Subversive Reading

The excellent Birmingham Book Festival commissioned the philosopher A C Grayling to give a lecture at the festival this year, entitled "The Good Reader and the World". This is in part a tribute to the National Year of Reading, which encourages the promotion of literacy for children and enjoyment of reading for everyone. In line with this, Professor Grayling began his lecture by giving a detailed summary of the history of reading, from the earliest known literate communities in Ancient Egypt through to the reading explosion of the autodidacts of the nineteenth century. Grayling particularly emphasised the impacts of the early printing presses, particularly their significance not only in rising literacy, but in the fact that literacy was therefore no longer largely exclusive to the church and the ruling classes. The subversiveness of access to religious texts, for example, is not something we think much of these days, but it meant that more people were able to challenge the church on the basis of their own reading - literacy is pwer, and as it spreads power is disseminated. During the Renaissance the importance of the classical literature of Ovid, Cicero, Virgil etc allowed "insight into the wider mind of Europe", broadening the views of those who could read them (which was of course still a small minority). By the nineteenth century, however, books were cheaper and more available, and more people could read - especially essays and poetry - and many of the working-class were able to educate themselves through their reading. This is hugely significant for social development of a country as a whole, Grayling pointed out, because those who read are thinking more; for example, revolutionaries in the seventeenth century such as the Levellers and the New Model Army were literate, which is hardly a coincidence.

Grayling emphasised the different modes of reading - passive reading, for plot alone, such as one might with a beach novel, and intensive reading, where one puts thought and consideration into the book, permitting a dialogue between reader and author, disagreeing with it, coming to one's own conclusions. This, he suggests, is the way to be fulfilled in one's reading, and it has a transformative effect on the reader. Some books, of course, invite purely passive reading, while others engage the reader sometimes against their will, and it those that are treasures.

Modern British education fosters "literacy" and "numeracy" in the quest to turn citizens into "good foot-soldiers in the economic battle", but as Grayling says, Aristotle said that the point of education was to make "noble use of our leisure". Education isn't about getting a job; it's about one's life and what one does with it, and permits one to be a "responsible contributor to public conversation", and indeed a responsible voter, too. Looking at the future of reading, Grayling is optimistic, suggesting that there will always be readers, and always people who do find necessary stimulation in books, even if the nature of "books" as we know them is overtaken by technology. The content of books "will never be far from the centre of a genuinely civilised society".

Carol Ann Duffy

Carol Ann Duffy is, it seems, fast becoming something of a grande dame of British poetry, and with good reason. I have always enjoyed her poems, but it wasn't until I went to hear her read at the Birmingham Book Festival earlier this week that I realised just how well-written her poems are, and how they stand up to scrutiny. "Something for everyone" is a phrase I use but generally dislike, but it does seem to be kind of true in this case: she opened her reading with extracts from 'The Laughter of Stafford Girls High', a poem which rather reminds me of my own schooldays and the infectious laughter of teenage girls (although usually schools don't need to be closed down because of laughter!) It's a funny poem, unsurprisingly, being about laughter, but it's also an amazingly descriptive poems that captures individuals caught up in a mass movement of laughter. Certainly Duffy's reading raised much laughter from the audience.

Her next few poems were also familiar to me, and no doubt to many in the audience: 'Mrs Midas', 'Mrs Aesop', 'Mrs Faust' - these are also funny poems, and yet as she reads, with a dry humour and a delicious slowness which lingers on the words, her choice of words becomes ever more significant. Everyone should have to listen to poetry read aloud properly (not the mangled syllables of the classroom) - listening, one is forced to become a passive auditor, which allows the imagination that much more action, and imbues the poems with something quite different. I was disappointed that she didn't read one of my favourite poems, though, 'A Dreaming Week' from her book Feminine Gospels, which seems langorously to play with words for the hell of it, and the effect is sensuous, soporific and somehow thrilling. Duffy is also a poet who knows the power of repetition - either of words or of sounds of words, and she uses it not just for humorous effect but also for pathos and drama, which even her most amusing poems contain.

Finally, she read some more serious poems from her most recent book, Rapture. This is rather different from her other work, being a book of love poems, but there's nothing soppy or unneccessary here. The book is based on the "fractured sonnet form", she says, suggesting that the sonnet is a kind of secular prayer: short, memorable, adhering to conventions, and expressing very personal emotions. She told the audience that she had abandoned religion at fifteen, and now feels that "prayer must be a comfort for believers, but atheists have only art". The last poem she read, 'Prayer', reflects this, using secular images to fill the mind in a kind of worship. All her poems seem to have a kind of intertextuality - referring to other poems, other forms, works of art - yet she makes them entirely available to the audience, chatting as she goes about Greek mythology, T S Eliot, Shakespeare, mobile phones, cups of tea...I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

Any Questions?

