Taking place at the on SwagÖ±²¥â€™s Oxford Road campus, on Deansgate, and SwagÖ±²¥ Central Library in the city’s iconic St Peter’s Square, literature lovers can look forward to an enriching series of talks and an opportunity to hear about the writing process from award-winning wordsmiths.

The programme opens on campus on 8 October with A.M. Homes who will be discussing The Unfolding with Razia Iqbal at the Martin Harris Centre, followed by an evening with Kamila Shamsie who will be sharing her thoughts on female friendship and the themes of her novel Best of Friends. David Olusoga will be talking about his role as a writer and historian at the MHC on 15 October in an event hosted by Ellah P Wakatama, which will also be recorded for a streamed audience. 

At Central Library on 9 October, Kit de Waal’s childhood memoir Without Warning and Only Sometimes will be central to her conversation with Ellah P Wakatama, while on 10 October 2021 Booker Prize-winner Damon Galgut will be sharing his thoughts on The Promise with Alex Clark. Susanna Clarke and Max Porter will be delving into Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell on 21 October at the library in an MLF exclusive event.

The auspices of the John Rylands will welcome one of America’s most celebrated poets Carl Phillips on 13 October, where he will deliver the John Rylands Reading. The gothic building will also host Cosey Fanni Tutti and Jon Savage on 20 October where they will be discussing three iconic women, Cosey Fanni Tutti herself, along with Delia Derbyshire and Margery Kempe. 

SwagÖ±²¥ Literature Festival’s Live events programme runs from 7-23 October 2022 across the city.

The wider SwagÖ±²¥ Literature Festival programme and tickets are on general sale from 26 August 2022 via the .

On 31 July - 2 August 2, 184 delegates from 20 countries participated in the event, held mainly at the Friends' Meeting House in SwagÖ±²¥ city centre.

Keynotes by Marlene Daut (University of Virginia) and Anne-Lise François (UC Berkeley) concerned the timely topics of Haitian Romanticism and ecological poetics in the age of the anthropocene, and were held at the Midland Hotel and the Whitworth Art Gallery.

An open conversation generated ideas about what changes should be made to how we do conferences in light of ecological crisis and eight thought-provoking seminars were given by leading international scholars on a range of topics across the three days, alongside some 60 panels and roundtable sessions.

The conference culminated in a plenary panel of leading scholars discussing Peterloo in its local and colonial contexts, followed by a reception event hosted by HOME.

In addition, accolades were awarded, including the Lore Metzger Prize, which was awarded to Alice Rhodes for the best paper by a graduate, and the Jean-Pierre Barricelli Prize for the best book published on Romanticism in the last year was given to Richard Sha.

Many generous sponsors helped make ICR SwagÖ±²¥ 2019 possible: Creative SwagÖ±²¥; The School of Arts, Languages, and Cultures; SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900; The Byron Society; The John Rylands Research Institute; Essays in Romanticism; Romanticism on the Net; and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Arts and Languages at the University of SwagÖ±²¥.

The International Conference on Romanticism and the SwagÖ±²¥ Histories Festival jointly hosted this panel of speakers, which includes Catherine Hall (University College London), Ian Haywood (Roehampton University), and Robert Poole (University of Central Lancashire). Mike Sanders (University of SwagÖ±²¥) moderated the panel, which was organised by Emily Rohrbach (University of SwagÖ±²¥). With generous support from Creative SwagÖ±²¥ and the Social Responsibility Fund of the School of Arts, Languages, and Cultures, the event was filmed in order to be circulated in time for the Peterloo 200^th anniversary, 16 August 2019.

Downloadable on Soundcloud, the podcast series includes casts concerning feminism and interviews and is a creative outlet for sharing thoughts and theories on the course module Victorian SwagÖ±²¥: Culture and Economy, which explores the way SwagÖ±²¥ as a city was experiencing the cultural and industrial revolutions of that era.

The podcast is named after the epic poem Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, which reflects a number of social issues affecting women at that time. Browning is one of the best-known Romantic poets of the Victorian era, producing works that focused on the political and social themes, and the male domination of women.

is beginning a new project, ‘A History of Poetics Birds’ and will be working alongside the Trust to create a series of events designed to raise awareness of bird conversation issues and bring together both poets and conservationists.

The decline of bird populations in Britain is one of the most conspicuous environmental effects brought about by sustained human intervention in global ecosystems. Nevertheless, the significance of birds within British cultural heritage is in no doubt.

In virtually every culture that produces poetry, and in almost every historical period, birds have been a feature of poetry. Birds are one of the most common animals that we engage with on an ordinary and daily basis, while they inspire artistic flights that take us beyond the limits of our physical and imaginative experience. Since the earliest poetic productions, where birds were emissaries to the gods, to contemporary poems where a merlin hunting a lark depicts the ravages of love, humans have turned to birds as a way of understanding the world around them and their place within it.

The project aims to contribute to our understanding of cultural and imaginative attitudes to birds in Britain and to further our understanding of how those attitudes shape human interventions that impact on birds and their habitats.

Cheshire Wildlife Trust has 13,000 members and oversees 45 nature reserves, engaging with thousands of people each year through its events and education programmes. By working with Cheshire Wildlife Trust, Dr Clara Dawson will be able to help them achieve one of their strategic goals, that more people need to feel a deeper connection to the natural world.

Members of the Centre met at the John Rylands Library to inaugurate CMEMS on 24 May 2018.

The event consisted of an open session to discuss the immediate future, before having a glass of wine with Professor Garrett Sullivan from Penn State College of the Liberal Arts and listening to his talk on Book I of the Faerie Queene.

The talk was illustrated with early editions of Spenser's work from the Rylands collections.

Learn more about the .

Home Fire, which is Shamsie’s seventh novel, reworks Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone to tell the story of a British Muslim family’s connection to Islamic State.

The novel was acclaimed by judges as “the story of our times”. Sarah Sands, chair of judges, commented, "Home Fire is about identity, conflicting loyalties, love and politics. And it sustains mastery of its themes and its form. It is a remarkable book which we passionately recommend."

It was the third time the Shamsie had been nominated for the award, previously known as the Baileys Prize and Orange Prize.

The other shortlisted titles were:

• The Idiot - Elif Batuman
• The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock - Imogen Hermes Gowar
• Sight - Jessie Greengrass
• When I Hit You - Meena Kandasamy
• Sing, Unburied, Sing - Jesmyn Ward

Author Kate Mosse, the founder of the prize, hosted the awards ceremony, which took place on Wednesday 6 June 2018 in central London.

The Women's Prize for Fiction is awarded annually to what judges consider the best novel of the year written in English by a female author.

Read more

An annual cycle of intrigue and speculation, followed by the denouement – at which point the whole knotty process come to a head. Not the sagas of the political party conference season, but the perennially shocking announcement of the . The same questions often follow. Who is that? From where? For what? Last year’s decision, , generated more headlines than ever – and a different question. What is “literature”, asked many commentators, if a songwriter wins?

It drew further attention to the . Its 16 members draw up a shortlist from the longlist nominated by previous Nobel laureates, experts in the field and national writers’ associations. The somewhat random process is further complicated by the criterion that the winner should be “”. How do these 16 academicians respond to work in so many genres, in so many languages, in any meaningful way? And what is their ideal direction?

This year’s choice, Kazuo Ishiguro, like and Dylan, has written for music, but is best known for his two novels which have been turned into movies: (1989), which won the Booker Prize, and (2005).

Return to type

Following Dylan’s success, and the success of the oral historian , this year’s announcement means that the prize has returned to a more conventional writer, a novelist who is easily read alongside predecessors such as VS Naipaul, Doris Lessing, Herta Muller and Orhan Pamuk.

Like Naipaul and Lessing, Ishiguro is a naturalised British citizen: born in Nagasaki, Japan, his family moved to the UK when he was a child. He studied at Kent and then took an MA in Creative Writing at UEA, where his London-based tutor Angela Carter, herself shortly returned from time spent living in Japan, was a powerful example of the independent literary life.

