that most of us had read the 'textile district' novels of Phyllis Bentley, for example. Winifred Holtby (she of South Riding) as well. Vera Brittain? Hah, Vera Brittain! Heads nodded: everyone knew Testament of Youth.

There was tension between Bentley and Brittain, Dave Russell explained. Brittain had nice vowels, nice standard sounds, blending in well with the London lot, whereas Bentley was distinctly Halifax, and thought of herself as rather tweedy down there. Strangely enough, Brittain originated from Buxton, which is hardly southern. We saw a fascinating photo of the two of them with a toddler-sized Shirley Williams.

Bentley was not just a 'regional novelist' (a fading category) but a novelist who dealt with class issues, and who came with a J B Priestley seal of approval. Her Inheritance (and yes, some of us have read it) was the big thing more than half a century ago, and was made into an impressive Granada TV drama series which was most ambitious for its time, which was 1967. The story of the Oldroyds covered 153 years, from the Luddite machine-breakers of 1812 to Churchill's death in 1965. Very young versions of John Thaw and James Bolam were in it. Many authentic workers' houses were still standing when filming took place, and the muddy killing fields of the Battle of the Somme were recreated just outside Wigan, which was not too difficult.
Bentley was also a significant writer of non-fiction: The Brontës and Their World still reads well today.

Bentley is due for a revival, it was hinted - a major (if not really great) novelist should not be lost to us. There seemed to be general agreement. Thanks to Dave for his fascinating talk and useful (but sporadic) Powerpoint.

Below, Dave Russell with his LitFest bottle of Aurvin Winery Firebird Legend Cabernet Sauvignon 2007, Phyllis Bentley on a cigarette card and Vera Brittain in nurse's gear:

Wonderful sofa

2010-03-27T12:54:00.000Z

The Saturday Sofa broadcast from ELFM is wonderful, especially the excellent contributions from the children of Shire Oak and Spring Bank primary schools. Thanks to everybody in the caravan parked outside St Michael's!

It was Dmitri

2010-03-27T12:51:00.000Z

The music for Gaby's reminiscence in Déja-vu last Sunday caused a bit of a stir. This is what it was - Non ti scordar di me sung by the Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. It is on a CD entitled Passione di Napoli.

North Noir

2010-03-26T13:30:00.003Z

Re-watching the discomforting Red Riding television series, I couldn't help thinking of Martin Wainwright's talk at the LitFest last week, on people's perceptions of the North, and his passing mention of David Peace, "who might be a brilliant novelist, but....." No doubt there will be audience members tomorrow (New Headingley Club at 3pm) who will ask suitable questions and make appropriately pithy comments on bloodstained depictions of Yorkshire, although the focus will be 1948 Tokyo and the 1984/5 Miners' Strike. A different kind of bloodstained.

Anyway, the TV backroomers really got it right when it comes to seventies clothes, interior design and tobacco, I am thinking. The wallpapers are authentically nightmarish. And I used to drive one of those Zephyrs. And all those smoke-filled rooms and characters with cigs drooping from their mouths... was it that bad?

Lettice Cooper

2010-03-26T13:11:00.000Z

Lettice Cooper comes into the category of 'neglected women writers' and she had strong Leeds connections, so she may well feature on next year's programme. Get in touch if you have something to say on that.....

Damned good!

2010-03-25T13:22:00.000Z

Monday's showing at our beloved Cottage Road Cinema (100 years old in 2012) of The Damned United, directed by Tom Hooper using David Peace's factional account as a starting point, was enjoyable, and funny. Poor old Billy Bremner doesn't come out of it very well, because we are reminded of spectacular deliberate dives as well as spectacular playing. Don Revie becomes a blustering manipulator too. Actually not that much spectacular playing (difficult to make it credible in a film like this) in spite of all attempts. Michael Sheen is a more than convincing Cloughie, and Timothy Spall a great Peter Taylor, but the screenplay does steer clear of certain parts of Peace's narrative, and the ending is well....cosmetic. Heartwarming though.

Kettle and Bennett

2010-03-25T13:11:00.000Z

I have just noticed a Guardian piece by Martin Kettle (see previous post on the Kettle connection) who writes about how he 'knows' Alan Bennett through a shared Headingley upbringing. He used to walk up to 'the grammar school' (now Lawnswood) every morning as well and mentions a sadistic PE teacher with the surname King that they both knew about. It is in the context of last year's Hay Festival: that's the one in marquees with celebrity chefs.

Three times good

2010-03-24T10:20:00.006Z

Sunday afternoon was just right: words, music, memories and warm sunshine. Three LitFest events took place in houses with capacious front rooms, all of them completely different, under the heading Pieces for Places.

The first was at the new Spafford abode. Three new authors - Jo Brandon, Connor Whelan and Katie Godman - pictured below in that order - bravely stood to read their pieces, introduced by Peter Spafford. All of them are connected with The Cadaverine, an Arts Council funded ezine which brings new authors (under the age of twenty-five) together with an emerging readership. It features interviews with leading authors and regular reviews. This is the official description:

From urban gothic to high modernism, cyberpunk to scathing satire, science fiction to fictitious cookery, Cadaverine is a comprehensive and uncompromising introduction to the new voices of English Literature.