I've just returned from attending the live broadcast of Any Questions? from the Birmingham Conservatoire, as part of Birmingham Book Festival. Politics can be so much fun! The panellists were Liam Byrne (newly promoted Minister for the Cabinet Office), Alan Duncan (Shadow secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, David Edgar (playwright and President of the Writers' Guild) and Julia Goldsworthy (Lib Dem speaker on Communities and local government). The opening questions were, unsurprisingly, about banking reforms and regulations, in which as might be expected Liam Byrne supported the Labour line ("we will do whatever it takes to ensure people don't lose out", to which Dimbleby replied, "What does that mean?" Byrne: "Well, we will do whatever it takes". Dimbleby: "What is it likely to take?" And so on. Amusing.) A nicely phrased question asked if the Prince of Darkness is the light at the end of the tunnel for the Labour party, referring to the apophrades (sorry, too much lit crit - return from the dead) of Mandelson - the audience was asked to vote on this, and it doesn't seem a popular move! David Edgar had some excellent answers, and also provided a nice literary touch, referencing Milton and Shakespeare among others - appropriate for the book festival. And the final question of the evening asked the panellists if a book has ever changed their lives. Alan Duncan suggested his own book changed his life by nearly getting him the sack, but went on to say that writers who concentrate on freedoms, moral liberty etc, such as John Stuart Mill, have greatly influenced his thinking. David Edgar went for Shakespeare's history plays, Liam Byrne for Graham Greene's Travels with my Aunt, and Julia Goldsworthy - rather worthily - went for the biography of Penhaligon, a Truro MP, which persuaded her to begin her own political career.
You can listen to Any Questions? online here. Everyone should listen to it - it's not just informative, it's also hilarious!

DIUS Expo 08

Anyway, after my trip to Russia it's back to work and reality. I was pleased to be invited to attend the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills Expo 08: One Year On, to celebrate DIUS's anniversary, as a new department, and to have the opportunity to consider what has been done in that year. The first workshop I attended was from Research Councils UK, talking about "Unlocking the Talents of UK Researchers". Obviously, as a (largely unfunded) researcher myself, this was something I was particularly interested to hear about. The speaker gave some background, stating that in terms of bibliometric data, the UK's researchers are second in ranking only the the US, and are the most productive in a G8 country. Moreover, we're international, apparently - nearly half of postgrads and 1 in 7 academics are from overseas.
The research councils' missions are to support research excellence (good!) However, as the speaker admitted, although the seven research councils cover all possible areas of research, there is still an emphasis on STEM subjects (science, engineering, technology and mathematics). Research, it seems, still equals science. All seven councils have common missions (which I believe can be found on the RCUK website, if you care!)
RCUK have three particular ways of helping researchers: Providing skills/skilled people; stimulating ideas, and providing opportunities. The skills aspect is largely about training, it seems, and the skills needed by researchers include: research techniques, entreprenerial skills, public engagement, management, personal effectiveness, communication skills and networking. Fair enough - mostly. However, I am a little more dubious about aligning research with public policy - yes, to a certain extent that helps to put the universities on the agenda and ensures that much-needed research is being done. But that must not be at the cost of "blue skies" research, in any discipline. (Kind of related to this, an interesting article in the Times Higher talks about universities' role in working with innovation). There are six programmes running involving three or more research councils, and they are: Living with environmental change; Energy; Ageing: Lifelong health and wellbeing; Global Uncertainties: security for all in a changing world; Digital Economy; Nanotechnology through engineering to application. All worthy, but you know, I don't see much room for Victorian poetry, heritage, culture etc there.
In fact, I was at the Expo as part of a panel, representing the National Student Forum - and if you don't know what that is, hopefully you will do soon as we are about to release a report. We're 16 students from across the UK, working with DIUS to represent the student voice, and, building on reports from Student Juries across the country, help the government tackle issues such as finance, teaching standards, employability, accomodation, information and support, etc. We had a session in the afternoon with Baroness Morgan, Minister for Students, who has been immensely supportive of us, and it was great to see that so many of the delegates are genuinely interested in helping to make the lives of students better.