When Ishiguro first began to publish in the 1980s he was identified with the “” of Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Graham Swift and Julian Barnes. The books treated the fixed manners and social norms of British and Japanese society with coolly understated prose, generating pathos and tragedy from the ways in which their subjects’ good manners and expectations were overwhelmed by events.

Experiments in genre

The success of The Remains of the Day seems to have given Ishiguro pause and his fourth novel, , published in 1995, was more abstract, featuring an unnamed protagonist, a pianist, whose dreamy, self-questioning wanderings invited comparisons with Kafka and also put clear water between Ishiguro and his more social realist contemporaries. Like Lessing before him – and like Jeanette Winterson and other fabulists of his own generation – Ishiguru’s work has increasingly veered from the recognisable worlds of his childhood to more fantastical realms.

Critically acclaimed: Never Let Me Go. Faber & Faber

Never Let Me Go typically confused reviewers who sought to identify its genre: its story of clones raised for organ donation was read as horror, science fiction and parable (it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Arthur C. Clarke Award), although its tender illustration of adolescent uncertainty and powerlessness was what made it both a critical and popular favourite.

Continuing his experiments in genre, his most recent novel, (2015), is a fantastical account of Arthurian Britain, whose travelling protagonists must negotiate tribal politics and feudal hierarchies. It makes for an uncomfortable perspective on the Brexit referendum – and the rise of anti-immigrant rhetoric in the UK – which also drew Ishiguro into an unusually political intervention, calling for a second referendum in an .

The essay is, as readers might expect, carefully attuned to the ways in which societies can be suddenly transformed, when yesterday’s norms no longer apply and sections of a population suddenly find themselves stranded under a new dispensation. Given that the Nobel academicians as much as for its stylistic innovation and integrity, what Ishiguro wrote in that essay may well be the “ideal direction” they use as a compass when they look for what is best in contemporary literature.

The Britain I know – and deeply love – is a decent, fair-minded place, readily compassionate to outsiders in need, resistant to hate-stoking agitators from whatever political extreme – just as it was in the first half of the 20th century when fascism rampaged across Europe. If that view has now become outdated, if it has become naive, if today’s Britain is one I should no longer recognise as the one I grew up in, then let me at least hear the bad news loud and clear. Let us find out what we’re dealing with. Let us find out who we are.

Ishiguro is an interesting and – in his experiments with genre – original novelist. He is also a relatively young recipient of the Nobel Prize. Winning the Booker propelled his writing in a new direction, so this award may likewise encourage what is most ambitious about his work. This time next year, when the bookies start quoting odds on his contemporaries, he may well have the look of a classic choice.

, Professor of Creative Writing and Modern Literature,

This article was originally published on . Read the .

Developed by our in partnership with industry experts, the will offer no more than 12 places each year. Students will be taught through a rigorous combination of workshops, seminars, and one-to-one meetings with tutors and visiting professionals.

Successful applicants will also have the chance to gain hands-on industry experience through structured internship programmes with leading production companies including (Last Tango in Halifax, Queer as Folk), (The Woman in Black, Let Me In) and (Billy Elliot, Philomena).

The new Master’s course is the brainchild of Professor of Creative Writing and celebrated author Jeanette Winterson and Professor Tanya Seghatchian – a leading UK film producer and former Head of Development and Film Funds for the UK Film Council, whose credits include the phenomenally successful Harry Potter series. It is the first programme of its kind offered by a Russell Group university and has attracted an enviable list of experienced writers and producers to the advisory board, including Russell T Davies, Tony Garnett, Abi Morgan and Andrew Eaton.

Speaking about the launch of the new SwagÖ±²¥-based programme, Russell T Davies, Advisory Board Member said: “SwagÖ±²¥ taught me how to write. These streets rattle with stories and songs and dark, brilliant jokes. I came here, at the age of 24, determined to meet writers, and to learn from them. And that’s never stopped!”

Advisory board member Abi Morgan said: “They say you can’t teach writing. But every writer needs space to write. The courses I have done have given me the time and affirmation I need to call myself a writer. The rest, as Hemingway said, is ’to sit down at a typewriter and bleed’. I can’t think of a better place to do it than in SwagÖ±²¥ – which has produced some of the great writers of our time: Elizabeth Gaskell, Anthony Burgess, Shelagh Delaney, Robert Bolt, Jeanette Winterson, Russell T Davies, Jack Rosenthal and Paul Abbot to name but a few.”

is now open for applications. To find out more, including how to apply and available , and register for our on 18 March.

You can also join us this Sunday (1 March) at Cornerhouse for The Centre for New Writing’s latest , featuring Oscar and BAFTA nominated screenwriter Patrick Marber (Notes on a Scandal, Fifty Shades of Grey).

This Is (Not) A Love Poem is the result of a Twitter-led project to create a new chaotic poem inspired by SwagÖ±²¥ Library’s Special Collections. From 26 January to 6 February, followers were asked to tweet a line of poetry in response to 12 collection images, keeping within Twitter’s 140 character limit.

The project hashtag #jrlpoem15 received over 1.3 million timeline deliveries, reaching over 400,000 accounts.  It received support and retweets from poetry associations across the UK, regional poets and writers, other North-West cultural assets and art movements such as SwagÖ±²¥ International Festival. Over 200 tweets were considered for the final poem, which was constructed in a public-led poetry workshop held at the Library on Saturday 7 February.

The project is part of a wider initiative to explore how social media can help to open up the Library’s collections for new interpretations and the new audiences. The chosen images were created during The University’s digitisation programme, which is aimed at increasing accessibility to over one million rare and precious books, maps, manuscripts and visual materials. Featured images included carbonised Greek papyri, William Blake artwork, an illustrated Latin anatomy text and even a cartoon from Punch magazine.

Head of Special Collections at SwagÖ±²¥ Library, Rachel Beckett said: “We really want to open up our Special Collections to new media formats and encourage our social media followers to interpret items in a new way. I’m delighted with what they have given us”.

Project Manager, Gwen Riley-Jones said: “It’s been exciting to work on a project that created something virtual and then made it a physical part of the Library. The poetry workshop was immense fun - some people taking part said this was their first attempt at poetry since school”.

This Is (Not) A Love Poem is on display in the main atrium at The John Rylands Library along with a sound recording in the Chamber Gallery. A special poetry corner has also been installed in the Historic Reading Room, where visitors inspired by the poem can leave their love declarations.

The poem is currently being translated into other languages, including Spanish, Italian, Hebrew, Mandarin and Braille, to reflect the broad appeal of The John Rylands Library, SwagÖ±²¥’s #1 rated visitor attraction on Trip Advisor.
 

Notes for editors

Images of the Greek Papyri and the poem on display as well as a copy of the final poem are available upon request.

The John Rylands Library located in central SwagÖ±²¥ is acknowledged to be one of the great libraries of the world and one of the finest examples of neo-Gothic architecture in Europe. The Library was founded by Mrs Enriqueta Rylands as both a tribute to her late husband John and as a gift to the people of SwagÖ±²¥. Since its opening in 1900, the Library has held rare and precious maps, books, manuscripts and visual materials spanning over 5000 years. Now part of SwagÖ±²¥ Library, it houses over 1.4 million items from The University’s Special Collections. Today, the Library is open to the general public and its growing archive is used extensively by The John Rylands Research Institute and visiting academics from across the world.

Press enquiries:

Kath Paddison
Media Relations Officer
SwagÖ±²¥
Mob: 0161 275 0790
Email: kath.paddison@manchester.ac.uk

To coincide with the 500th anniversary of the death of the world’s most famous commercial printer, the exhibition will celebrate the legacy of the Italian Aldus Manutius (1449-1515) who brought the Greek and Roman classics to the public through the new technology of printing and pioneered the pocket sized book we now take for granted.

The exhibition celebrates the legacy of Aldus, who also introduced the world to italic type, as an innovative scholar-businessman who founded the Aldine Press in Venice at the end of the fifteenth century and sought to produce critical editions of the classical authors.

