Category: Culture

The CILIP Carnegie medal

“Words are mastered by meeting them, not by avoiding them.” This was Geraldine McCaughrean’s advice to publishers who favour children’s books with […]

“Words are mastered by meeting them, not by avoiding them.” This was Geraldine McCaughrean’s advice to publishers who favour children’s books with simpler vocabulary. Yet the English language comprises tens of thousands of words, and it is only through exposing readers to this wealth of expression that interesting paths of thinking develop and realms of knowledge become available.

Geraldine McCaughrean‘s book, ‘Where the World Ends‘, illustrated by Jane Milloy, won the 2018 CILIP Carnegie Medal, an annual British award for excellence in children’s literature. She also won it in 1988 with ‘Pack of Lies’.

CILIP stands for the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. Carnegie refers to the Carnegie UK Trust and its efforts to promote public libraries and children’s interest in reading. The Carnegie awards were established in 1936. CILIP also administers the Kate Greenaway awards for children’s book illustration.

(Image [cropped]: CILIP Photos at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC 2.0)

20/10/2018
2 min
6 years
154 words

Samuel Pepys’s diary

Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) was born and lived most of his life in London and began writing his famous diary every day from […]

Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) was born and lived most of his life in London and began writing his famous diary every day from lst January 1660 until nine years later, when he stopped for the sake of his eyesight. The diary gives us a personal view of life in London at the time. Pepys also witnessed and wrote about three disasters – the Great Plague of 1665, the Great Fire of London in 1666 and the English navy’s defeat to the Dutch in 1667.

Pepys was a high-ranking naval administrator and helped to improve the navy’s standards. He has been described as “the father of the modern Navy” (Royal Museums Greenwich, 2018). The image above is of his statue in the City of London.

He left his complete library of 3,000 books, including his diary, to Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge.

(Image: Matt Brown on Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)

19/10/2018
2 min
6 years
145 words

Culture / English language

Emily Brontë

Emily Jane Brontë (1818-48) was part of a tragic but creative family in Yorkshire which produced what are now regarded as […]

Emily Jane Brontë (1818-48) was part of a tragic but creative family in Yorkshire which produced what are now regarded as classic English literary works. Her own was called ‘Wuthering Heights‘ (1847), a story of vengeance, death, love and cruelty and it challenged Victorian ideas about class. Without the normal morality lesson, it was panned by critics at the time.

*Image: Internet Archive Book Images at Flickr.com Public domain*

Emily herself died of tuberculosis aged only 30, just a year after the book was first published. The featured image is of Haworth House, the parsonage where she and her family lived and all but the youngest, Anne, died. Although Emily and her siblings loved the moors near their home, the district did not have good sanitation and the water supply was polluted, sadly.

Indeed, in the industrial town of Haworth at that time, life expectancy was a mere 19-25 years, but Emily’s Irish father, Patrick (1777-1861, original surname Brunty), had been given a job for life there so did not consider moving away. He outlived all his family ~ his wife, his son and his five daughters, of whom Emily was the fourth.

(Top image: DS Pugh at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

19/10/2018
3 min
6 years
202 words

Culture / Law

Betting & gambling

Betting and gambling are legal activities in the UK. Betting shops, bingo halls, casinos, the National Lottery and online betting games are […]

Betting and gambling are legal activities in the UK. Betting shops, bingo halls, casinos, the National Lottery and online betting games are all regulated by the UK Gambling Commission and the Gambling Act of 2005.

There are various support services for those people who unfortunately become addicted to gambling.

The photo above shows two of the main betting shops to be found on a British high street, namely Paddy Power and William Hill. Ladbrokes, Coral and BetFred are some others. Such outlets were legalised in the 1960s in order to raise more revenue for the Government. Today they are tending to close their premises and focus on the internet market.

(Image: Alan Stanton at Flickr.com / CC BY-SA 2.0)

19/10/2018
2 min
6 years
117 words

Culture

Gertrude Jekyll

Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932) was born in London and spent most of her life in Surrey. The arts of all kinds filled her […]

Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932) was born in London and spent most of her life in Surrey. The arts of all kinds filled her life and she was a keen advocate of the Arts & Crafts Movement of 1860-1920. She pursued her interest in painting until her eyesight deteriorated in 1891, at which point she devoted herself to gardening. She went on to become a highly esteemed and influential garden designer after working on her mother’s garden at Munstead, near Godalming in Surrey. She pioneered the use of hardy perennials and colour themes.

Among her 400 garden designs are numerous collaborations with the English architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944). One of their projects was at Lindisfarne Castle in 1906, where the north-eastern coastal conditions were quite a challenge for Jekyll’s ingenuity. However, the photograph above shows part of the gardens as they are today, still providing plenty of colour for visitors to enjoy.