From Russia with love...

I have recently returned from a lovely week in Russia. After visiting St. Petersburg on my honeymoon, I’ve been hoping for another chance to visit, and it didn’t disappoint. We had a few days in Moscow first, which I loved, and was very impressed by Moscow State University (picture right). A friend said that although Petersburg was beautiful, she preferred Moscow because it’s more Russian, and I agree, I think. The city smells of fuel and fried potatoes; it was unfeasibly warm when we arrived, and the traffic is appalling, but it’s just such an amazing city, and has an indefinable buzz about it – much as I find in London. We did the usual tourist stuff – the Kremlin (see photo left), the Tretyakov gallery of Russian art (which I’ll post seperately), the Novodevichiy convent, Red Square etc. I think the convent was one of my favourite places, actually: such peace in the heart of the city (yes, a cliché, I know, but it’s true) and the architecture and colours of the Russian Orthodox church, with the gilding, the icons, the faint smell of incense – to me it seems so utterly foreign and exotic, and very appealing. The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour is particularly beautiful, brilliantly-gilded and adorned with ikons inside, and is apparently where Medvedev attends services, yet there were young women in headscarves standing in front of the ikons in genuine devotion, ignoring the tourists.
The Russians certainly revere their artists and writers, which the cemetery next to the convent displays; there are extravagent monuments to Russian writers, artists, actors, dancers (see grave of Galina Ulanova, right), as well as politicians, surgeons and scientists. The reverence for Pushkin is also striking, and admirable – it seems less aimed at tourists than, say "Shakespeare’s Stratford" and "Jane Austen’s Hampshire", as British tourist boards clunkily define them, and more about a deep local respect for their own. I read some of Eugene Onegin whilst travelling, since my knowledge of Pushkin is limited, and it’s incredible – the facility of expression, the sparkling, butterfly nature of the subject matter – and that’s reading it in translation, which I gather is almost impossible since Pushkin’s fluid use of Russian not only forged a new poetic sensibility in the nineteenth century but also made him extremely difficult to translate. I am working on my Russian now with the aim of one day reading himin the original! (On the left is a pic of a statue of Pushkin.)
St. Petersburg seems (as Jonathan Dimbleby says) to be more Western-facing, somehow superficial city – the facades of the palaces along the Neva seem to be part of the display put on for the tourists. However, I’m reluctant to see the city as only the playground of socialites (despite Onegin’s propensity to do so) because it has had a much more complex history than this; thousands of serfs died during the founding of the city; and more recently, as Leningrad it was besieged by the Nazis during World War II (or the Great Patriotic War, as the Russians term it). Our guide told us a great deal about the damage done to palaces and historic monuments by the Nazi occupiers as they attempted to close in on the city, and about the starvation and bravery of the citizens ("Some people froze to death but would not burn their libraries", she said; "This is how they looked to the future, and preserved their heritage".) Many palaces, such as Pavluvsk, Catherine’s Palace and even the Peterhof, are still undergoing restoration more than sixty years later. The staff at the palaces took photographs and hid artefacts before the Nazis took over, and from these they are still gradually rebuilding and restoring. Life is, perhaps, cheaper in Russia than in Europe, but heritage is precious, and highly valued. Holding onto the past for the sake of the future is clearly important, and not just for the tourist industry; Russians genuinely feel their history in a way that not even the British do, I think.

Jonathan Dimbleby's Russia

Last week I went to hear Jonathan Dimbleby lecture at the Royal Geographic Society, about his book and TV series on Russia. He's an entertaining and, I think, genuine speaker - he doesn't seem pre-programmed and although he talked from notes he was engaging and off-the-cuff. Also, he didn't just rehash the TV programme, but instead tried to give his listeners a different insight, which was fascinating. He thought twice when the BBC asked him to do the programme, as it was a new venture for him, but decided it would be interesting to see if he could unravel Churchill's famous quote, "Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma". It's a country of extremes, Dimbleby says rightly, not just extreme temperatures but extreme wealth and poverty, extreme emotions and extreme temperaments (this last he illustrated amusingly with tales of reckless drivers and sailors).

His newfound fondness for the Russian people shone through; a people that can initially seem cold turned out to be welcoming, tactile, entertaining and amusing, and, he emphasised, have a deep-rooted fondness for us, as their war-time allies, which the Brits sadly rarely display. Furthermore, Russia has such a complex and often tragic history that we cannot under-estimate the significance of it in understanding its people - while this is of course a truism for any country, Dimbleby explained carefully how this is particularly true for the Russians, still recovering from the scars of the past.

