BOOK – Saki: The Complete Short Stories (H.H. Munro)

Writing around the turn of the last century, Hector Hugh Munro’s short stories became so famous for their irreverent and dark humour, they earned their author the pen name ‘Saki’. These have always been a favourite of mine, but recently I’ve been revisiting them, and they never fail to reduce me to tears of laughter. From fictitious bishops to insidious felines, and murdered peacocks to charming werewolves, Saki’s macabre prose is excruciatingly funny. None of the stories is more than a few pages long, so I always tend to have a copy in my bag for whenever  I need a dull five minutes filling.

FILM – The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

I love Wes Anderson’s quirky approach to filmmaking, with every shot packed with so many weird and wonderful details that you have to watch each film again and again before you catch all of it. The Life Aquatic, a fabulously bats story about a marine explorer going through a mid-life crisis with his crew of insecure and red-hatted mariners, I think is Anderson’s best. With an amazing cast, with Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, Anjelica Huston, Owen Wilson and Michael Gambon, and a soundtrack of David Bowie sung in Portugese, everything about this film is wonderful.

MUSIC – Push The Sky Away (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds)

Nick Cave really is the modern Renaissance man, whether he’s publishing novels, composing for the theatre, directing films, acting, or putting out great albums with any one of his bands. Drawing inspiration from Dante, gospel, jazz, garbage rock, and well, whatever takes his fancy really, Nick Cave, with the accompaniment of his Bad Seeds, always manages to create something totally unexpected and fab. Push The Sky Away is the band’s fifteenth album, and came out this year. They’re playing in the UK at the end of the month – tickets sold out months ago, but there’s a ballot going for eager beavers.

ART – Francis Bacon/Henry Moore: Flesh and Bone (The Ashmolean Museum)

Francis Bacon and particularly Henry Moore are two of my favourite artists, and the Ashmolean is currently hosting the work of both in one exhibition – bliss. Although working in different disciplines, the two artists drew on surprisingly similar influences, and the same themes can be traced in both their art. Flesh and bones were in fact key to Moore’s modelling process – he used to take bones and leftovers off his plate at the end of a meal and use them as a starting point for his maquettes. Getting to see how the two artists’ work developed separately but in parallel is very exciting.

Lucie Dawkins is directing the Ashmolean’s next Live Friday, ‘The Art of Theatre’, 25th October, 7-10.30pm. It’s a free evening of live theatre, music, workshops and tours, with bars in the crypt and on the roof, in association with OUDS.

In the one corner, Elizabeth I – the doyenne of British monarchs. In the other, Mary Stuart – Queen of Scots, the shadow that plagued Elizabeth most of all. At the centre of this opera – an imagined meeting between the two, which begins in frosty politeness before exploding into poker-wielding, name-calling soprano pyrotechnics. It is a great shame that the rest of the music is less inspiring, falling at the least provocation into four-square oom-pa-pa-pa ditties which fail at expressing anything much of note. The second act of this production, despite the presence of two – TWO – deaths succeeds in being incredibly boring, culminating in a twenty-minute paean to Mary’s status as a noble Catholic martyr which, despite being beautifully sung by Judith Howarth (in the title role) and WNO’s ever-fantastic chorus, succeeds in perplexing the audience member given that in the first act Mary seems to spend most of her time attempting to manipulate and/or seduce Leicester (sung by Bruce Sledge) before calling the queen a ‘bastard whore’.

Rudolf Frey’s direction is quite poor – even in Donizetti’s typically ecstatic love duets, the singers essentially stand at opposite ends of the stage doing Expressive Opera Hands before crossing and doing the same thing to the other half of the audience. WNO’s chorus are now well-practised in standing around looking political. For some reason Lord Cecil begins the second act draped over the edge of a ditch in Elizabeth’s apartment – her wonderfully unconvincing slap in the first act is also worthy of mention.
The costumes are mostly quite ugly, Elizabeth’s in particular. Starting the action she sports a singularly hideous binbag-dress before getting kitted up in the sartorial love-child of a hearth brush and an IKEA chandelier. Mary, of course, starts in a kilt, is given the black shiny plastic treatment, and in the final scene removes her coat to reveal a copper breastplate replete with Stephen-Fry-Blackadder-II-style shiny nipples.

All in all, it’s a wonder that any of the cast can muster the conviction and energy to even try. Thankfully they do, and the result does not disappoint. Howarth excels, with a shining tone and a phenomenal top register. Adina Netescu, as Elizabeth, is a little harsh at times but is otherwise very much on top of Donizetti’s score. The male leads sing beautifully and generally characterise well – Alastair Miles as Talbot fits and plays the ‘stiff courtier’ with an appreciable naturalness. Sledge is occasionally a little too puritan for the ‘ardent lover’, but then, what can you do when the music isn’t very good and all the scene changes take seven minutes?

