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Monday 30 January 2017

Our next speaker, Dan Richards Friday 17 February




Dan Richards was born in Wales in 1982 and grew up in Bristol and Bath.
His first book, Holloway, was co-authored with Robert Macfarlane & illustrated by Radiohead artist and collaborator Stanley Donwood. Self-published in 2012 as a limited run of 277 books, Holloway was issued in a general edition by Faber in 2013.
The book explored the sunken paths and 'hollow ways' of South Dorset's sandstone, chalk and flint, a landscape of shadows, spectres and great strangeness.
Moving in the spaces between social history, psychogeography and travel writing, Holloway has been described as a gem and a haunting work of art.
'A perfect miniature prose poem of a book, beautifully printed and published.' (William Dalrymple — Observer Books of the Year)
'Glorious ... endearingly open-hearted.' (Barnaby Rogerson — Sunday Telegraph Books of the Year)
Dan's second book, The Beechwood Airship Interviews, was about art and creative process and takes a journey into the methodologies and workplaces of some of Britain’s most unique artists, including Dame Judi Dench, Bill Drummond, Jenny Saville, David Nash, Manic Street Preachers, Vaughan Oliver, Jane Bown, and Stewart Lee. It was published by The Friday Project/HarperCollins in July 2015.
'A wonderful jigsaw puzzle of a book’ (Kirsty Gunn, Observer)
‘A kind of miraculous manual, a brilliant answer to the simplest and most mysterious question art inspires: how do they do that?’ (Horatio Clare)
‘Burnishing, edifying and relentlessly inspiring. A complex meditation on creativity as opposed to mere technique, full of wonderful, wildly grand statements from people who make excellent things.’ (Emma Jane Unsworth)
Climbing Days, his third book, was published by Faber in June 2016, and saw him set out on the trail of his great-great-aunt, Dorothy Pilley, a prominent and pioneering mountaineer of the early twentieth century. For years, Dorothy and her husband, I. A. Richards, had remained mysterious to Dan, but the chance discovery of Dorothy's 1935 memoir marked the beginning of a journey. Following in the pair's footholds, he travelled and climbed across Europe, using Dorothy's book as a guide. Having learnt the ropes in Wales and Scotland, he scrambled in the Lake District and topped summits in Spain and Switzerland, ending with an ascent of the severe serrate pinnacle of Ivor and Dorothy's climbing lives, the mighty Dent Blanche in the high Alps of Valais.
'Climbing Days is a special book, not quite like anything I have ever read before, and a law unto itself.
It's a wayward, funny, warm, wandering, open, inspiring journey back into the lives of two remarkable people, and out into the remarkable landscapes they explored. 
Climbing Days belongs in part to a rich comic tradition of mountain-writing which includes Bowman's 'The Ascent of Rum Doodle' and Eric Newby's 'A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush.'' (Robert Macfarlane)
‘A delightful portrait of an extraordinary woman. Dan Richards’ prose is a joy to read, and despite my lifelong aversion to heights, swept me happily along in the pioneering footsteps of the fascinating Dorothy Pilley’ (Nigel Slater)
'Climbing Days is the most enormous fun... Richards has something of Jerome K Jerome about him. It’s a miracle he lived to tell this tale and Climbing Days is a wonderful achievement. I will be intrigued to see where he takes us next.' (Katharine Norbury, Observer)
'[A] totally engaging and satisfying book on every level – as biography, memoir, travelogue and erudite meditation on the restlessness and indomitableness of the human spirit.' (Andy Childs, Caught By The River)
'[A]n affectionate portrait... For non-climbers, the attractions of mountaineering might seem inexplicable, but Richards conveys much of the thrill and sense of achievement. The resulting book is an entertaining and absorbing account of past and present relationships forged amid extreme physical endeavour.' (The Sunday Times)
'Sublime' (Alex Preston, Observer)
'[A] rich and illuminating portrait of a remarkable woman.' (The Scotsman)
'With its roots in the psychogeographical writing about landscape, this fascinating account of the life of the early twentieth-century pioneering mountaineer Dorothy Pilley eschews objectivity in favour of dramatizing the relationship between writer and subject, melding personal reflection and the process of historical investigation.' (TLS)
Climbing Days was shortlisted for the Wanderlust Adventure Travel Book of the Year at The Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards 2016.

Dan is currently at work on his fourth book, Outpost, an exploration
If the question at the heart of Climbing Days was 'why climb mountains?' Outpost will seek to answer the question of what draws people to wilderness? What can the spartan expedient architecture of such places tell us about the human condition? What compels us to go to the ends of the earth, and what future do such places have? 
He plans to visit the bothies in Rannoch Moor and the Cairngorms; the tjalda and sæluhús (Houses of Joy) in the Icelandic interior; Festival au désert in Mali, the fire lookout cabin in Washington State where Jack Kerouac wrote and kept his eyes peeled for forest fires in 1956; a shed on Ny-Ålesund in Oscar II Land, Spitsbergen, Svalbard where my father stayed during an Arctic expedition in 1982; the lighthouse of Cape Brett, New Zealand; desert habitations in New Mexico and the space-pods in Utah of the mooted Mars mission; brutalist tree-houses in Switzerland; finishing at Stromness, former whaling station on South Georgia and destination of Ernest Shackleton's extraordinary journey to raise help and rescue for the stranded crew of the Endurance in 1916.