I won't go into too much detail here, but he covered a multitude of aspects of Russian life - from politics (obviously) - he's sceptical about Putin and Medvedev, and is surprised by how many Russians revere Stalin, and feel that Communism had more to offer them than democracy - to agriculture, history, and particularly literature, which he read on his long train journeys and includes discussion of in the book (which I haven't yet read). In fact I even managed to have a brief discussion with him about Russian literature at the end of his talk.

I was impressed by how much ground (physically and metaphorically) was covered in the lecture, the series and the book; there are plenty of amusing anecdotes, but Dimbleby patronises neither his subject nor his audience, and takes his analysis very seriously, which makes a welcome change in the current "bitesize" media world. The Royal Geographic Society, of course, provided a wonderful setting for this; wonderful to think of all the lectures that have taken place there, discussing the world of which we once (and perhaps still) knew so little.

The Poet's Scissors

My final call at the book festival was the Tennyson Research Centre. We were treated to a short talk on its holdings, and it’s amazing what’s there – a piano which may have belonged to Emily Tennyson, the majority of the Tennyson library (his father’s, his wife’s, his own), and some surprising memorabilia. Grace Timmins, who gave the talk, made it clear that any collection of Tennysonia (a real word?) is self-conscious, since even before he died people were hanging onto anything that might possibly have been connected with him, as he was such a celebrity (and not a fake tan in sight…) I suppose this is how they come to have two small pairs of scissors labelled "The Poet’s Scissors", which amused me, as well as numerous pipes and quills (enough DNA to recreate him?)
The insight into Tennyson's father (alcoholic, unstable, rather mad vicar, extremely educated) impacts upon one's understanding of the poet; and Tennyson scholars are fascinated by the books he had access to in his father's library. It's also amusing to think of this mad, clever man giving impenetrable, erudite sermons to Lincolnshire peasants who probably didn't understand a word of it. There's also what could be considered to be Tennyson's first work - his translations of Horace, and some fascinating marginalia - doodles, genealogies of the Greek gods, and some workings out of the number of ships that were sent to rescue Helen of Troy!
It's sad that the library of the remarkably intelligent and educated Emily Tennyson consists largely of religious books and novels, but of course she would have had access to her husband's library and read much more widely than this. Tennyson's own library is, it appears, rather selective - the Research Centre owns far more than they display, and despite the poet being a well-known voracious reader of novels, it's the more serious works that are on display. Of course when space is limited choices must be made, but this does seem a rather fascist way of editing his 'legacy'! - it's quite comforting to know that Tennyson indulged in the Victorian equivalent of EastEnders!
His family life, with 10 siblings, seems chaotic and dream-like, reminiscent of the Brontes. I love the vision of his mother being pulled around in a cart drawn by a Newfoundland mastiff, pausing unpredictably while the children recited poetry; and of the young Tennyson taming an owl to sit on his mother's shoulder, which is lovely until it fights with the monkey... When three of the Tennyson brothers had their first volume of poetry published, they hired a coach to take them to Mablethorpe to shout their joy to the world! People just don't seem so interesting today, sadly.
The Centre has many editions of Tennyson's work, though few manuscripts (most are at Trinity College Cambridge or in the States), but they do have a ms of 'In Memoriam', which is so valuable it's kept in a safe, and I was disappointed that we didn't get to see it. We did get to see multiple proofs of 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', though, and it's amazing how many times he changed his mind about where in the poem the famous "Half a league..." stanza should appear. One almost pities his publishers. In fact he was rather careless with his manuscripts, since he had excellent recall. Apparently he once asked Coventry Patmore to look for something he had written, and it was found in the grocery box, written in the butcher's book. He also had an uneasy relationship with illustrators, only liking Julia Margaret Cameron. The Centre has a 6th edition of The Princess, illustrated by Maclise, with a comment in Tennyson's writing next to an illustration which simply reads "Wrong!" I was intrigued by an 1866 edition of his poems with a remarkable, intricate fore-edge painting which shows Farringford when bent one way, and Somersby the other.
There are also some excellent letters to view, including comically illustrated correspondence between Emily and Edward Lear, and a sincere letter of condolence from Queen Victoria on the death of his son, Lionel, not to mention an autograph-seeking letter from Prince Albert! This archive provides a wonderful insight into the ways of Victorian celebrity! There is also an unsent letter to the soldiers in Sebastopol, who (rather surprisingly) had asked for copies of 'The Charge of the Light Brigade'. Tennyson sent 1000 copies, and wrote them a letter talking patriotically of the glory of the soldiers - but there's a little note on it by Emily suggesting that "while it might be pleasant to write to soldiers, one is afraid to seem too regal"!! I could go on, as there was so much to see and so many anecdotes told to us, but the most important thing is that I now have a strong desire to reread Tennyson and to think about his poetry and not just the physical things he left behind.