Called ‘Merchants of Print: from Venice to SwagÖ±²¥’, the exhibition will examine how such a rich collection was amassed in SwagÖ±²¥ which is a city more famous for its textiles than its texts and more associated with mills than libraries.

The John Rylands Library, now part of the University of SwagÖ±²¥ Library, became home to the world-leading collection of Aldines which were drawn together by the merchant collectors and citizen scholars of the industrial North of England during the nineteenth century.

Stephen J. Milner, Serena Professor of Italian, at SwagÖ±²¥ said: “A story of cultural translation emerges in which the parallels between mercantile Renaissance Venice and mercantile industrial SwagÖ±²¥ were not only registered in the neo-Gothic architecture of SwagÖ±²¥’s palaces, but also in the literary and educational cultures of both cities.

“In the nineteenth century, SwagÖ±²¥ imagined itself in the image and likeness of the great merchant cities of Renaissance Italy: Venice and Florence. This exhibition showcases part of the outstanding Italian cultural patrimony left to the city’s libraries and museums by the merchant collectors, theologians and educators of the day.”

Rare Books and Maps Manager Julianne Simpson said: “The Aldine collection at The John Rylands Library is truly remarkable for its size and depth, containing editions of the finest quality printing the Renaissance had to offer. Rarely has such an exquisite display of books from the foremost centre of early printing been on public display.”

The spotlight will be turned on local collectors, from Bishops to mill-owners and gynaecologists, and explores how they looked to the texts of Renaissance Venice for education and instruction. It will be accompanied by a full programme of public events – including:

• Learning about how books were made with demonstrations of printing and a closer look at paper and parchment
• Discovering the journeys undertaken by books printed by Aldus 500 years ago
• Finding out how the books found their final home in The John Rylands Library.

The exhibition runs until Sunday 21 June.

Notes for editors

The exhibition’s curators Julianne Simpson, Caroline Checkley-Scott and Professor Stephen J Milner are available for interview via the Media Relations Office.

Media enquiries to:

Kath Paddison
Media Relations Officer
SwagÖ±²¥
Mob: 07990 550050
Email: kath.paddison@manchester.ac.uk

• Tuesday 27 Jan - From Humanitarian Relief to Holocaust Rescue: A Young American in Vichy France.
• Wednesday 28 Jan - Why Did They Kill? Revisiting the Perpetrators
• Thursday 29 Jan - Holocaust History and Survivor Testimony: The Case of the Starachowice Factory Slave Labour Camps

You can find out more about the Bogdanow Lectures at the .

Professor Bogdanow, who died in July 2013 aged 86, fled from the horrors of Nazi Germany in 1939 as an 11-year-old child. She was one of the 10,000 Jewish children rescued by the UK in a mission known as the Kindertransport.

The academic was an only child, who was taken in by a Quaker family in Denton. Professor Bogdanow was one of the few Kindertransport children whose parents survived, between them, the appalling concentration camps of Dachau, Wulzberg and Bergen-Belsen and the ghetto of Theresienstadt. She was reunited with her mother in SwagÖ±²¥ during the 1950s.

After receiving distinctions in seven out of eight subjects at Fairfield High School for Girls, she was awarded three entrance scholarships to The SwagÖ±²¥ University in 1945 where she studied French.She went on to spend much of her career at the University as postgraduate student, lecturer, reader and professor, to become one of the world’s foremost scholars in her field – literature on King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

The award was presented for the , an initiative set up to tackle the challenge of capturing and preserving the email archive of SwagÖ±²¥’s world-renowned publisher, Carcanet Press. 

The project team included Fran Baker, Dr Philip Butler, Caroline Martin and Ben Green.

Archivist Fran Baker, accepting the award on behalf of SwagÖ±²¥ Library, said: "This means a great deal ... particularly having seen the presentations of the other contenders."

The Digital Preservation Awards celebrate organisations across the world that have made significant and innovative contributions to ensuring that digital objects are accessible to future researchers.

Maureen Pennock (the British Library) and Paul Wheatley (University of Leeds) presented the award on behalf of the  at a prestigious gala evening in London.

The other contestants for the award were: the University of Freiburg and Rhizome for their Conservation and Re-enactment of Digital Art Ready-Made project; the Digital Repository of Ireland and Partners for their Inspiring Ireland project; and the Archives and Records Council of Wales for their The Cloud and the Cow project.

Here is the video of the awards ceremony:

Carcanet Press Email Preservation Project

During the Carcanet Press project, more than 200,000 emails and 65,000 attachments which were in danger of being lost forever were rescued and preserved for the future. As a result of the work done, material that would otherwise have been lost will be available to future readers, students and scholars.

The University Library created a significant archive to which material will be added on an annual basis. A test-bed for practical digital preservation, the project allowed the development of systems that will ensure that the Library is well-placed to deal with similar born-digital archives in the future. 

Carcanet Press

Carcanet itself publishes many established, award-winning poets from around the world, including Nobel laureates, recipients of the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry and Pulitzer Prize-winners. The Carcanet list also includes new and emerging writers – no less than four of its authors appeared in the Poetry Book Society’s once-in-a-decade list of 20 Next Generation Poets earlier this year.

Caroline wins a cash prize of £1,000 plus up to a year’s mentoring from the London-based The Literary Consultancy to help her shape and develop her novel with a view to possible publication.

The piece was selected by a group comprising the novelist Alison Moore, this year’s judge, with representatives of The Literary Consultancy and literary agents A. M. Heath. Alison Moore said the work “has an intriguing synopsis and good characterisation, plus a touch of humour.”

Euan Thorneycroft from A.M. Heath said: “I think there is lots to admire here and overall the story feels as though it could have depth and heft. There were good scenes … (and) some lovely characters.”

Aki Schilz from The Literary Consultancy said: “I was moved by this piece… I feel there’s a real and forward-driving human story here… it is handled elegantly and with a subtleness I very much appreciate.”

Swimming Pool Hill was selected from over 1,200 entries to take the top prize. The novel competition is open to any writer based in the UK and is named in honour of Peggy Chapman-Andrews who founded both the Bridport Prize and its home, Bridport Arts Centre in 1973.

The Bridport Prize is one of the most prestigious open writing competitions in the English language with categories in poetry, short stories, flash fiction (stories of 250 words or less) and first novels. With over £16,000 in prize money to be won annually, the competition attracts entries from across the globe. This year 15,000 writers from over 80 countries competed for one of the 34 winner and highly commended awards.

Originally from Essex, Caroline Chisholm studied English Literature at the Queen’s University of Belfast and worked for several years in communications for high profile NGOs, most recently for Greenpeace International in Amsterdam. She has an MA in Creative Writing from SwagÖ±²¥, where she developed the early drafts of Swimming Pool Hill. She’s currently studying for a PhD at the University’s Centre for New Writing and has previously been long-listed for the Mslexia first novel award.

Caroline said: "It's a huge honour to win the competition in its inaugural year. My tutors and friends at the Centre for New Writing have been an enormous support to me in getting this far. Thanks particularly to my supervisor John Mcauliffe, for his encouragement and enthusiasm for the novel."

John McAuliffe, co-director at the University’s Centre for New Writing commented: “Caroline Chisholm is a terrific writer. As an MA student at the Centre for New Writing and now as a PhD candidate here, all her work has been marked by her deep reading and her sense that fiction has an important part to play in how we understand the contemporary world.

“Swimming Pool Hill’s treatment of migration and war seems not just topical but powerful in the way it understands the detail of its characters' worlds, in Calais as well as in Kabul, places we have only recently started to see as related to one another. We're delighted that the Bridport Prize's Peggy Chapman-Andrews Award has recognised Caroline's work. And we look forward to seeing the novel in press before too long...”

In her spare time, Caroline volunteers for the Southport lifeboat station, the UK’s oldest. She was diagnosed with a primary brain tumour in 2013, but following treatment is now in remission.

The first chapters from Caroline’s story are available to read on the Bridport Prize website at www.bridportprize.org.uk.

Notes for editors

Hi-res images are available on request

More information is available on the  and .