Jekyll also wrote many books based on her expertise, such as ‘Home and Garden’ (1900), ‘Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden’ (1908) and ‘Gardens for Small Country Houses’ (1912), as well as hundreds of magazine articles in which she aimed to show how the garden can be a beautiful asset to the house.

(Image: M J Richardson at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

18/10/2018
3 min
6 years
209 words

Culture / English language

Sir V.S. Naipaul

The writer Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad (“V.S.”) Naipaul died in August 2018, just short of his 86th birthday. He was born in Trinidad […]

The writer Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad (“V.S.”) Naipaul died in August 2018, just short of his 86th birthday. He was born in Trinidad in 1932 but studied in England at Oxford University as a young man and became a British citizen. He wrote more than thirty books, including ‘A House for Mr Biswas’ (1961) and ‘In a Free State’ (1971) for which he won that year’s Booker Prize.

He wrote both fiction and non-fiction and in various styles, from comic to bleak.

The video below is of a short speech he gave in 2001 during the Nobel Prize awards event, at which he was honoured with the Prize in Literature.

(Top image of Naipaul in 2016: Faizul Latif Chowdhury at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0)

18/10/2018
2 min
6 years
119 words

Culture

Mary Quant

Fashion designer Dame Mary Quant (1930-2023) from London was part of the ‘Swinging Sixties’ cultural shake-up in the UK. She pioneered the […]

Fashion designer Dame Mary Quant (1930-2023) from London was part of the ‘Swinging Sixties’ cultural shake-up in the UK. She pioneered the wearing of mini skirts, hot pants, coloured tights, PVC, skinny-rib jumpers and ‘bob’ haircuts in a freer, more relaxed and fun style of fashion.

She opened her first two London boutiques as early as 1955 and 1957 and they were so successful that the USA and Europe came calling just a few years later. She started to win awards and her business greatly expanded, including a cosmetics line which began in 1966. That decade saw her at the top of her industry. In the 1970s she again diverged into a new field, that of interior design. In 2015 she was made a Dame for her services to British fashion.

*Image of Mary Quant in 1966: Jack de Nijs for Anefo at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0*

(Top images LtoR: Anthony O’Neil at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0 & David Merrett at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)

17/10/2018
3 min
6 years
161 words

Culture / Entertainment

National Eisteddfod of Wales

The National Eisteddfod of Wales was first staged in 1861 and is held at a different venue each year, alternating between North […]

The National Eisteddfod of Wales was first staged in 1861 and is held at a different venue each year, alternating between North and South Wales. The Eisteddfod is a festival of music, literature and arts which takes place in the first week of August. It promotes the Welsh language and among its competition prizes is one for the ‘Welsh Learner of the Year’.

There is also a ceremonial aspect to the Eisteddfod, in Druidic style, and a stone circle is a key element to this. The head Druid presides over the ‘Chairing of the Bard’ and the ‘Crowning of the Bard’ for the two best poetry entrants.

Performers from all over the world come to take part. For example, the winner of the Choir of the World prize in 2018 was the ‘National University Singapore Choir’. Watch them performing their Humpty Dumpty/Old King Cole/Grand Old Duke of York medley here:

(Top image: Senedd Cymru/Welsh Parliament at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)

16/10/2018
3 min
6 years
161 words

Culture

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) from Edinburgh first became a medical doctor. However, he had inherited story-telling talent from his mother and […]

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) from Edinburgh first became a medical doctor. However, he had inherited story-telling talent from his mother and for a time he tried to combine both activities. Eventually, in 1891 he abandoned his medical practice and devoted himself to writing.

The source of the idea for his Sherlock Holmes novels came from a Dr. Joseph Bell who based his diagnoses on logic, observation and deduction, which impressed Doyle immensely. Holmes sometimes became a real person in readers’ minds and Doyle related that there ws even a marriage proposal among the many fan letters addressed to Holmes himself! Although he did not rate his Holmes stories as having much literary status, instead preferring to work on more intellectual subjects, he came to realise that he could make a living from them.

Doyle is well-known for following and promoting Spiritualism. He wrote books and articles supporting its beliefs, and toured around giving lectures on it. Unfortunately, he was wrongly convinced by the infamus photos of fairies produced by two girls in Yorkshire in 1920, which later proved to be a hoax.

He remained a spiritualist for the rest of his life and is the Honorary President-in-Spirit of the Spiritualists’ National Union.

(Top image: Elliott Brown at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)

13/10/2018
3 min
6 years
210 words

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Quoting Neil Oliver...

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