The orchestra, as usual, sound fantastic, and Graeme Jenkins’ conducting manages to keep the stage and the pit in the same place, most of the time.

Anne Boleyn has long been a fascination to authors, playwrights, composers and audiences alike. It is in conjunction with Donizetti’s two other Tudor operas, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux that WNO bring Anna Bolena to Oxford this season. The opera charts the last few days of Henry VIII’s second wife, from her arrest to the day of her execution. While there is no mention of it in the synopsis, this production would appear to open with the birth of Elizabeth (on a revolving stage), an incident which we then hear suspiciously little about.

Despite the company’s best efforts, it is difficult to maintain interest in an opera that consists essentially of one-dimensional characters standing around singing very similar tunes all about their feelings. The orchestra, directed enthusiastically but somewhat manically by Daniele Rustioni, attempt to make some sense of the slightly piecemeal overture and after that are relegated, in typical bel canto fashion, to providing similar-sounding accompaniments to the vocal fireworks. The singing, by and large, is fantastic, Katharine Goeldner’s Jane Seymour a well-cast foil to Serena Farnocchia’s Anna. Both are very much on top of anything Donizetti throws their way. In the trouser role of Mark Smeaton, Faith Sherman stands out with a wonderfully expressive and shining tone. She and Robert McPherson, in the role of Lord Percy, Anna’s supposed lover, valiantly attempt to act their parts convincingly despite the fact that their characters spend all their time being desperately in love in that operatic way that means they are unable to do anything that isn’t deeply stupid.

Alistair Miles is a superb Henry VIII, displaying great vocal control, power and expressivity. WNO’s chorus, as usual, sound great and do their best to make standing around in clumps and occasionally wearing bits of chainmail interesting. While the set design brings some handsome darkness to the proceedings, it does occasionally, along with the slightly pedestrian direction, detract from the potential spectacle of the chorus and ensemble scenes. In short, Anna Bolena is a noble effort from all concerned but one which suffers, in the end, from the opera being not one of the greats.

Dear Cherwell,

I hope this postcard finds you in the best of spirits. How was the summer internship at the Telegraph? I’ve got a few minutes spare so I thought I’d drop you a quick line to let you know how I’m doing on my year abroad. I do it ‘cos I care, you see.

It’s two months now since I waved goodbye to the eternal mediocrity of Derby, kicked my two 20kg suitcases through the departure lounge of Liverpool airport, bought a ridiculously overpriced Eat Natural bar at 30,000 feet and eventually rocked up in the delightful, industrial environs of Nantes. Don’t worry, I’d never heard of the place either. Turns out it’s the sixth biggest city in France, and it’s the European Green Capital for 2013. Oh, and they also have a 40 foot mechanical elephant that rides around an ex-shipyard all day squirting water at people. So there.

Nantes is actually a pretty cool city. Too cool in places – and I don’t just mean the weather. By day, tourists gawp at the contemporary art installations tucked away on every street corner. At sunset the city comes alive; its late night cafés and bars packed to the rafters with patrons so hipster it hurts. A former banana warehouse, transformed in the midnoughties into a gleaming strip of shiny new bars, clubs and restaurants, is an iridescent beacon of urban regeneration perched on the grubby banks of the Loire. Nantes’s industrial heritage continues to make its presence felt in every corner of the city. The old biscuit factory still stands defiantly against a backdrop of grey sky, its tower disguised as a Fabergé egg. Today Kraft Foods produces the pillow-shaped Petit Beurres, and the vast premises left behind is a national centre for music and the arts. The Machines de l’Île, home to an enormous nautical carousel as well as the aforementioned robotic pachyderm, is a veritable shrine to the golden age of engineering. Drawing inspiration from Jules Verne and da Vinci, this merry-go-round invites you to straddle steampunk seahorses and sit astride sinister squid as it completes its eerie rotation to a soundtrack worthy of a Tim Burton film. The exposed valves and pistons form a vital part of the aesthetic, and the overall result is a sublime feat of macabre marine mechanics.

But let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. A year abroad isn’t just a holiday. There’s work to be done. For me, this means that from 9 to 7, Monday to Friday, I can be found in the offices of EuradioNantes, a radio station specialising in European affairs. Along with nine other interns from around Europe, I’m here to take part in the biannual broadcast journalist training scheme. My job is to present the daily English language shows. This mainly involves talking animatedly about local festivals, interviewing obscure Italian indie bands, and trying to muster interest in the latest EU agricultural reforms. It sounds fun. And sometimes it is. Sometimes it makes Oxford look as easy as tarte aux pommes. I’m waiting for the day when I come home and have the energy to do more than just feed myself and sleep.