For media enquiries please contact: Anne-Marie Nugnes, Marketing & Communications Officer, School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, 0161 275 8322 or anne-marie.nugnes@manchester.ac.uk or Kath Paddison, Media Relations Officer, SwagÖ±²¥, 0161 275 0790 or kath.paddison@manchester.ac.uk

A University of SwagÖ±²¥ lecturer has discovered that the famous first line of English language’s oldest epic poem has been misinterpreted, ever since it was popularised almost 200 years ago.

Dr George Walkden, who is a historical linguist, says because translators of the iconic Beowulf have relied on a faulty interpretation of its first word, the meaning of its first sentence must be understood differently.

The poem, in Old English and believed to be written between 1,200 and 1,300 years ago, has captivated poetry lovers ever since it was first published in 1815 by the Scandinavian scholar Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin.

However, according to Dr Walkden in a new paper published this month, the first word hwæt penned by an unknown poet, is not a stand-alone sentence meaning “listen up!” as previously thought.

Other interpretations such as ‘What ho!’ (Earle 1892), ‘Hear me!’ (Raffel 1963), ‘Attend!’ (Alexander 1973), ‘Indeed!’ (Jack 1994), and ‘So!’ (Heaney 2000) are all incorrect, he says.

Dr Walkden says the mistake dates back to Jakob Grimm, of Grimm Brothers fame, who wrote in 1837 that hwæt was a ‘pure interjection’.

Beowulf’s first line: ‘Listen! we have heard of the might of the kings’ should in fact, says Dr Walkden, be read as ‘How we have heard of the might of the kings’.

“Though we are just talking about one word, the true meaning of this iconic line of poetry now has a biographical feel, giving us a sense of how the writer attaches importance to his community’s history,” said Dr Walkden.

“The whole sentence becomes an exclamation – rather than just the first word.

“But fascinatingly, there’s no record of the Anglo-Saxons using exclamation marks, or any other form of punctuation, besides the full stop (or ‘point’) and the occasional semicolon.”

The academic, based in the University’s School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, looked at 141 instances of hwæt, comparing them to sentences without the word.

He discovered that in clauses beginning with hwæt , the verb is usually at the end – something which had not been observed before.
In the context of Old English word order in general, this means that these clauses are more likely to have been intended as exclamatives, rather than simple assertions.

Beowulf, set in Scandinavia, is commonly cited as one of the most important works of Anglo-Saxon literature.

It is an epic tale of war, monsters and heroism, in an early coming together of Anglo-Saxon and Christian traditions.

Dr Walkden added: “Even Seamus Heaney’s rendering of the first line in 2000, though a substantial achievement, is ultimately misleading.

“Like the others, he had no reason to doubt the accepted scholarship on the meaning of the word, so he translated it – brilliantly – with “So.”. But that translation now has to be rethought.

“Our understanding of Beowulf and its language is hugely important: it tells us where we come from and how much we’ve changed.

“Maybe now future editions may take this into account. After all, the text is regarded as the first line of English poetry in the most important piece of Anglo-Saxon literature ever written.”

Notes for editors

Dr Walkden is available for comment

The paper ‘The status of hwæt in Old English’ published in English Language and Linguistics is available.

For media enquiries contact:

Mike Addelman
Press Officer
Faculty of Humanities
SwagÖ±²¥
0161 275 0790
07717 881567
Michael.addelman@manchester.ac.uk
 

University of SwagÖ±²¥ scientist Professor Brian Cox returns to television screens in a new BBC2 series called Science Britannica starting on Wednesday 18 September.

Rock-star turned scientist Professor Cox, part of the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, will explore why, when science has done so much for humanity, it sometimes gets such a bad press.

In the first episode Frankenstein’s Monsters, he reveals that the gothic novel Frankenstein drew on Italian scientist Giovanni Aldini’s public attempts to raise the dead using electricity in the1800s.

It’s this powerful image of scientists ‘playing God’ that has dogged discovery ever since. Brian explains how the discovery of DNA, like nuclear fission before it, has resulted in controversy, with tales of ‘Frankenfoods’ fuelling the public’s mistrust of science.

Meeting Professor Tipi Aziz, whose pioneering work has helped thousands of Parkinson’s disease sufferers, he reveals that - because the treatment was developed through experimentation on monkeys - it is wholly unacceptable to some.

Professor Cox, who has done  much to popularise science through his BBC TV programmes Wonders of the Solar System and Wonders of the Universe, said: “Scientific progress sometimes comes at a cost that scientists and the society they serve struggle with. However, although Aldini’s work appalled his 19th-century audience, we are well served by the electronic defibrillators that routinely save lives today.”

The next episode looks at ‘Method and Madness’ on 25th September followed by ‘Clear Blue Skies’, which had input from Professor Matthew Cobb, from the University’s Faculty of Life Sciences, broadcast on Wednesday 2nd October.

Science Britannica starts Wednesday 18 September 9.00-10.00pm BBC TWO

For more information visit:

Notes for editors

For further information, please contact: Alison Barbuti | Media Relations Officer | SwagÖ±²¥ Tel. +44 (0)161 275 8383 |Email: alison.barbuti@manchester.ac.uk

Two of literature’s most famous detectives had a major influence on the development of the modern crime scene investigation, according to a historian from SwagÖ±²¥.

’s research into the history of “CSI” has revealed that two of its founding fathers – Frenchman Edmond Locard and Austrian Hans Gross – were influenced by British writers Arthur Conan Doyle and R Austen Freeman.

Conan Doyle, a doctor and creator of Sherlock Holmes and Freeman, another doctor whose creation Dr John Evelyn Thorndyke is the prototype for the modern forensic investigator, were evangelists for a professionalised CSI – according to the material analysed by Dr Burney.

The historian was speaking at the 24th International Congress of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, held at SwagÖ±²¥.

Dr Burney is based at the University’s . He said: “It’s surprising but clear that the fictional creations of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Thorndyke were a major influence on the crime scene as we know today.

“The stories showcased new methods of CSI: protecting the crime scene from contamination; preserving and recording the relationships between all objects in the scene, even the most trivial; and submitting minute trace evidence to scientific scrutiny.

“So it’s fair to say that Conan Doyle and Freeman helped investigators to systemise their methods to make the invisible, visible and the inconsequential, consequential.

“It wasn’t until the 1920s that dedicated CSIs began to appear as supervisors of a complex police and scientific operation, accompanied by photographers and policemen to search and protect the scene.

“Freeman and Conan Doyle helped bring this about.

“It’s amazing that both writers were able to conceive of the modern crime scene from their own imaginations – though I would guess they were familiar with the writings of Gross and Locard.”

In an English translation of Hans Gross’s handbook for crime investigators, Dr Burney discovered a passage referring to the forensics kit bag taken by English police to crime scenes as “the Thorndyke,” a clear reference to Freeman’s character.

And in his textbook, Edmond Locard, repeatedly urged all students of police science to read and absorb the lessons of Sherlock Holmes.

Dr Burney added: “During the Victorian era, there were certainly people who investigated the scenes of crimes, but they were was not systematic and scientific in the way they went about their work.

“At murder scenes, the representative of “science” was a medical man – sometimes a pathologist but often just a local practitioner.

“But Sherlock Holmes - and especially Dr Thorndyke- were critical of they way Victorian pathologists might contaminate a scene and helped change practice for good.

According to Dr Burney, ‘The Boscombe Valley mystery’ is one of many examples of how like modern CSI the novels were.

In this story, Holmes laments the destruction of crime scene evidence by “investigators” unaware of the need to adhere to csi protocol saying: “Oh, how simple it would all have been had I been here before they came like a herd of buffalo and wallowed all over it.”

And Dr Thorndyke argued in one of his earliest stories, “Message from the Deep Sea”, that the scene of a murder should be treated like: “the Palace of Sleeping Beauty … Not a grain of dust should be moved, not a soul should be allowed to approach it, until the scientific observer has seen everything in situ and absolutely undisturbed. No tramplings of excited constables, no rummaging by detectives, no scrambling to and fro of bloodhounds.”

