18 Thursday Jun 2020
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This story was told to me years ago, one summer afternoon, in a centuries-old library in Mantua. It was whispered by an elderly scholar, as we took a short break after hours of patient, careful philological work…
It begins with a boy of eighteen, the shy, bookish sort, with the kind of passion for Ancient Greece that makes one court girls by lending them books of Greek poetry. Continue reading
11 Thursday Jun 2020
Posted in Theatre
So – are we back yet?
A little hard to tell. I mean, theatres are opening again next week. Opening with all sorts of restrictions, as was to be expected – like playing with gloves whenever there are props to be touched, and masks when the actors need to go near each other, and keeping safe distances in the audience, and onstage, and backstage… As I said, nothing truly unexpected, but it will be hard to get used to… Continue reading
04 Thursday Jun 2020
Posted in Books
When I found out that there was an Italian edition of Conrad’s Lord Jim for children, reading age 10+, I couldn’t rest until I saw it with my own eyes.
Because, really: from age ten? Ten?! And I wondered because, on first reading it at the slightly more mature age of sixteen, I’d found LJ such hard going. I’d also eventually fallen in love with it in several fundamental ways – but, heavens above, it had been hard. And mind, I don’t mean technically difficult to read – although both language and structure are definitely not easy – but emotionally exhausting. And here was this children’s publisher, springing it on ten-year-old kids? Continue reading
28 Thursday May 2020
Posted in Scribbling
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Do they ever ask you Where Do You Find Ideas?
Hereabout, it happens all the time. It is one of the Three Questions:
1. How much of yourself is there in this story?
2. How long does it take you to write a novel?
3. Where/how do you find your ideas? Continue reading
21 Thursday May 2020
Posted in Scribbling
So… how is it going? #StoryADayMay, I mean…
I must say that…well. I suppose you could say that technically speaking, having completed my fifteenth story last night, I’m still on my chosen course of at least three stories a week.
And that’s good.
But… but. Continue reading
14 Thursday May 2020
A few days ago, on the phone, Nina the Director asked how how I would like to adapt for the stage a certain, very famous ghost story.
“Oh,” I said. “That one. I’ve had it on my Kindle for ages, and never quite mustered the courage to read it…” Continue reading
07 Thursday May 2020
Posted in Scribbling
Because six days are not a week, you know – and yesterday was Day 6, and I haven’t got yet to story-time today. Still, six days, six first drafts. So far so good – all the more because I’m not entirely unsatisfied with what I’ve written.
That said…
30 Thursday Apr 2020
Posted in Scribbling
I’m doing Story a Day May!
Yes well – I think I am. Sort of. Because, you see… Oh well, let me explain. Continue reading
24 Friday Apr 2020
Tags
The Bard, you know – and the present times, and all this uncertainty… it brought back to mind an old post, about something that happened a few years ago, when times felt uncertain as well – although in a very different manner.
Anyway, it’s a small story about the power of words in dark times – and you can find it here: Reciting Poetry in the Dark.
23 Thursday Apr 2020
Posted in Eccentricities, Things
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Apart from or the Erasmus Year in Cardiff, my University years were spent in one of the smaller colleges in Pavia, the good old Gandini, housed in a wonderful 15th century palace right in the town centre. It was a pleasant place to stay, and I made a number of good friends there – and I played cards more than I ever had before or have since.
Now please don’t go imagining things: we didn’t gamble or anything… the place was, after all, run by nuns. The College’s game of choice was, for some reason, Pinochle, and we could spend whole evenings at it, playing in two, three or two pairs… Continue reading
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