MargoMusing

It's the Bath Festival of Literature again, and so far, the events I've been to have been excellent.

The first was a talk by Dr Alice Roberts, about the Celts.  I had watched the programme which she and Neil Oliver made for the BBC, which was shown last November - its a fascinating subject; so much is known, but also there are so many things which are not known, and cannot be known.

Dr Roberts is an excellent speaker, and her enthusiasm is infectious. She is not, herself an archaeologist; she is an anatomist, and is currently Professor of Public Engagement in Science, at Birmingham University.

She explained the uncertainties about the origins of the Celts (hint: not where you thought) , and the fact that certain things we think we know (such as druids and human sacrifice, and Celtic warriors taking heads) seem to come from just one (Roman) source, with no confirmation..

She talked about some recent discoveries in Germany, and the quality of the work being done there, and waxed enthusiastic about proofs of decapitation.!

It was very interesting, and although I didn't buy a copy of her current book then and there,(It's a big glossy, *heavy* bardback.) I may yet succumb!

After this event, my friend T and I indulged in tea and cakes, and a visit to Mr B's Emporium of reading Delights, where I was very restrained about the number of books I bought, then, after a little more shopping, I headed to the Masonic Hall, to hear Neil Jordan interviewed about his most recent novel, The Drowned Detective.

This is a somewhat late blog - I am not on holiday  any more, but my laptop has been playing up so I haven't been able to blog for a bit, but it has randomly restarted, so I'm making the most of it!

I decided to go to Amsterdam for a few days, and went via London. I wanted to see the exhibition 'Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red'',  the installation by Paul Cummins, at the Tower of London, commemorating WWI.

There will eventually be 888,246 poppies, one for each British fatality during WWI.

It is pretty sobering to see the vast numbers of poppies and to realise that the installation isn't complete yet.

You don't have to go into the tower to see the poppies, but once I got there, I decided to go in and have a look around.

I have been to the tower before, but I was about 8 at the time, so I don't recall it in huge detail.

I was there on a Wednesday, so it wasn't too crowded, and I was able to wander around.

It is impressive - the Tower itself was built by William the Conqueror in around 1078, although  there are Roman ruins on the site -  and it still holds the crown jewels (I went to see them. They are proof that the Royal family has never allowed good taste to

There is also an exhibition of armour and wooden horses and stuff. It had my favourite ever caption for an exhibition - after boating that the exhibition has, in one form or another been at the Tower since 1652, it adds proudly "the exhibition was changed several times over the next 300 years" which you have to admit, is nice, as even the best exhibition can get a bit dull after the first hundred years or so!

There is a dragon on the top floor.

After spending several hours wandering around, I decided to go and hunt book-benches - the National Literacy Trust had arranged for lots of benches, decorated by various artists and celebrating specific books to be placed around London.

I didn't get to see all the Books about Town, but did find all of the 'Riverside Trail', from Tower Bridge down to the Globe.

My favourites were The Librarian, Paddington Bear, and Shakespeare.

And then there were trains and a boat, to get to the Netherlands. It was an interesting day.

More pictures on Flickr for those who may be interested

I have blogged before about Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights, one of Bath's 2 lovely independent bookshops. They have lovely events, with writers and conversation and food, and on Wednesday, the writer in question was Nick Harkaway, author of 'The Gone-Away World', 'Angelmaker' and, now 'Tigerman'.

The evening didn't start too well for me, as I had forgotten that They were closing the road in Dunkerton, so I had to go the long way round, and then I got held up because there had been an accident (not, I think, too serious - the police were there, and a 1st response car, but all the people seemed to be standing around and talking to each other).

All of which meant that I got to Bath late, and had to scratch plaintively at the door of the shop like a delayed cat, to be let in. And then try to sneak in to a gathering where the only available seat was in the 2nd row which you absolutely can't do without people looking at you.

Anyway, once the embarrassment factor of causing a disturbance had settled I was able to start listening to Nick, who was reading an extract (about the English, and T.S.Eliot, among other things) from 'Tigerman'.  Which was very, very funny.

And then there was conversation. The evening was nominally themed around Father's Day, but as often happens at Mr B's, due to the conversational nature of the evening,discussions around the theme were only a minor part of the evening!

Nick talked about various things which led into the book, including his own experience of a close encounter with the Esso tiger, and of learning to shoot while in Thailand.

There was also some discussion about his experience of fatherhood, and in particular the protectiveness which comes with that, and about other notable fathers in literature.

As always with a Mr Bs event, there was a break in the proceedings for food and mingling - on this occasion, the food part of that included a lemon drizzle cake with blueberries in, which was such stuff as gastronomic dreams are made on...

And there were some interesting (mostly travel related) conversations over food, too.

As you'll have seen from my last post, I wasn't very efficient in booking tickets for this years Bath Festival of Literature, and ended up missing some events I'd like to have seen. One I didn't miss, however, was last night's interview with J.K. Rowling.

Rowling was being interviewed by James Runcie, who, as well as being a novelist in his own right, is Artistic Director of the Bath Literature Festival and also a long-standing friend of Rowling's, which came through in the interview, as they laughed and joked together.

The event was held in the Forum, which seats around 1,600 people, and which was pretty full - I think the event was sold out, or pretty close. Having booked late, I was seated in the very back row of the circle. This may have been a good thing. There were some pretty intense fans nearer the front, from what I can gather!


The event was primarily an opportunity to talk about Rowling's recent adult novel, The Casual Vacancy but also covered aspects of the writers life and, inevitably, Harry Potter.

'The Casual Vacancy' has some very troubled teenage characters, and Rowling was asked about her own teenage years, and specifically, her first French kiss (She was 12. He tasted of cheese and onion crisps). She counter attacked, asking Runcie about his, and he revealed he was 17, pointing out that as a ginger with glasses he was at a disadvantage!

She explained her wish to write realistic teenagers, and that she felt that all of the characters in the novel were real, in that they are not exaggerated - she had known people like that, when growing up, and while working as a teacher (but also stressed that she does not put actual people into the books), and that without seeking to claim to be a 'modern Trollope or Gaskell' that she did the novel as being in a similar tradition of parochial,  fiction, looking at a small and limited group of people. She also mentioned that she drew on aspects of herself in writing Hermione, and was very clear that she wanted Hermione to be, not 'the pretty girl' or 'the tomboy' but a clever girl, and for that to be OK, and to be someone whom she would have identified with as a child.


Rowling described how liberating she had found it, after finishing the Harry Potter series, to be writing without a deadline, and knowing that nothing would ever be the same as Potter - she described having been on a train at Kings Cross organised by her publishers in around 2000, thinking "you will never top this" and feeling, now, that she could either dwell on knowing she'll never top Potter, or that she can see how lucky she is to be free to write whatever she, knowing she can pay the bills even if only 5 people like the new book!