The key to solving this particular murder was Thorndyke’s attention to and scientific analysis of sand traces on the dead woman’s pillow.

Dr Burney said: “When we consider the look of a crime scene today, with its protective tents and its ceremonially cloaked guardians, it is not difficult to see it as Thorndyke’s “Palace” come to life.”

Notes for editors

Images are available

Dr Burney is available for comment today (Thursday) and Friday afternoon.

The 24th International Congress of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, is being held at the University of SwagÖ±²¥ from July 21 – 28, 2013. The largest ever conference in the subject with more than 1600 attendees, ICHSTM brings together world-renowned academics from over 60 countries to present the latest research and debate current issues in the field.

For media enquiries contact:

Mike Addelman
Press Officer
SwagÖ±²¥
0161 275 0790
07717 881567
Michael.addelman@manchester.ac.uk
 

Academics at SwagÖ±²¥ and Bristol are marking the 700th birthday of one of the medieval world’s greatest writers, credited with establishing the European storytelling traditions we know today.

Italian Giovanni Boccaccio, author of the 1351 Decameron, a collection of 100 tales ranging from the erotic to the tragic, will be honoured through a five-month exhibition at the University’s .

It is curated by and   from SwagÖ±²¥ and Dr Rhiannon Daniels from the University of Bristol.

The same team are also hosting 60 Boccaccio scholars from around the world at a conference at SwagÖ±²¥ Town Hall on 11-12 July.

Called ‘Locating Boccaccio in 2013’, the exhibition will showcase some of the world-renowned Boccaccio exhibits held by The John Rylands Library, alongside loans from other libraries and private collections.

Exhibits span the period from the fifteenth century to the digital age, from medieval manuscripts and early printed books, through private press editions and popular classics right up to the internet resource, the Decameron Web.

As well as the historic books, it contains a collection of new artists’ books, specially commissioned for the anniversary to offer new responses to Boccaccio and his works.

Professor Milner said: “We are delighted to be hosting the world’s leading scholars in Boccaccio studies and showcase SwagÖ±²¥’s outstanding collection of Boccaccio’s works.

“His impact as a writer is vast, both as a founding father of the Renaissance and the revival of interest in the classical world and as an innovator in writing prose stories”

“His influence on figures as diverse as Chaucer and Salvador Dali reflect the scale of his literary heritage ”

Dr Armstrong said: “Boccaccio was a great humanist, and unlike Dante and other writers of the time, one of the first people to give women a voice.”

“He’s often described as the writer of ‘dirty stories’, but he’s so much more than that because we can credit him with establishing the great European traditions of storytelling.

“But he is also the master of the double entendre and the sexual farce.”

The star of the show is the ‘Roxburghe Decameron’, purchased by Mrs Rylands in 1892 from the Earl Spencer, and is the founding volume of the world’s most exclusive book club - The Roxburghe Club.

The Roxburghe Club, which boasts just forty members at any one time, was founded in 1812 after the auction of the 1471 printed edition of Boccaccio’s Decameron for a then world record price of £2,260 after a dramatic bidding war.

Notes for editors

The academics will also be involved in a further public Boccaccio event at the British Library in September 2013, while the artists’ book exhibition will move on to the University of the West of England in December 2013.

Dr Guyda Armstrong and Professor Stephen Milner  from SwagÖ±²¥ and Dr Rhiannon Daniels the University of Bristol are available for comment

Images are available

For media enquires contact:

Mike Addelman
Press Officer
Faculty of Humanities
SwagÖ±²¥
0161 275 0790
07717 881567
Michael.addelman@manchester.ac.uk

A 165-year-old envelope addressed to one of the Victorian era’s greatest writers has been reunited with its letter, unexpectedly discovered by an American academic.

The items, dated 8 November 1848 and penned by another influential Victorian figure, Thomas Carlyle, are now reunited at SwagÖ±²¥’s John Rylands Library.

Intended for Cranford author Elizabeth Gaskell, Carlyle’s letter praises her first novel Mary Barton, published on 18 October that year.

Carlyle, a historian and radical social commentator, did not know who wrote the novel, which was a closely guarded secret, but suspected it was by a woman opening his letter ‘Dear Madam’.

The letter, one of a substantial collection bequeathed by Gaskell’s daughter Meta to The John Rylands Library in 1913, was almost certainly read by the novelist.

David Southern, Managing Editor of the Carlyle Letters Project at Duke University Press, North Carolina, spotted the envelope in a random search on the internet.

He said: “I make regular trawls for Carlyleana that show up in catalogs of manuscript dealers, major auction houses and even on eBay.

“We have had a special relationship with The John Rylands Library since the 1950s,  when we acquired copies of a number of its manuscript letters and list 39 Carlyle letters from in our masterlist.

“So knowing of the Gaskell collection in SwagÖ±²¥, I immediately knew what it was when I spotted it and contacted Fran Baker at the Library to let them know.”

Mary Barton, based on Gaskell’s own observations, sympathetically portrayed the lives of the SwagÖ±²¥ cotton workers, creating a sensation amid criticism from mill owners.

When it was published, Gaskell asked for copies to be sent to writers she admired, including Thomas Carlyle.

In a letter dated 5 December she complained of the ‘impertinent and unjustifiable curiosity of people’ about the authorship of her novel but that ‘in the midst of all my deep and great annoyance, Mr Carlyle’s letter has been most valuable; and has given me almost the only unmixed pleasure I have yet received from the publication of MB’.

Fran Baker, archivist at The John Rylands Library, said: “The letter this envelope originally held was sent before the author’s identity became known, and directed to 186 The Strand; the address of Gaskell’s publishers, Chapman and Hall.

“It was forwarded to Gaskell by Chapman and Hall, and was definitely in her hands by December 1848.

“The envelope bears no postage marks, suggesting it was handed in at the office, perhaps by a messenger sent on Carlyle’s behalf.”

She added: “At what point Carlyle’s letter became separated from the envelope that originally contained it remains a mystery. We don’t even know whether the envelope was forwarded to Gaskell with the letter.

“If it was, one explanation for its subsequent disappearance might be that Gaskell was an avid autograph collector, and was always ready to pass on the letters and signatures of well-known figures to friends and acquaintances. She may therefore have forwarded the envelope, with Carlyle’s precious signature, to a fellow collector.

“Its peregrinations during the past 150 years or so may never become known, but I’m delighted it has finally reached a permanent resting place, reunited with its original contents.”

Notes for editors

Visit to see The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle.

Images are available of the letter, envelope, and portraits of Elizabeth Gaskell and Thomas Carlyle. Please credit: Gaskell Collection

• Letter dated 8 November 1848.
• Envelope dated 8 November 1848
• B&w photograph of Gaskell taken by the photographer Alexander McGlashon in c. 1864, the year before Gaskell’s death.
• Portrait miniature painted by William John Thomson in Edinburgh in 1832. Gaskell would have been 21, almost 22; she was also called Elizabeth Stevenson at this point – it was a couple of months before her marriage. Thomson was Scotland’s leading miniaturist and he was also the brother of Elizabeth’s stepmother, Catherine.

Fran Baker is available for comment

For media enquires contact:
Mike Addelman
Press Officer
Faculty of Humanities
SwagÖ±²¥
0161 275 0790
07717 881567
michael.addelman@manchester.ac.uk
 

A new mural poem by renowned writer Lemn Sissay – celebrating the virtues of peace and quiet – has been unveiled at SwagÖ±²¥.

‘Let There Be Peace’ (SwagÖ±²¥ 2012) is part of the award-winning SwagÖ±²¥ poet’s Poems As Landmarks project.

The first in the series was “Hardy’s Well”, inscribed on to the popular SwagÖ±²¥ pub of the same name in the mid-1990s.

Other work to be found in the city include “Flags”, laid over  a mile on The Northern Quarter’s Tib Street, and “Rain” on Oxford Road, passed by SwagÖ±²¥ students every day as they make their way into University.

The latest addition provides a tranquil and inspiring backdrop for the large atrium space in University Place on Oxford Road. It was painted over five days by Gerard Brown, a local sign writer from The Graphics Centre, onto what was previously a blank white wall.

