|
Book News from our favourite local book shop, The Book Case Saturday, 10 October 2009 New into stock is Juliet Barker's big new historical book, Conquest: The English Kingdom of France 1417-1450. The story of "what happened after Agincourt" has never been properly covered and in this new book, Juliet again combines her gift of bringing history to life through everyday details with painstaking scholarship: for example, "Robert Stafford who complained that it was impossible for him to defend his fortress since his sole gunner was absent, the only cannon was in need of repair and there was just one crossbow left in the armoury – and that had no string." See Juliet's account of how she came to write it. Also new in from locally-based writer, curator and design historian Lesley Jackson is a big colourful new book, Shirley Craven and Hull Traders: Revolutionary Fabrics and Furniture 1957-1980, about the gifted textile designer who specialised in big bold abstracts. Hull Traders were based at Trawden, and the accompanying exhibition will be visiting Bankfield Museum in Halifax. More info. Lesley Jackson decided to move to this area after hearing Ted Hughes speak at Lumb Bank. Coming up on 22-25 October is this year's Ted Hughes Festival: Helen Broderick, the cataloguer of the Hughes Archive at the British Library, will be talking about her experiences at the Erringden Room at 7.30pm on 22 October. You can find her blog here. Friday 23 Oct: Children from local schools will read their favourite Ted Hughes poems at St Michael's Church Hall at 4pm and comic poet John Hegley will perform at the Ted Hughes Theatre at 7pm. Saturday 24 Oct: Ursula Holden Gill will tell stories for young children at Mytholmroyd Library at 10am; Donald Crossley will lead a guided walk up Crimsworth Dean, starting in Hardcastle Crags car park at 2pm; junk sculptor Mick Kirkby-Geddes will run a junk modelling workshop at St Michael's Church Hall, 2-4pm; and author Jackie Kay will read from her own work and present the Elmet Poetry Prize at the Ted Hughes Theatre at 7.30pm You can download a brochure and booking form This year's Man Booker winner, Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, is selling briskly and hurrah for a Booker winner that people actually want to read. T S Eliot has emerged as the nation's current favourite poet, according to an online poll, the runners up being John Donne, Benjamin Zephaniah, Wilfred Owen, Philip Larkin, William Blake, William Butler Yeats, John Betjeman, John Keats and Dylan Thomas. And Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy's poem for National Poetry Day, "Atlas", can be found here. Meanwhile we have even more splendid bargain books in than we mentioned in our last newsletter - including Kate Fox's entertaining Watching the English (£3.99), Annie Proulx's Shipping News (£2.99), Doris Lessing's Mara and Dann (£3.99), more from the Dalai Lama, and now in stock, Eckhart Tolle's popular Power of Now(£3.99). Lots more on and under our centre table and around the shop. See Book News 1 (2nd Oct 09) "A book which is left on a shelf for a decade is a dead thing, but it is also a chrysalis, packed with the potential to burst into new life." - Susan Hill, Howard's End is on the Landing
|
|