Katie Godman kicked off with extracts from her novel in progress, which is set in Bristol, introducing us to some of its characters and scenes, which included one involving newly arrived slaves, still in chains. She was followed by Jo Brandon, who is the managing editor of The Cadaverine. She read a series of poems stimulated by memories of her vacation job at Balmoral. I would fish out The Linen Cupboard as one which I found particularly memorable. Connor Whelan recited W.B.Yeats's The Lake Isle of Innisfree before getting to his own poems, the best of which was inspired by the loaves which are still available at the legendary Murton Bakery in Cardigan Road. He is the editor of The Scribe, a creative writing mag produced in Leeds University Union. Poetry and Audience, I was reminded, is the product of students in the School of English. I couldn't help thinking of the reading by the veterans in the Brotherton last Thursday. Then and now eh?

So refreshing and enlivening, this session! Young blood! All three were recorded by Peter Spafford for ELFM, so you can listen to the podcast.

Very soon, there is going to be an original writing link for selected items which were first heard during the Headingley Litfest. It will be up on the right.

The second piece for a place, or if you like, piece of a place, was at Maggie Mash's, and it was entitled No Place Like Home. It was a full programme of poetry, drama and song, complete with a versatile pianist (the excellent John Holt) and a line-up of accomplished performers. It was polished, professional, and superbly entertaining, with a large audience seated in rows on two sides of the room. It included (and this is taken from a long list) an extract from Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent (about getting away from Iowa), Aubade, written and read by James Nash, The Interlopers, written and read by Linda Marshall, part of Forty Years On, written by one-time Headingley resident Alan Bennett and advice on etiquette dating from 1834. Jazz singer Lynn Thonton gave us a hilarious Plastic Recycling Blues.

This sort of thing just has to catch on. So successful! Perhaps this will lead to some June or July events: if we don't have a barbecue summer like the one we didn't have last year, we could do things inside, if necessary with the windows open. Soirées, even, why not?

Below, Jane Oakshott, Dave Robertson, Richard Rastall, Maggie Mash, Lynn Thornton

The third event at the Jones's, Déja-vu, was not a performance, but an opportunity to hear about two extraordinary periods in the life stories of Gaby and John Jones. In 1971, Gaby and John were driving a car beside Lake Como in Italy, on holiday. Gaby knew she had lived somewhere around there when she was three years old in 1938. She said,"Stop the car!" somewhere on the road between Como and Bellagio and then walked up to a villa which she recognised. The door opened, and the elderly lady who answered it told her that this was the Villa Cocini, where Gaby had spent her early childhood. At first, she did not recall much, even though she had lived there since the thirties, because many families had come there on holiday, even during the war. Then she was told the name of Gaby's family - Wulff. She flew at Gaby to embrace her. She had last seen her as a tiny girl.

There followed a tour of the garden, the terraces of which descend to the lake, where there is a view of the renowned Hotel d'Este on the opposite side. Gaby recognised the view, the paths and the little patio where she had been given breakfast al fresco many years previously - and she felt a kind of shudder when she walked up one of the paths, just before a turn to the right. A little further on was a dark grotto with water dripping from its roof. A Blessed Virgin, stars circling her head, was contemplating the distant mountains, enough to induce shudders in a three year-old.

Gaby went on to explain how her father, who worked for an American firm, had transferred to the Milan office from Berlin in 1933, not a bad idea if you were Jewish. In 1938, the family came to England at a time when the German Nazis were putting the tighteners on the Italian Fascists, getting them to step up the racial discrimination. She ended up in Argentina. A slide show followed, showing a selection of photos from a family album. It ended with a postcard with a photo and a message in German inviting people to a birthday party in Buenos Aires. One of the selection is below - Gaby at breakfast in 1938.

John introduced one of the audio tapes he had made about ten years ago when he was recording his autobiography. His voice, sprightlier than nowadays, was heard telling the story of his posting to Knokke in Belgium. He had arrived with the Royal Engineers in 1944 during the last phase of World War Two, and the Germans had not long left. There were macabre scenes: in the damaged streets, the skeletons of horses had not yet been cleared away. Local people had cut off the meat when it was fresh, from the animals the Germans used to pull heavy items, and which they did not film, preferring staged shots of strapping young Aryans atop modern panzers. He remembered the small hotel with inadequate lavatories which was used to cram in as many squaddies as possible and a Café des Artistes, which had walls covered with drawings and paintings. He traded one of his own drawings for beer.

One of his strongest memories was of the events which followed the 'White Parade', when local citizens who had been in various camps and prisons in Germany returned, to walk to the centre of town, reunited with friends and family. As they walked, people broke away to paint black swastikas on certain houses. After the ceremony, many returned to the daubed houses, broke in and systematically smashed everything from window frames to beds. Debris and belongings were thrown on to bonfires in gardens. These were the houses of collaborators, or people said to be collaborators. But, said John on the tape, known collaborators, mostly male, had already been arrested and imprisoned, so the houses were occupied by wives and children. These were hounded, but the troops were forbidden to interfere in domestic affairs. Nevertheless, a sergeant major had at one point barked at a disorderly crowd, telling them to clear off and go home, which is what it did.

John had returned to Knokke a couple of times. No hotel, no Café des Artistes. A new statue. A housing estate. The usual seaside stuff. Ice cream. A large casino with an exhibition of work by Raoul Dufy, the French Fauvist painter.