Saturday 15th November 10.00 to 15.00. Ebrington Village Hall, Ebrington, Gloucestershire Famous best selling local author Susan Hill is holding another fund-raising day, this time for the Village Hall Fund and, apart from her own books being for sale and all the other attractions, Susan has another very special stall – the popular and amazing “Magic Handbag Stall”.
A new title by Northampton Author -Malcolm Deacon. Book launch at Northampton Museum and Art Gallery, Guildhall Road, Northampton on Sunday 21st September 2008 from 2pm – 4pm. No-one gave Queen Elizabeth I more faithful and devoted service than Sir Christopher Hatton; yet he has been largely ignored by historians and unfairly dismissed by early biographers. The myth of him as “the dancing chancellor” still persists, the details of his life relatively unknown. Read the rest of this entry »
Thursday 1st May 2008 Cotswold Author Ian Walthew’s highly acclaimed first book is being re-issued in paperback.
A Place in My Country is part memoir, dealing with issues of personal identity, sense of place, loss and memory, but equally it is about a small Cotswold village in the early 21st Century.
“Funny, touching and ultimately very moving..a beautiful, unsentimental account of a personal loss that is reflected in the rapidly changing texture of life in rural England” Sunday Telegraph
Saturday 19th April and Sunday 20th April at Toddington Station on the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway
Paddington Bear* visits the Gloucester Warwickshire Railway for the first time this coming weekend. Amazingly, this little bear has been enchanting youngsters for half a century and he’s coming to Toddington to celebrate his 50th birthday.
The Return of Ulysses: A Cultural History of Homer’s Odyssey – written by local author Professor Edith Hall and published by I B Tauris & Co. Limited.
Edith Hall who lives near Bourton-on-the-Water in the Cotswolds is a scholar of classics and cultural history and holds a joint Research Chair in Classics and Drama at Royal Holloway, University of London where she directs the Centre for the Reception of Greece and Rome. She also co-directs a research project at Oxford University and is Chairman of the Gilbert Murray Trust.
Described by the poet Colin Teevan as “the Thierry Henry of Classics” (what a wonderful quote) Professor Hall has focussed her research on racism, sexism and class prejudice in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds.
She has made many TV and Radio appearances, regularly appearing on Radio 4, including Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time and Woman’s Hour, as well as acting as a consultant for professional theatre productions.
Professor Hall was also the model for Ethel Spurgeon who was the heroine of Stephen Prasher’s novel The Cellar at the Top of the Stairs and the model for the goddess Hera in the stage play by Colin Teevan Alcmaeon in Corinth.
The Return of Ulysses: A Cultural History of Homer’s Odyssey is her sixth book and is an enlightening look at how Homer’s Odyssey has resonated in West and offers a thematic analysis of the poem’s impact on social and political ideas, institutions, and mores from the ancient world through to the present day. Proving that the epic poem is timeless, Edith Hall identifies fifteen key themes in the Odyssey and uses them to illustrate the extensive and diverse effect that Homer’s work has on all manner of inquiry, expression, and art. Source: The Johns Hopkins University Press
The book, which is written in an accessible and lively way and with beautiful illustrations, explains the popularity of the story of Odysseus trying to get home to his loyal wife Penelope, but delayed by one-eyed giants and beautiful nymphs and sirens.
There is a strong focus on films inspired by or adapting the Odyssey, including the Coen Brothers O Brother Where Art Thou, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, 2001: A Space Odyssey as well as novels such as Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus (Canongate Myths).