Virginia Woolf: Art, Life and Vision at the NPG

I’m always trying to find fun ‘cultural’ things to do, be it an exhibition, a gig or concert, some literary event etc. I do enjoy them and deep down somewhere I probably think that they are a necessary part of my self-improvement. They’re also great small-talk fillers. Problem is, that when summer hits, the requirements of small-talk often goes up as everyone becomes more sociable when the sun comes out, but the number of cultural conversation pieces goes down because I stop looking for cool things to do. The one drawback of actually having a British summer this year is that I’ve done almost nothing but sit outside, eat a lot and do a hell of a lot of people watching. So this weekend I decided to try to fill the void at least a little and headed off to see Boyhood (incidentally people watching for the cinema-goer) and went to the Virginia Woolf exhibition at The National Portrait Gallery (hoorah, I finally got to the subject of this post).

Love a bit of Virginia Woolf and I know that there is a Woody Allen sequel to Midnight in Paris (which will be aptly named Midnight in London) waiting for me to snatch the lead role from Owen Wilson so that I can hang out with the Bloomsbury set for 90 minutes. I mean seriously, these are the people that started up their own publishers and printed TS Eliot’s The Wasteland. The Woolfs got to hang out with Sigmund Freud, John Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey, Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, EM Forster and Lady Ottoline Morrell. Can you imagine having so many and such an eclectic group of intellectual minds – writers, artists, economists, psychologists, poets.

Such life envy, with the exception of the whole going mad and killing yourself bit… not so great.

The exhibition is a must for anyone vaguely interested in this time period. It included photos of the Woolf’s home in Tavistock Square before and after the bombing that destroyed all but its end wall the mural Virginia’s sister, Vanessa Bell, designed for the couple.

Vanessa’s artwork was dotted about the exhibition and the front covers of early editions of Woolf’s work were on display, each designed by Vanessa Bell.

There were handwritten love letters (including one from Leonard Woolf to Virginia which did nothing for my futile belief that he would make a great husband… for me… I told you it was futile), personal photographs, extracts from Virginia’s family newsletter that she wrote with her brothers.

It is perhaps unsurprising that Virginia Woolf became, like so many, very interested in the Spanish Civil War but I didn’t know that she had been so heavily involved in an event at London’s Royal Albert Hall that was started to raise money for the Basque children. She was also a patron for the campaign to bring Picasso’s epic anti-war painting Guernica (1937) to Britain (the exhibition leaflet was included in the exhibition) and her nephew, Quentin Bell, apparently tried to get Picasso to come along himself. While he didn’t turn up, the exhibition included one of his drawings ‘The Weeping Woman’ which Picasso was said to have donated to the cause in lieu of his own attendance.

Anyway, I’ve written a ridiculously long post but there’s so much to see and learn. Even if you don’t really care about Viriginia Woolf, it’s a wonderfully detailed snapshot into a very interesting group of people at a pivotal moment in modern history. It’s only £7… You can even drop in at the BP Portrait Award for free at the same time.

Relevant Posts:

Virginia Woolf at Tavistock Square

Introducing… Virginia Woolf

Monk’s House

Charleston Bulletin (The Woolf family newsletter)

Books About Town

If you live in London you may have noticed that some weird benches have started popping up everywhere. Always surrounded by flocks of tourists, it’s taken me a while to find out what it’s all about… so just in case you too were all wondering what they are I thought I’d do a post.

The project is called Books About Town and was set up by the National Literacy Trust, which for those of you that don’t know is a charity working to increase literacy in disadvantaged children and young people in the UK.

For 10 weeks this summer BookBenches will be placed throughout London. There are four areas or Trails where the benches will be focused on – Bloomsbury, Riverside (around London Bridge), Greenwich and the City - and each bench is crafted to look like an opened book and decorated with visual art from local artists within the theme of a well-known classic.

Now London has no shortage of benches but these do look pretty cool and there’s always our inner child that likes the idea of a good old fashioned treasure hunt. Ok, maybe ‘treasure’ is not a great word but these BookBenches are out there to be found and collected.

At the end of the 10 weeks, the Benches will be auctioned off to raise money for the National Literacy Trust At the end of a literary summer of discovery, creativity and enjoyment our unique BookBenches will be brought together in a final display and auctioned off to raise money for the National Literacy Trust. Have a look at some of the benches below and see if you can guess which books they're from... (not meant to sound like a primary teacher...). Or, alternatively, you could take a look at the website to see which benches are out there and get any more information: www.booksabouttown.org.uk. 