The open-plan atrium space can be used by people from across the University, with many students passing through it on their way to visit the accommodation office and to access support services.

But the area also provides a haven for quiet personal study or small group work – amid the hubbub of an otherwise busy building, which houses large lecture theatres, the main refectory and dozens of teaching rooms.

Tall glass windows on corridors overlooking the atrium allow building users to enjoy the 15 metre high poem as they go about their daily business.

The commission and installation of the poem was funded by alumni of the University through the Your SwagÖ±²¥ Fund, which supports projects across campus to enrich the student experience.

Lemn Sissay said: “Let There Be Peace stands with my Landmark Poems as testament to the creativity and pride of a world class city with a world class University. SwagÖ±²¥.”

Prof Dame Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice Chancellor of SwagÖ±²¥ said:  “We hope this uplifting poem will provide inspiration as well as academic, creative and intellectual stimulation to the many students and staff who see it during their journeys around campus.”

Chris Cox, Director of Development and Alumni Relations, said: “We’re delighted our alumni have made possible such a beautiful piece of mural poetry. I hope students, staff and everyone visiting the campus will make a point to take the time to appreciate this important landmark and to join us in thanking our alumni of all disciplines and ages for their generosity.” 

Lemn Sissay’s Landmark poems include commissions by The City of London and The Royal Festival Hall.

He is the first poet to write for the 2012 Olympics and his poem “Spark Catchers” will soon be seen by millions, as part of Winning Words, an initiative for poetry in public spaces. His poem Gilt of Cain was unveiled by Bishop Desmond Tutu in London, and he has been awarded an MBE for Services to Literature. He is currently writing a poem which will be projected onto the coastal town of Margate.

Most of the Lemn Sissay’s Landmark poems can be seen at 

Notes for editors

For more information, please contact Jon Keighren, Media Relations Manager, SwagÖ±²¥, 0161 275 8384.

Photographs are available.

Lemn Sissay is available for interview. Please contact Mike McCarthy at Lakin McCarthy, 0114 2680243 / 07775 646482.

An exquisite handwritten edition of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, kept at The John Rylands Library, is now available on the iBookstore.

The iBookstore is included in the free iBooks app for iPad, iPhone, iPod touch and at www.itunes.co.uk.

The manuscript, written by little known SwagÖ±²¥ artist Alan L Tabor, was digitised using state-of-the-art technology by specialist photographers at the world famous university library.

Tabor wrote the entire text by hand and decorated it with medieval style illustrations. His widow donated the manuscript to when he died in 1957.

In 1937 Tabor  produced a loyal address from the City of SwagÖ±²¥ upon the accession of George VI and in 1943 designed the scroll conferring the freedom of the city upon Winston Churchill.

Published in facsimile by George G. Harrap in 1916, this title is the latest Rylands addition to the ground-breaking ‘eBook Treasures’ series, which enables iPad, iPhone and iPod touch users to explore rare works from UK collections in ultra high-definition.

Also being made available from the John Rylands Library is a first edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets, published during the poet’s lifetime in 1609. They are one of only 13 copies in existence.

The sonnets were bought by the Spencer family for £8 in 1798, then acquired by the John Rylands Library in 1901 as part of the Spencer Collection.

Developed with media company Armadillo Systems, each eBook is £4.99 to download and uses realistic page turning software linked to additional video and audio content.

A Christmas Carol was first published in December 1843, inspiring a genre of Victorian Christmas books.

The first edition of the classic was illustrated by John Leech, and the book has been a favourite with illustrators ever since.

, a Senior Lecturer in 19th Century writing at SwagÖ±²¥ said: “It’s very appropriate that A Christmas Carol inspired a SwagÖ±²¥-based artist to create this stunning work, because it was during a visit to SwagÖ±²¥ that Dickens first got the idea to write the story.

“It has been working its magic ever since it was first published, continuing to this very day.

“In 1843 that was immediately recognised by Dickens’ fellow-novelist, Margaret Oliphant, who declared it to be 'unique as a work which actually made people behave better'.

“In 1867 when a Boston factory owner attending  a Christmas Eve reading of A Christmas Carol by Dickens himself was so moved by the tale he ordered the works to be closed on Christmas Day and gave a turkey to every employee.

“Thackeray described it as "a national benefit" and in the early part of the twentieth century, the Queen of Norway sent presents annually to disabled children in London inscribed "With Tiny Tim's Love".

Director of the John Rylands Library Jan Wilkinson said: “We are delighted that general readers as well as Dickens fans will  be able to see this  beautifully illustrated manuscript in high resolution. It will be the next best thing to owning the original.

“A key aim of the University is engage with the public by sharing our knowledge and expertise and this is a strong example of that.

“We know very little about the origins of this work and the artist Alan Tabor, so if any members of the public have any further information, the library would be grateful to receive it.”

Michael Stocking, Managing Director of Armadillo Systems, said: "This is one of the most evocative books we have in eBook Treasures, and we're delighted to be working with the John Rylands Library on this project.

“I thought I was familiar with A Christmas Carol, but this version made me re-read the book from cover to cover."

Notes for editors

Book treasures are being made available by the British Library, National History Museum and Royal Society in partnership with Apple Europe. More information can be found at www.ebooktreasures.org or find ebook treasures on Facebook.

It is available to download for £4.99 from the iBookstore on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch or at www.itunes.com/iBookstore  

A Christmas Carol is now on display to the public at the John Rylands Library, Deansgate, SwagÖ±²¥.

Images are available.

Dr Sanders, Michael stocking and John Rylands Library project manager Carol Burrows are available for interview.

For media enquiries contact:

Mike Addelman
Press Officer
Faculty of Humanities
SwagÖ±²¥
0161 275 0790
07717 881567
Michael.addelman@manchester.ac.uk
 

A 350-year-old notebook which describes the execution of innocent women for consorting with the Devil, has been published online by SwagÖ±²¥’s John Rylands Library.

Puritan writer Nehemiah Wallington wrote passages on his attitudes to life, religion, the civil war as well as the witchcraft trials of the period.

By 1654 Wallington catalogued 50 notebooks, of which only seven are known to survive.

Each is unique, and the Tatton copy documenting battles and skirmishes of English Civil War period and the disturbing violence of the 1640s in which dozens East Anglian women were killed.

There are also 4 in the British Library, 1 in the Guildhall Library, 1 in the Folger Library, Washington DC, and 1 at Tatton Park in Cheshire.

Last year, a team of experts from the John Rylands’ Centre for Heritage Imaging and Collection Care (CHICC) team funded by JISC, spent a week at Tatton Park, Cheshire, to capture the document on camera.

Wallington tells how a supposed coven of witches was found in the Essex village of Manningtree.

Manningtree is the home village of Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins, notorious for his brutality against women.

In 1645 Hopkins had been appointed to examine villager Elizabeth Clarke for ‘devil’s marks’ like warts or moles.

Under torture, she named other women, including her daughter Rebecca. When Rebecca was herself tortured, she implicated her own mother as a witch.

A total of 19 women were eventually hanged, though Rebecca was saved thanks to her confession.

At the Chelmsford trial in July 1645, Wallington wrote about Rebecca.

On the ‘many witches in Essex, Suffolk and Northfolk’, he wrote:
“July the XX111 there were at Least XXXV111 wiches imprisoned in the Town of Ipswich…divers of them voluntarily and without any forcing or compulsion freely declare that they have made a covenant with the Devill, to forsake God and Christ ant to take him to be their Master and Like wise do acknowledge that divers Cattell; and som Christians have been killed by their meanes …By this wee may see the grand delusions and impostures of Satan by which we works upon men & women in these Latter times of the world What sins so hanious what crimes so grevious will not they run in to from whom God is gone’

James Robinson, Senior Photographer at  the John Rylands Library, said: “Our work at Tatton Park  involved careful documentation of each and every page of this fragile and important notebook.

“We’re delighted the public, free of charge, will now be read for themselves the horrors of that period.”

