FESTIVAL BOOKS PREVIEWS
TOP 5
KIDS EVENTS Brian Donaldson picks the five things you should defi- nitely take the children to this week David Walliams The comedian and actor has launched himself into a pretty successful children’s books career and his latest one is Gangsta Granny. Ben has no idea about his gran’s secret life as an international jewel thief but that’s all about to change when she requires his assistance for her most daring heist yet. 27 Aug, 4.30pm, £4.50.
Horrid Henry with Francesca Simon Only HH would come up with a new set of pursuits for the Olympics as he seeks to hand out medals (to himself probably) for burping and crisp-munching. Horrid Henry’s Monster Movie is book number 21 in the massively successful series. 26 Aug, 10am, £4.50. Sally Magnusson & Norman Stone Horace and the Haggis Hunter is the title of broadcaster Magnusson’s debut for kids after having written non-fiction tomes for big people about Eric Liddell and urine. Stone is both her hus- band and the book’s illustrator. 25 Aug, 10.30am, £4.50.
What Comes Next? Proving that the Book Festival won’t shy away from the tough questions, this event for those over the age of 12 revolves around an anthology of stories which explores theories from a variety of authors on where we go once we die. 24 Aug, 7pm, £4.50. Polly Dunbar For the 4–7 bracket, this event features a reading from her new book (Arthur’s Dream Boat), some live drawings, a frenzy of puppets and the chance to help Dunbar create a brand new tale. 23 Aug, 3pm, £4.50.
ROBERT MACFARLANE Finding a calling in nature writing
A new generation of authors is bringing an incredible range of skills to nature writing: literary style, social observation, memoir, geology, cartography and psychology amongst them. All of which can be found in Robert Macfarlane’s remarkable third book, The Old Ways. Subtitled ‘A Journey on Foot’ it sees the award- winning writer setting off along the ancient highways and byways of the country, and is full of subtle revela- tion. ‘It’s about walking old paths and tracks and routes,’ Macfarlane explains. ‘It has many origins, but the most
obvious was an unforgettable journey I took with Roger Deakin [the late filmmaker, environmentalist and author] to a holloway, a sunken path of long use, in south Dorset, which I wrote about in The Wild Places. After following that holloway I decided to write a bigger book about the paths we take through landscapes and through our lives. That became The Old Ways.’
Reading The Old Ways, packed as it is with resonance and insight, it feels like Macfarlane was born to this kind of writing, but he happily reveals it took him a long time to realise that himself. ‘I wrote a shockingly bad series of nature poems as a teenager, about ecologically impossible things like cougars stalking penguins,’ he says. ‘That was a bad start; it took me ten years to recover and realise that I wanted to write a book about why people were willing to die for the love of mountains. That became Mountains of the Mind and each of the next two books has grown out of its predecessor.’ Having found his calling, though, he’s now leaving it for a while. ‘I’m currently completing a short libretto for a performance with the jazz musician, Arnie Somogyi,’ he reveals when asked about future projects. But fear not, another nature book is in the pipeline. (Doug Johnstone) ■ 27 Aug, 5pm, £10 (£8).
LAVINIA GREENLAW Seeing her work set to music
At 49, Lavinia Greenlaw is hardly ancient, but her thoughts turn to the experience of getting older in her most recent collection of poetry, The Casual Perfect. ‘I wondered for years, thinking, if the casual perfect were a tense, what would it be? Then I got older and thought, now I’m in the casual perfect time of life, allowing this incompleteness of knowledge and myself instead of trying to fix or understand it.’ Is she scared of getting older? ‘No, I just don’t want to waste time.’
A writer of novels, poetry and non-fiction, wasting time doesn’t figure in Greenlaw’s career. Her work on Audio Obscura, a sound installation in St Pancras and Manchester Piccadilly stations won her the Ted Hughes Award for new work in poetry last year. ‘I wanted to explore the illusion of thinking we’re not seen or heard in public. But we are constantly taking in those around us.’
Soon, The Casual Perfect will be publicly audible. Paul Smith of Maximo Park will perform Greenlaw’s poem ‘Essex Kiss’ at art collaboration project Space Invasion in Newcastle this September. So how does she feel about a rock star setting her poem to music? ‘He’s a very good reader,’ she says. ‘He understands how poems work and I’ve really enjoyed seeing it happen.’ (Jen Bowden) ■ 25 Aug (with Marie Howe), 10.15am, £10 (£8).
104 THE LIST 23 Aug–20 Sep 2012