The London Short Story Festival

Where better to hold a literary festival than in Waterstones' flagship store on London's Piccadilly? Award-winning writers nestled in amongst the endless shelves of books and a sea of book-loving streaming in through the doors every hour. Solid effort from Spread the Word teaming up with Waterstones for the first ever London Short Story Festival.

With the sun blazing outside, though, some anxious cynicism seeped into my brain - was the lineup, fantastic as it is, likely to win against the blue skies and 25 degrees outside? Thanks to Spread the Word and the festival's Guest Director, writer and blogger, Paul McVeigh, lined up such a fantastic series of talks and workshops across the weekend that the turnout was not something we needed to be concerned about.

The festival kicked off on Friday evening with the launch of Salt Publishing's Best of British Short Stories 2014 followed by an evening with the winner of the Guardian's Fiction Prize, the impressive Jackie Kay who had the audience in the palm of her hand as she read, discussed and answered questions on her work.

Amidst the science-fiction novels and Manga on Waterstones' first floor was the festival's main space, which played host to an eclectic range of talks all weekend. The first of which got everything off to a weird and wonderful start with "The Weird and Wonderful World of Short Stories" with readings from Adam Marek, Dan Powell and Robert Shearman. Marek's first line made sure there wasn't any hanging around in the 'weird and wonderful' department: "I met a man with a 40 litre monkey..."

You can see just what went on by looking at the Festival Programme online HERE, which featured writer and journalist Anita Sethi, writer and editor Jacob Ross, writers Colin Barrett, Stuart Evers, MJ Hyland, Alex Preston, Radio4's Di Spears, Booker-shortlisted Alison Moore, the list goes on...

A big draw for the writers in the audience was the range of workshops on offer over the weekend, hosted by huge talents such as MJ Hyland, Vanessa Gebbie and Claire Keegan, whose book Foster was, from my experience, the talk of the festival!

Meanwhile, downstairs Spread the Word had set up a series of hands-on sessions in the Writers' Space.

If you didn't have tickets, you needn't have left the store's main atrium to have listened to some stunning examples of short stories at Speaker's Corner. I was very lucky in being able to introduce Davy Byrnes-shortlisted Irish writer, Danielle McLaughlin, Crossword Book Award Winner and author of Boat on Land, Janie Pariat, Edge Hill-shortlisted writer Jaki McCarrick and journalist and writer, Anita Sethi. All of which were fantastically evocative and entertaining. And I mustn't forget the powerful English Pen session which saw Femi Martin read some extraordinary extracts from creative writing written by prisoners - quite amazing.

I feel there is so much more to say as it was such a fun-packed event. Fingers crossed for round two next year so you can all come along for yourselves!

Canon Tales

One of the highlights of the TLC conference last year was the Canon Tales session. What, I hear you ask, are the Canon Tales. Set up by Doug Wallace and Jon Slack in, I believe, 2006, it is essentially an innovative literary project where figures in the world of books pick twenty images that showcase their own personal take on creativity in publishing. The tricky part is that they only have 21 seconds per image, thus creating a high-speed 7 minute snapshot.

This year Canon Tales came back with seven strong contenders. I say contenders like they are going in to battle, which could be an interesting development... a publishing rap-off anyone? Ok, getting carried away.

Although pretty shoddy quality, you can get an idea of the whole set-up by watching Canongate's Jamie Byng Canon Tale at the London Book Fair a few years ago:

I don't sadly have any footage of those who contributed to the Canon Tales session at the TLC conference this year but everyone put in a strong effort:

YA Literary Agent Hannah Shepard charted her relationship with books from Nancy Drew and Point Horror through to her life as a bookseller and then agent.

Biographer Maggie Ferguson delivered a touching talk on her relationship with George Mackay Brown and later Michael Morpurgo.

X-Men's Mike Carey was the intellectual talk of the session - looking at the way words and pictures have worked together over the centuries, from fine art to political cartoons, from comics to the Chinese alphabet.

Daniel Cooper took us through his life in the world of books from working for Amazon in Seattle to his own personal escapades with writing and publishing via Kindle.

Author Katy Darby took us through the evolution of her life as both a writer and founder of the live literature event - Liar's League - which now has branches in New York and Japan.

Editor at Granta, Max Porter, managed to get through his talk with 90% of his images displayed upside down - so huge kudos to him, even more so because his first book at Granta was Booker-winning The Luminaries... some people are sickeningly talented. 

Gemma Seltzer of the Arts Council gave an inspiring talk on her adventures with new ways of presenting stories, from innovative blogging to Japanese book binding, from dancing in libraries to James Bridle's physical and online weathervane project where people 'get on board' and 'shipped' out to sail the seven seas.