Tatton Park Mansion and Collections Manager Caroline Schofield said: “Nehemiah Wallington, a turner by trade and a Christian by religion, was an intelligent working man battling with the adversities of life in the seventeenth century.

Of his brood of children only his daughter Sarah survived into adulthood.

“At times he doubted his salvation to the degree that he suffered a mental breakdown and tried to take his own life.

“He began to keep his diaries in an effort to record his own sins and God’s mercies.

“The Wallington manuscripts are hugely important primary sources for scholars of the period.”

Notes for editors

More details online at or visit Open the Insight browser, select Rylands Collection and search for Wallington.

Caroline Schofield and Jamie Robinson are available for comment.

Images are available.

For media enquiries contact:

Mike Addelman
Media Relations
Faculty of Humanities
SwagÖ±²¥
0161 275 0790
07717 881567
Michael.addelman@manchester.ac.uk
 

Popular online arts journal the SwagÖ±²¥ Review will today broadcast last week’s controversial debate between Martin Amis and Clive James on the subject of aging.

Renowned novelist Amis, who is a Professor of Creative Writing at SwagÖ±²¥, told the audience that writers are past their prime once they reach old age.

Philip Roth, Vladimir Nabokov and John Updike, he said, were examples of how older writers lose their literary skills.

Not so, said respected novelist, poet and broadcaster James, who cited Tolstoy, Goethe and Yeats as writers who hit new heights in old age.

The SwagÖ±²¥ Review is published by SwagÖ±²¥’s , home to leading literary figures including Amis.

Four Amis public debates are organised every year by the Centre, where he is based.

Amis told the audience at the University's : “Old age is not for old people. It’s like starring in a low budget horror film, saving the worst till last.

“Saul Bellow published in his mid-80s a charming but slight novel called Ravelstein - but nothing like the mighty longer novels.

“The great stylist John Updike’s ear went and he was reduced to writing [poor] sentences. The idea of not spotting clunking repetition is a terrifying indictment of failing powers.

“And Philip Roth lost the ability to breath life into his characters.

“I hope and expect to have a good last period. But there are things that science can tell us - we all face a shrinking vocabulary. I reach for the thesaurus more often than I used to.”

However, James disagreed, citing Tolstoy, Goethe, Yeats as examples of writers who achieved literary success in old age.

“I am 70 and I feel within myself a new strength - especially in poetry and there’s a simple reason for it: my work depends on reflecting experience and at this age I’ve a lot of experience to reflect on.

“I have every intention of employing this time in my life for creative profit.

“I probably can’t still produce the glittering phrase out of thin air: there’s something in the argument that lyric talent goes off with the years.

“But poetry is not all lyricism and many great poets mature in old age because they have more and more to say.

“The later years are creative years: we’re not going into the dark, but into the light.

“Goethe was 81 years old when he met Ulrike von Levetzow and fell in love with her. She was 19 and he made an utter fool of himself - he was a laughing stock.

“But out of it he wrote a poem - the Marienbad Elegy- which is one of the greatest poems in literature.

“Yeats exploited the power of reflection, a transparency denied to the young. His later poems are some of the greatest in English. These magnificent works could only be produced by an old man.”

The SwagÖ±²¥ Review  nurtures and promote the best emerging talent as well as featuring new work.

Leading writers and poets are on the Centre’s teaching staff, including novelist M.J. Hyland, Irish poet Vona Groarke and science fiction author Geoff Ryman.
 

Notes for editors

The Amis james debate is available for download at    Click podcasts.

For media enquiries contact
Mike Addelman
Media Relations Officer
Faculty of Humanities
SwagÖ±²¥
0161 275 0790
07717 881 567
michael.addelman@manchester.ac.uk

Guests at Café at the Rylands, located within the historic and beautiful John Rylands Library, have been treated to an exclusive tasting session of Richard II’s recipes from ‘The Forme of Cury’, one of the oldest known cookery manuscripts in the English language.

The 600-year-old book, written in Middle English, doesn’t detail precise quantities or cooking instructions and created many problems for the catering team.  Manager of Café at The Rylands, Debbie Fletcher, said: “Some of the combinations were very strange and it was a real challenge to find some of the ingredients.”

But after hours of experimenting and sampling, chefs at the café managed to devise a menu suitable for modern day palates.

Specially invited guests sampled Tart in Ymber Day (a type of egg custard tart sweetened with raisins), Compast (cooked root vegetables cooked in a sweetened vinaigrette), Payn Puff (boiled fruits in coffin or pye, a type of pastry), Frumenty (bulghar wheat and chicken stock coloured and flavoured with saffron served as a porridge type dish), Gingerbrede (spiced breadcrumbs bound with honey and rolled in sugar and ginger, washed down with Piment (a sweetened spice red wine with ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and pepper).

Chefs at the cafe plan to introduce one of the dishes into their contemporary menu and the exclusive tasting was an opportunity to capture valuable customer feedback. Staff are now reviewing responses and the favourite will become a permanent fixture in their January 2010 menu and will be announced in the New Year.

John Hodgson, keeper of manuscripts and archives at John Rylands Library, was also on hand to provide guests with an insight into the historical origins of the book and a rare viewing of the precious item.

The Forme of Cury was compiled and written in 1390 by King Richard II’s master cooks and contains over 190 recipes that would have originally been served in the royal household, from the servants’ quarters through to the top royal table. It includes recipes made from porpoise, pike and blancmange and gives a great insight into the delicacies eaten in the Middle Ages. 

The Forme of Cury was bought by Mrs. Rylands for the library from Lord Crawford as part of a larger collection in 1901 and it has been housed in the library ever since. John Rylands Library houses thousands more of the UK's most exquisite collections of books, manuscripts and archives.

Further information

A video of the day can be viewed at:

The Forme of Cury was digitalised and went online this year and can be found at:

Notes for editors

Contact
Jon Keighren, Media Relations Manager, SwagÖ±²¥
0161 275 8384

Dr Yaakov Wise, who specialises in Jewish history,  says the Tory leader is descended from a German-born Jewish scholar whose writings furthered the study of Hebrew in European Christendom at a time of widespread hostility toward its Jews.

And according to Dr Wise, who has been using archival material to examine the Cameron family tree, the Tory leader could also be a direct descendent of the greatest ever Hebrew prophet, Moses.

Cameron is a descendent of banker Emile Levita, who came to Britain as a German immigrant in the 1850s. Emile Levita was himself a descendent of Elijah Levita, who lived from 1469-1549.

During the last years of his life Elijah Levita produced, among other works, two major books: the 1541 Translator’s Book, the first dictionary of the Targums or Aramaic commentaries on the Hebrew Bible.

His lexicon of 1542 explained much of the Mishnaic Hebrew language and was a supplement to two important earlier dictionaries.

Elijah Levita also wrote what is thought to be the first ever Yiddish novel - called the Bove-bukh (The Book of Bove) written in 1507 and printed in 1541.

The book is based on an Italian version of an Anglo-Norman tale about a queen who betrays her husband and causes his death.

Emile Levita, who was granted citizenship in 1871, is Cameron’s great great grandfather.

Levita ,says Dr Wise, is the Latin form of the name Levite, a Jew descended from the Tribe of Levi, the son of Jacob and one of the original twelve tribes of Israel.

“The leader of the Levites at the time of the exodus from Egypt was Moses, who was married with two sons named in the Bible,” said Dr Wise - who is based at the University’s Centre for Jewish Studies.

“However, later descendents of Moses are unknown and many of today’s Levites - often carrying the surnames such as  Levy, Levine, Levitan or  Levita - could in fact be his descendants.”

Emile Levita enjoyed considerable financial success, becoming a director of the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, which had offices in Threadneedle Street in the City of London.

He took on all the trappings of an English gentleman - he hunted, owned a grouse moor in Wales, and started an educational tradition which has continued through to today's Tory leader, by sending his four sons to Eton.

Emile’s eldest son, Arthur, a stockbroker, married Steffie Cooper, a cousin of the Royal Family providing Cameron with a link to King George III, an ancestor he shares with the Queen  - his fifth cousin once removed.