Books in Lincoln

I have recently returned from a lovely trip to Lincoln. I'd never been there before, but have a friend who recently moved there, who lured me to visit him by supplying me with a brochure for the Lincoln Book Festival. I'm pleased to say that Lincoln struck me as a remarkably literary city, but my view may be warped by the things I did while I was there...So many excellent secondhand bookshops! I particularly liked this one, halfway up Steep Hill (they're not kidding) - Reader's Rest; how appropriate! I'd hardly been in Lincoln for two hours when I went to my first event, a talk by Joanne Harris about her new book, The Lollipop Shoes, which I have to admit I haven't read yet, but she's an engaging speaker whom I've been to hear before (and you can read about that here). She suggests her new book is about fear, and managing what we are afraid of, which is often reflected in fairytales and European folklore, which has permeated Western thinking and affects every story we tell. Perhaps we're not as sophisticated as we'd like to be, she says; we still believe there are monsters out there, be they disease, stalkers or other threats; and so we also need to think that there are people who can fight for us and vanquish these dangers. As she put it, we're still sitting round the campfire hoping the light will extinguish the darkness.
The next day I went to a discussion on A S Byatt's Possession, one of my very favourite books. Actually I didn't feel it covered a great deal that I didn't know, though I was intrigued by the suggestion that Christabel LaMotte is signposted by Byatt as being based on Christina Rossetti by referring to her as the "Monna Lisa" instead of the "Mona Lisa", thus referencing Rossetti's sonnet sequence "Monna Innominata". Much could be made of that, in terms of gender roles in romantic relationships etc, but this was sadly skipped over - and besides, Byatt says she intended to base LaMotte on Rossetti but eventually settled for Emily Dickinson (for rather odd reasons, I think, but I won't go into that now!). What did strike me from the talk, though, is how you can read Byatt's book as a kind of puzzle she's set, for those with the patience to unravel it. It's an enormously intertextual, referential, erudite volume, drawing on classical and Norse mythology, Victorian literature and history, genre boundaries, academic mores and so on - you could spend a lifetime unravelling it.
After an exciting day of bookshops, tea and the cathedral, of which Ruskin said: "I have always held and proposed against all comers to maintain that the Cathedral of Lincoln is out and out the most precious piece of architecture in the British Isles", we went to hear the linguist David Crystal lecture. Like most linguists that I have come across, he is afflicted with an enormous fascination for place names, with which he entertained us for a while (did you know that Bricklehampton is the longest place name in the world - I think - that is a first order isogram?) We also learned some interesting terms such as an unkindness of ravens, a puddling of ducks (really!), and a wisp of snipe (which may be specific to Snitterfield.) I was fascinated to hear about the Americanisation of Harry Potter, which has changed crisps for potato chips, crumpets for English muffins, wastepaper basket for trashcan, and so on, but his (and my) favourite is that the nicely English "That's a bit rich coming from you!" has been changed to "You should talk!" American English seems so pointless when you compare it like that...We also heard about naming places (why don't we have a town called Shakespeare? The Russians even renamed a town Gagarin, to honour Yuri). Equally, why do we name objects? In the course of researching his book, Crystal came across Yorrick the Yucca (Alas, poor Yorrick...but apparently he lived longer than the owner anticipated); Tardis the garden shed, Cedric the ashtray, and a butter knife called Marlon. The best, though, is a car called Simon because of the Rattle...and a teddy called Isaiah, because one eye's higher...I have to confess, I went through a stage in my teens of calling things Engelbert; the last, I think, was Engelbert XIII, who was a potted baby Christmas tree. I loved the Victorian phrases that people learning English were taught: "Unhand me, Sir, for my husband, who is Australian, waits without." "The postillion has been struck by lightning." But the most uproarious moment of the evening must have been Hamlet's soliloquy delivered in words which began with H, concluding with "Head holy housewards!" I have a feeling I may be working on King Lear with words starting with L...