Novelist, Kamila Shamsie wrapped things up with her publishing story from the beaches of Karachi to the campus of an American university to being published and winning awards at the age of just 24.

In short, if you see a Canon Tales event going on - go along.

Writing in a Digital Age 2014: Day 3

As I said on Friday, the conference is now in its third year and, with TLC always on the hunt for new exciting opportunities for writers, it is no surprise that they have made this year’s conference bigger and better than ever by adding a brand new bonus day to the programme.

The third day saw people from all walks of literary life taking over Farringdon’s Free Word Centre, with Kobo Writing Life’s Diego Marano kicking the day off with an informative introduction to Kobo and its continued support and schemes for writers.

Thanks to the Royal Society of Literature in association with the Booker Prize Foundation, upstairs fourteen lucky writers took part in an intimate three-hour masterclass with award-winning novelist and poet, Bernadine Evaristo. During the session, entitled ‘On Character’, Evaristo divulged her secrets in the art of character building, from how to write complex, interesting but credible characters that can hold an entire novel, to using them effectively to create powerful, emotional impact.

It is arguable that it is impossible to be a great writer if you are not also a great editor. Luckily professional copy-editor and proof reader Richard Sheehan was on-hand all day to showcase the different types of editing, indispensible advice for any author, be they published traditionally or independently.

Meanwhile the main theatre was transformed into literary X Factor. TLC’s Rebecca Swift and Aki Schilz took Dermot O’Leary’s seat, hosting the Kobo Writing Life sponsored Pen Factor Writing Competition pitching session. Fifteen brave Pen Factor entrants, including this year’s winner Guinevere Glasfurd-Brown, read from their opening extract to a panel of top London agents: Hannah Sheppard (DHH Literary Agency), Heather Holden-Brown (hhb agency), Tom Witcomb (Blake Friedmann), Chris Wellbelove (Greene & Heaton) and Lorella Belli (LBLA). The sessions provided the writers with the rare opportunity to pitch directly to the industry ‘gatekeepers’ and walk away with detailed bespoke editorial advice and an invaluable insight into the mysterious mind of a Literary Agent. And it was clearly not just the readers who were benefitting, as each discussion was accompanied by the soundtrack of scrawling pens and scurrying fingers over keyboards coming from the rapt audience.

In the main hall, the Writers’ Fair was in full swing with representatives from TLC, the Alliance of Independent Authors, Amazon KDP & CreateSpace, Completely Novel, ePubli, Kobo Writing Life, Liars’ League, and the Royal Society of Literature, each offering both one-to-one and drop-in sessions for writers throughout the day.

From agents to Amazon, from debuts to backlist, from digital to live fiction, the TLC’s bonus day showcased the plethora of options available to writers, both new and established, and taught us all that the Digital Age is not about one right way of publishing but about multiple opportunities and platforms waiting to be explored.

Wow, that all sounded pretty intense and meaninful huh? Well I'm feeling knackered so I'm going to go to sleep all week. Oh, wait, I'm working and have the London Short Story Festival next weekend... no rest for the wicked! 

P.S. I always thought it was 'no rest for the wicket' as in, you know, cricket... I think my way makes more sense.

Writing in a Digital Age 2014: Day 2

Back at the Free Word Centre in Farringdon today for Round 2 of The Literary Consultancy's Writing in a Digital Age conference 2014. Today was, even more so than yesterday, all about the author - more specifically, the self-published author.

First up 'The Writer in the Machine' brought us a 'dynamic quartet' made up of Orna Ross, the founder of the Alliance of Independent Authors, and self-published writers Joanna Penn, Polly Courtney and Rachel Abbott. The first hour consisted of each panelist giving a talk about their own experiences, their own bylaws and their own take on the daunting task of marketing.

Joanna Penn's energetic (if not slightly manic) manifesto on exploiting the plethora of rights opportunities out there was certainly informative and her results hugely impressive but I felt left with a mild case of whiplash... In short, though, they all agreed you need a damn good cover, a great blurb, a strong strap-line and "know your reader". The discussion of the latter may have sounded a little stereotypical in places and potentially creepy taken out of context... hunt down your 40-something women on Mumsnet, capture your sci-fi readers as they browse techie websites and fan fiction forums - but essentially the message was that every book needs a primary readership to target and that you're doing it all wrong if you're just saying 'any gender, any age, any location'.