At the weekends it livens up a bit. Saturdays are invariably spent having a breakdown in Carrefour over the lack of sausages, peanut butter, golden syrup and/ or proper houmous. On Sundays, in a desperate attempt to curb the creeping homesickness, I fi nd myself watching Strictly Come Dancing on iPlayer. I still skip the bits with Bruce in, of course. There’s life in me yet. In my darkest hours, I think of how I could have bagged myself a juicy little British Council teaching job. How I could have been sunning myself in some backwater village in Provence, occasionally popping into the local school to point at a few laminated posters of farm animals. And been paid double my current wage for the privilege. But frankly, I would have hated it. For now, Nantes will have to do.

Wish you were here!

Sophie

xx

It is January 2^nd 2001. With my fluffy Tracy Beaker gel-pen, wearing Tracy Beaker socks under Sketchers trainers (the sort that light up as you walk – never been prouder of a piece of clothing, never will), I am filling in the ‘My Hopes and Dreams’ page of my Tracy Beaker Diary. There, between ‘beat Anna Murray at swimming races’ and ‘pink Tamagotchi’ I write: ‘meet Jacqueline Wilson’. To me, she is the last word in literary genius.

Skip to 2013: I am talking to Wilson on the phone, and the experience is living up to every seven-year-old expectation. She gives elegant, articulate answers, using the word ‘lovely’ at least nine times over the course of the interview and in the process demonstrating how ‘lovely’ she herself seems. At the end of our call she recommends me books (Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings, if you’re interested), asks me what I want to do when I grow up and tells me how much she enjoyed my questions. I feel like high-fiving my Inner Child.

Wilson’s works sell in their millions. With the exception of JK Rowling, she is the UK’s most prolific children’s author, appointed Children’s Laureate in 2005 and made a Dame three years later. Her books have been adapted for stage and screen and her Nick Sharrat-drawn characters have adorned the usual collection of Paperchase pencil cases, M&S underwear and Argos lunch boxes. There exist at least three spoof Tracy Beaker Twitter accounts.

Her distinctive brand of fiction bases its plots in ‘real-life’ issues, addressing everything from estranged dads to evil stepmothers, bullying best friends to acrimonious divorces. She’s killed off mums, dads, sisters, cats, friends and hamsters. It’s social realism for the Biker Grove generation, with Wilson as a kind of Elizabeth Gaskell-for-kids (a comparison she appreciates – ‘I love Elizabeth Gaskell!’). She tells me she has always been interested in everyday difficulties – ‘even as a child I would purloin my mum’s magazines to turn to the Problem Page’ – and grew tired of the ‘slightly bland’ kids’ books of her childhood in the 50s and early 60s. ‘They presented a safe, middle class life that wasn’t quite what I, certainly, had experienced. I was sure a lot of children would want a book in which mums and dads sometimes quarrelled, or there were money problems.’

With her last book easily topping best-seller lists, she was evidently right about the children. It’s adults that have proved a trickier audience – the parents and teachers who, whether through honest concern or literary snobbery, have persistently judged her works ‘too grown-up’ and upsetting for their target market. Wilson’s response to her critics is diplomatic – she’ll listen if they’ve actually read her novels, but not if they’re just reacting to her reputation as ‘that dreadful Jacqueline Wilson with her books about drugs and sex’.

‘I will say my books can make children cry. But when I reply to the children who’ve written telling me, “Such-and-such made us howl” with, “I’m so sorry”, they reply “Oh, but we liked it!”’

She laughs. ‘Hopefully I’m not traumatising children!’

A Jacqueline Wilson book rarely simply makes the reader cry, however. Challenging themes are treated with childlike good-humour and optimism, with laughter as well as tears. She’s also created some of the most intelligent and interesting female characters in contemporary children’s literature, from bookworm Garnett in Double Act to Tracy Beaker kicking butt. The best girl characters in kids’ fiction are always the least ‘feminine’ and domesticated – Jo in Little Women; George in Famous Five – but Wilson’s are always totally varied and individual, whether they’re naughty or ambitious, shy, clever or funny. Would she call herself a feminist?

‘I think I am a feminist, and I was concerned to find many young readers today who aren’t. At the end of the third Hetty Feather book, for example, she goes off to become a circus ringmaster, which I thought for a restless, ambitious girl like Hetty was a lovely, swashbuckling thing to do. But many readers wrote in upset, saying they’d simply wanted her to settle down and marry the sweet-but-slightly-ordinary boy Jem who’d been brought up with her.

‘It’s touching that girls are such romantic souls, but the idea of Hetty having a career and exciting life didn’t seem to interest them. But I’m working on this.’

Writing books that touch on such sensitive subjects, it’s inevitable Wilson receives thousands of letters from children who’ve found comfort in her characters. She tells me that, though it can be overwhelming, it’s a ‘privilege’ to hear from so many of her readers and be frequently recognised by her legions of fans.

 ‘To hear giggles when you walk down the street – ‘It’s her!’ ‘No it isn’t!’ – and then the tentative tap at my arm and ‘Are you Jacqueline Wilson?’. It’s what every sixty-year old woman would want –

‘It’s lovely!’