We’re currently hard at work putting together the programme for next semester. If there’s anything you’d like us to cover please get in touch and let us know, or just leave a comment below. In the meantime, you can watch and rewatch and generally binge … Continue reading Cardiff BookTalk on YouTube
It was the summer of 1910. Wispy cirrus clouds skittered nervously across a pale sky as Lily Briscoe, brush in hand, stood before her easel at the edge of the lawn in front of the Ramsay’s house. From where she was standing she had a clear view of the sea and the rocky coastline of the Isle of Skye, and then, at some distance from the shore and standing out starkly in the soft summer light, the lighthouse, a tall, solitary pharos on a rock barely the size of a tennis court. But her canvas was empty…
The complexities of marriage and familial relationships are explored in Virginia Woolf’s brilliant stream of consciousness novel. While vacationing on the Isle of Skye, the youngest of the Ramsay children, James, eagerly anticipates a visit to a lighthouse, however, Mr. Ramsay believes the weather will … Continue reading Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse
‘… So for example, the Yeats poem “The Second Coming” [that’s the one that starts: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre/ The falcon cannot hear the falconer”]. That’s a canonical poem. He wrote it in 1919, and it has been read, quite rightly, as … Continue reading ‘The blood-dimmed tide is loosed’
‘…Woolf saw that a subjective perspective was required to make sense of how death continues to inflect the mood of a generation. Mourning, as Sigmund Freud also realised at a similar point, is ongoing, illusory work. What is remarkable about her writing is that Woolf … Continue reading ‘We cease to be soldiers in the army of the upright; we become deserters’
In this clip, Krishnan Guru-Murthy interviews Hilary Mantel in the wake of her 2012 Booker Prize win for Bringing Up the Bodies. She discusses whether her handling of Thomas Cromwell is too sympathetic and considers the differences between the first two volumes of the trilogy. … Continue reading Hilary Mantel – interview with Channel 4 News
Prior to this week’s BookTalk, Hilary Mantel introduces The Mirror and The Light, the latest and final volume in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy. Here she discusses writing historical fiction and reads an extract from the opening of the novel. Book your place here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cardiff-booktalk-hilary-mantel-registration-125345332263
12 May, 7:30pm (please note later start time) Book tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cardiff-booktalk-hilary-mantel-registration-125345332263 ‘This book has been the greatest challenge of my writing life, and the most rewarding; I hope and trust my readers will find it has been worth the wait.’ – Hilary Mantel The … Continue reading Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light
‘We all have this duality, but perhaps us writers most of all. An outer and an inner life. A persona, and a self. And writing has to originate from the self, the depths, not the surface-persona – if we want to write what matters to … Continue reading ‘I wandered the streets, both aimless and purposeful’
‘Second-person narration, in which the author uses the pronoun ‘you’ to seemingly address the reader and draw them into the story, can be a bit of a high-wire balancing act. Or, to apply an analogy more suited to my West Coast background (I’ve never tried … Continue reading You and the Story