The second half was what I will call the Marmite session in that some people in the audience really loved it, others looked slightly bamboozled and on the verge of an attack of the giggles. Orna Ross led a practical session where all the writers got out their pens and pads (did not help me stay inconspicuous as the only non-writer in the room...) and scrawled down answers to questions like "why do I write" and "who do I write for".

As engaging as it was, after a two-hour long session lunch was a welcome break.

Last year it was Tina Seskis, this year it was Piers Alexander - winner of last year's Pen Factor award and the latest TLC self-published success story with his historical novel, The Bitter Trade. This guy should be an agent - it was the greatest pitch of the weekend and saw him sell a healthy number of signed copies of his book and likely double the size of his book launch by sort of accidentally inviting the entire conference... charming, talented and go-getting, just what you want from an author!

This post is getting quite long... so I'm going to stop rambling quite so much... other highlights included a star-studded panel chaired by Paul Blezard (who has a voice to rival Michael Gambon and Anthony Hopkins in my opinion), which saw 'book-blogging's First Lady' Dovegreyreader, the Telegraph's Sam Leith, and founder of ReadySteadyBook and Quercus's Mark Thwaite discuss the art and future of the book review.

We also got to hear who had won TLC's Kobo Writing Life sponsored Pen Factor Award 2014. The prize went to a very shocked Guinevere Glasfurd-Brown - such a lovely moment seeing her collect it from Kobo's Diego Marano. Judging by Piers's success, great things are sure to follow for her - I do hope so, having myself had a read of the sample material she submitted.

Another great day at the conference. Final day tomorrow!

Writing in a Digital Age 2014: Day 1

Today I attended the first day of The Literary Consultancy's annual conference: Writing in a Digital Age. It's my second year, the Conference's third, and there was a strong turnout, which is always good to see. I personally opted for the best seat in the house - halfway up the raised seating at the back, right in the corner so I have a great view and a sturdy wall for some good right-angled leanage, while remaining reasonably inconspicuous, which is generally a good way to be in my opinion when you find yourself the only non-writer and member of 'traditional publishing' in a sea of authors. I just typed out my reasons and decided that as it took up two beefy paras that I best delete and move on to the conference itself...

For those of you who don't know who The Literary Consultancy are, I've put their very helpful website at the bottom but, in short, they provide professional and in-depth editorial and proofreading services for authors. Beyond that, and what the conference is really all about, they are an excellent source of advice for authors on traditional publishing, but also all the other options available to new writers in the changing publishing landscape.

The conference is a three-day extravaganza and I'm not about to go into loads of detail now. Why not? Not because I'm lazy but because TLC cleverly slipped in little writing spies, including myself as it happens, to write up each session in detail and you can have a read (and listen) of those HERE. I really recommend you taking a look as there's so much interesting information to be taken, be you a writer, a reader, a publisher, an agent, a bookseller or anyone else with an interest in whether books are going to die or not (spoiler: they're not by the way, we're gonna save 'the book'  by doing lots of cool digi-shit).

But let me give you my highlights of Day 1

The first session with keynote speaker, sci-fi writer Cory Doctorow, was pretty mind-blowing. I don't think I've ever heard quite so eloquent a speaker - not a single 'umm'. And Cory sure knows his stuff, and he has a whole lot of passion to go with his knowledge. But the whole talk left me slightly sweaty with anxiety if I'm completely honest. I thought I knew what DRM meant but it turns out I really don't know anything at all about anything and basically Amazon is trying to eat our souls and really I shouldn't call myself a publishing-person (not that that's how I introduce myself at dinner parties...) because I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING. *breathe* Conveniently for me and for the writer-up of the session, it was all recorded - thank the lord - and you can have a listen HERE. Phew.

The next two sessions were brilliant. In content, yes, but what I loved most was the juxtaposition of the two panels. The first of the two was the Industry Snapshot with an all-male panel which, after a very informative talk from Steve Bohme at Neilsen Bookscan, discussed the doom and gloom of publishing. Having come from an agency myself, I am certainly no stranger to the view of panelist and agent James Gill talking of a 'narrowing' of the industry, but it's still so depressing to hear that even the proverbial gatekeepers are struggling to summon up a bit of hope. After an hour and a half of talking about publishing 'service providers' and 'processes', the next session with an all-female panel (including author Rebecca Abrams, publisher Alexandra Pringle, and writer and Kingston's Publishing MA course leader Alison Baverstock) had a slightly different approach... 'service providers' had suddenly morphed into a discussion about editors, authors and agents forming a publishing 'family'...