Notes for editors

Sources include archives at The University of Leipzig, Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, 107th  edition, the 1871 Census of England  & Wales and the  gravestone of Elijah Levita in the Lido Jewish cemetery, Venice.

Dr Wise is available for comment

An image of Dr Wise is available

For media enquiries contact:

Mike Addelman
Media Relations Officer
Faculty of Humanities
SwagÖ±²¥
0161 275 0790
07717 881 567
michael.addelman@manchester.ac.uk

A world renowned children’s author had a life tainted by tragedy, despised Enid Blyton and dabbled in the paranormal, according to her private diaries published for the first time this month.

A world renowned children’s author had a life tainted by tragedy, despised Enid Blyton and dabbled in the paranormal, according to her private diaries published for the first time this month.

Alison Uttley –known to millions across the world as the author of Tales Of Little Grey Rabbit and Sam Pig –kept a diary for more than 40 years which is now archived at SwagÖ±²¥’s .

After her husband James’ suicide in 1930, Uttley launched her writing career  to support her only child John, and went on to write more than 100 books.

Sam Pig, Brock the Badger, Tim Rabbit, Little Grey Rabbit, Squirrel and Hare have mesmerised children ever since.

In the diaries Uttley wrote of her admiration for poet Walter de la Mare and other male figures, including her former Professor at SwagÖ±²¥ – known at the time as the Victoria University of SwagÖ±²¥.

The author-  who in 1906 as a physics student became the second woman ever to graduate at the University - bequeathed a third of her literary income to support students at the University’s Ashburne Hall.

But she hated many women and was bitterly resentful of comparisons with Beatrix Potter

She and scornfully dismissive of her near neighbour Enid Blyton, who she called a ‘vulgar, curled woman’ and whose success provoked her envy and dislike. She also detested her main illustrator, Margaret Tempest.

The former suffragette and close friend of first Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald wrote about her dreams and her psychic abilities as well as expressing a deep love for her son John.

John also tragically took his own life by driving his car off a cliff two years after his mother's death in 1978.

She also described in loving detail her fondly remembered childhood in rural Derbyshire. She lived out her old age in suburban Buckinghamshire and died in 1976, aged 91.

The book – The Private Diaries of Alison Uttley 1932 to 1971 – is edited by Professor Denis Judd, author of Uttley's biography. Professor Judd who along with the members of the Ashburne Association is a trustee of her literary estate.

, which turned 107 this year, is the organisation of past and present students living at the University of SwagÖ±²¥’s Ashburne Hall.

He said: “These diaries chart Alison Uttley’s rise as a best-selling author and are a fascinating read.

“They describe some surprising attitudes to the people she knew as well as highlighting the tragedy of her husband’s death which blighted her life.

“She recorded her frustration with publishers, wrote beautiful descriptions of the countryside and described her early financial struggles.

“Her competitive and passionate nature often clouded her judgement and drastically affected her private and professional life.

“Though she ended her life as a grande dame of literature, she was acclaimed but never entirely content.”

Alison Uttley on:

• Enid Blyton:  ‘False teeth, red lips... boastful. ... we only met once, and when I asked her which books she wrote, she replied “Look in Smith’s window” and turned away, and never spoke again.’.
• Margaret Tempest: ‘She is a humourless bore, seldom does a smile come, her eyes cold and hard... she is absolutely awful...’
• Walter de la Mare: ‘He was smiling and very charming, so that I quite loved him.’
• Her characters: ‘Why do children love them? Because I believe in them. Mine aren’t made up. They are real...I don’t sit down to write a story, they come.’

Notes for editors

Images are available:

• Alison at a picnic at about the time she became engaged to James
• Drawings of her animal characters drawn by Margaret Tempest, her illustrator.

The Private Diaries of Alison Uttley 1932 to 1971 is edited by Professor Denis Judd and published by Pen and Sword books.

Journalists are welcome to photograph a blue plaque commemorating Alison Uttley on the steps of the grade 2 listed Behrens House, Ashburne Hall Campus at SwagÖ±²¥.

Professor Judd is available for comment.

For media enquiries contact:

Mike Addelman
Media Relations Officer
Faculty of Humanities
SwagÖ±²¥
0161 275 0790
07717 881 567
michael.addelman@manchester.ac.uk

A collection of letters written by two Victorian families – including one of the era’s best loved writers - have been acquired by SwagÖ±²¥’s John Rylands Library.

The correspondence between Elizabeth Gaskell, her friend Mary Green and Mary’s daughter Isabella - as well as hundreds of letters between other members of the Green family - is an important addition to the world’s most important Gaskell collection – already housed at the library.

In one of the letters written a month after Gaskell’s death in November 1865, Isabella Green recounts how the writer had eerily predicted early in the year that she did not expect to live beyond December.

The Gaskell letters in the archive are full of news about her writing, reflections on other authors, her hectic domestic life and the constant stream of visitors to her household.

Some of the letters between the Green family provide a fascinating insight into life in the Cheshire town where Gaskell had grown up in the first half of the nineteenth century  - immortalised in her novel Cranford.

Others touch on subjects including travel, politics, art and literature, social events, and the minutiae of daily life, from current fashions to medical treatments.

Gaskell also discusses difficulties with her most controversial novel ‘Ruth’ published in 1853. The novel dealt with unmarried motherhood and Gaskell was worried about reactions to the book.

She expressed relief at the Greens’ positive response to it, but wrote: “I feared and still think it probable that many may refuse to read any book of that kind”.

The author of ‘Cranford’ - which famously depicts life in Knutsford, Cheshire where she grew up - had died suddenly of a heart attack on 12 November, leaving her last novel ‘Wives and Daughters’ a chapter short of completion.

The manuscript of the novel – also kept at – poignantly breaks off at the top of a page. She authored five others, along with two novellas, numerous articles and short stories, and the famous biography of her friend Charlotte Brontë.

John Rylands Library archivist Fran Baker said: “This archive sheds interesting new light on Gaskell and her daughters.

“The reference to Gaskell foreseeing her own death is intriguing. By early November 1865, she claimed to be feeling more energetic and in better health than she had done for years.

“She was busy preparing a house at Alton, Hampshire, which she had secretly bought in the hope of persuading her husband William to retire there.

“She believed his life in SwagÖ±²¥ was ‘bad for his health’, not least because of the strain he put on himself with overwork.

“On 12 November she was at the new house chatting over tea with three of her daughters, when she collapsed into the arms of her daughter Meta and died instantly. Her husband had no idea she was there.

“Referring to the prediction, Isabella wrote in a letter to her brother that Gaskell had said she ‘did not expect to live thro’ the year’.

“People often have presentiments like this, which are forgotten when they don’t come true”.

The former owner of the archive, Miss Jean Jamison, is a descendant of Isabella Green, the youngest of the Green daughters, who married Dr Arthur Jamison in 1875. Miss Jamison sold the archive to the Rylands on behalf of the Jamison family.

Ms Baker added: “The library would like to thank Joan Leach of the Gaskell Society who brought the archive to its attention, and Jean Jamison for choosing the Rylands as a home for her family papers.”

Notes for editors

The purchase was made possible by funding from the MLA/V&A Purchase Grant Fund, the Friends of the National Libraries, and the Friends of the John Rylands.

Fran Baker is available for comment

Miss Jamison and Joan Leach are available for comment

Images are available. Please caption as Copyright John Rylands University Library. 

• The first and second pages of the letter from Isabella Green to her brother Philip which refers to Gaskell’s prediction of her own death – from the new archive.
• Reproduction of a photograph of Gaskell taken during the 1860s -  towards the end of her life.
• Gaskell’s inkstand, paperknife, quills, letters.
• Miniature portrait of Gaskell by William John Thomson.

Documents from the archive will be on display at the John Rylands Library, Deansgate, SwagÖ±²¥ until Sunday 1 February.

For media enquiries contact:

Mike Addelman
Media Relations Officer
Faculty of Humanities
SwagÖ±²¥
0161 275 0790
07717 881 567
michael.addelman@manchester.ac.uk