Outpost will be published by Canongate in Spring 2019.
 
 

Literary Society and Book Group January 2017

Thanks to Alan McKinna for this:


What an exciting week at the start of 2017 for the society! As a result of the generosity of Mr & Mrs Voice, we had the privilege of an interview with their Pett Level week-end neighbour, Matt Charman, a young and very successful screen-writer who came to significant public notice as the writer of the very successful 2015 film “Bridge of Spies” directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks & Mark Rylance, with its BAFTA and Oscar nominations and awards in 2016. Matt had asked if he could be interviewed (rather than just giving a straight talk): Gill Southgate was prepared for that but not for the acute chest infection which overcame her two days earlier. Bill Doherty stepped up to the post and enthusiastically led Matt and the audience into the history of the film. Whilst researching ‘The Unfinished Life’ (of J.F.Kennedy) Matt came across a footnote in a book of that title which reported that a US lawyer, James Donaldson, had travelled to Cuba to negotiate with Castro the release of 1,500 US marines captured at their invasion of ‘The Bay of Pigs’. Following this up
 led to his discovery that earlier, Mr Donaldson had travelled to East Berlin to effect the spy-swap of Gary Powers (a captured US U2 pilot) with Rudolf Abel (a Russian spy who Donovan had earlier defended in the US Courts). Matt was sure that all this must have been documented in a movie by someone else ..... but, NO it had not. He then wrote a 15 minute ‘pitch’ of the Spy Exchange story to offer to film producers in Los Angeles. His agent fixed him up with seven or eight daily meetings in a week – which provoked little interest to start but on the last day he met the producers of “DreamWorld” who said they wanted it and they would show it to Spielberg. Matt flew home with his head spinning a bit after this quick encounter of a great number of film executives! First came a message on his phone that “Steven Spielberg had called expressing great interest and wanting to talk” – this was just before Christmas and after he had returned Spielberg’s call he flew back to LA to meet him. “I like it and I want Tom Hanks to play Donaldson: how long will it take you to write it? I have other possible projects but I would like to do this next – can you write it by the end of January? We’ll have to show it to the Coen brothers because they are used to working with Tom BUT IT’S YOUR STORY”. Matt tells us that he wrote his 15 minute pitch into a script in 5 weeks !!  Then he told us some of the excitements of his complete involvement in making of the film, getting to know the Coens, the actors – especially Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance in rehearsals and then sitting beside Spielberg at the filming. 
 
Of course he had known Mark Rylance on the London stage. After studying English at U.C. London, he had written a play for a competition for new Playwrights which, out of seventy entries, he won the prize and the play was staged at the Soho theatre. That led him to a meeting with Nicholas Hytner at the National Theatre where for three years he became ‘Playwright-in-Residence’; the three plays he wrote were staged; these and the complete experience with actors, plays AND audiences was invaluable for learning his craft (in all a ten-year project). Bill then took Matt back to discussion of an earlier film script for “Suite Francaise” : which was shared with the Director,
Saul Dibb. Then questions came quickly from the members’ audience which helped us to understand this disciplined and determined (‘driven’ ?) young man and father. Since having two children he is keen whenever possible to sharing bedtime with them. At home he works for the morning on one project, has lunch and a short walk before writing for a different one in the afternoon before the kids’ bath-time. Several scripts are in hand but especially a film with Spielberg about the American commentator, Walter Cronkite and his campaign against the Vietnam War.
 
As a result of this fascinating evening I have managed to share the DVD of “Bridge of Spies” with my wife (first seen last year at the Kino) and two friends: it has an excellent 15 minute summary of the Cold War which for many young folk can be unknown territory. I have watched a couple of Matt Charman’s YouTube interviews – as we now know, this is a format of presentation in which he excels. Always he marvels with gratitude at the opportunities which his discovery of a hitherto unknown American Lawyer, James Donaldson, has given him. In writing the script it came to life when he met Donaldson’s son, sitting in a New York diner, to talk about and hear about his father. The Donaldson family came to the New York premiere of the film – so appreciative that the story about the man they loved had now been told.
 
Two days before this superb evening, the Society’s reading group had met to discuss a recent Winchelsea crime novel: “Murder on the Strike of Five” by M.P. Peacock. Maddy Coelho and her brother, Paul Youlten came to explain to us their joint writing of this story as a novel for Kindle publication – without agents or orthodox publishers. It was another surprising meeting and this account of some varied, often unpleasant, Russians trapped on the Trans-Siberian Railway at the start of the Revolution in 1917 is well worth a read and can be easily obtained from the Rye Bookshop (if you don’t have a Kindle).
 
Alan McKinna