A talk on funding for writers followed but the prize for the most cheering talk of the day goes to the wonderfully positive sounding 'The Age of Possibility'. Last year, this session was probably my least favourite... on a completely subjective level I guess I'm just not that interested about creating an app with situation-specific stories for the reader to enjoy on their commute. Clever, yes, but inspiring - I'm afraid not for me. That said, this year was fun. John Mitchinson of Unbound, Canongate's Frances Bickmore, and David Varela all discussed the digital opportunities available out there for novelists. Not KDP, no, far more exciting than that and enviously creative (particularly loved hearing about the evolution of the Letters of Note blog tie-in book and Letters Live). Discussions ranged from zombies computer games, to setting up pirate radio stations, to crowd-funded literary projects. Have a read of the write-up for more info, and have a browse of the Unbound website yourself, and feel inspiiiireeed.


TLC Conference 2013

Book Slam: Emma Jane Unsworth, Ned Beauman, Elvis McGonnagall

Tonight was Book Slam night. For those of you unacquainted with the brilliance that is Book Slam, it basically involves a group of reasonably like-minded liberal book-loving intellectuals gathering for one night in the delightful and oh-so-classy Clapham Grand (on this occasion) for “London’s Best Literary Club Night”.

The evening started off well. Very well. You all know me well enough by now to know that that means there was food on offer. Flame-grilled barbecue steak or ribs, only without the flame-grill part because, you know, it was inside... so each steak was served with a portion of ‘this would normally taste better if they’d let us use our blowtorch’. Unflamed but still delicious. And what is better than food? FREE food. And what’s better than free food? Free DOUGHNUTS.

Anyway, books. Great line-up tonight and for the first time I’ve actually read one of the books. Emma Jane Unsworth read from her new novel, Animals. As kindly summed up on the front, it’s basically Withnail and I but with women. It’s an hilarious read, but also very touching and, at times, hugely frustrating. Unsworth’s protagonist is desperately trying to navigate her way through her late twenties, on the one hand trying to settle down with her very sensible and stable tee-total fiancé, while still being drawn in by the addictive madness of best friend, Tyler, who is still very much into all-night benders and one night stands. Loved. It. Will review shortly.

Generally I’m not in to poetry. Occasionally I like to romanticise about sitting down by a peaceful canal on a sunny day with a pretentiously named ale in hand and reading TS Eliot, but mostly poetry just makes me recall studying poetry at school and how rubbish I was at it. However, if you want to bring in a tartan-wearing Scot reciting his hilarious satirical verses, then I’m all ears. We got to meet Nigel Fromage and hear what the queen really wants to say in her Christmas speech. Good fun. Thanks Elvis McGonnagall.

The finale was Ned Beauman reading from his new novel, Glow. He began by explaining how he had become aware of his portrayal in the media as being very pretentious and that a journalist had recently contributed by wrongly declaring he had been wearing all black (classic sign of pretentiousness apparently) during the interview, when he hadn’t and the accompanying photo of him proved said fact. Sadly, rather than making me warm to him, it just sort of made me a little more certain that he probably is a little pretentious, judging (perhaps unfairly) by his attire and fashionable beard (which I still don’t get, by the way). I don’t mind him being pretentious, hell we’ve all paid to go listen to authors read from their literary novels while we gorge on pop-up bbq deliciousness. I’d just rather he’d embraced it all, rather than slam dunk the journo. Yeah, wasn’t keen. Sorry Ned.

All of this was brilliantly brought together in the middle by music from the brilliantly weird, Benin City. Downloading their stuff legally right now.

Thanks Bookslam. Top evening, great doughnuts.

The Library at Scotney Castle

This weekend a friend and I drove out of the city and into Kent for a National Trust day - don't pretend you aren't jealous of our old lady lifestyles. Scotney Castle is an English country house and, given its home in Kent - the Garden of England, has some suitably spectacular gardens.

The site was originally that of an old moated medieval castle, complete with secret priest holes, which still stands in the gardens today. Apparently when the Hussey family took it over they thought it would make a pretty cool centre-piece for the garden rather than an idyllic home, but it was all just in a little too good a condition so they went ahead and gave it a brutal makeover as they felt looked more picturesque as a ruin... some people are mental.

What has Scotney Castle got for the book geek, though, you might be asking - well one of the National Trust's biggest collections which is made up of ceramics, furniture, and a whole library of rare books with its own secret bookshelf doorway. Pretty awesome.

Scotney Castle

Lamberhurst

Tunbridge Wells

Kent

TN3 8JN

www.nationaltrust.org.uk/scotney-castle

Other Posts:

The George Inn

Monks House - Virginia Woolf

Christmas at Batemans - Rudyard Kipling

Sissinghurst Castle - Vita Sackville West