Anne Sebba's Blog, page 6

The Pram in the Hall – Enid Bagnold Writer and Mother

A talk I gave recently at the October Gallery – The annual Persephone Lecture I have never thought it a particular advantage to know the person you are writing about. You will have known them at a particular time or in a particular role. Above all, for a child to write about a parent seems [...]

Confused in Berlin

A weekend in cold and wet Berlin has left me confused. Can you (should you) make art out of suffering and if so what is appropriate where and who should pay? Why do I find tourist maps offering tours of Jewish Berlin, tours of Nazi Berlin, tours of �fun time� Berlin offensive � Are we [...]

What Brighton means to me

One of the most powerful images from the Vienna Portraits exhibition currently at the National Gallery is by Egon Schiele of himself and his pregnant wife dying of Spanish �flu. He was to succumb to it himself three days later, aged just 28, later described by the Nazis as a ‘degenerate’ artist. I cannot empty [...]

Hidden panels, dusty books, silence at all times? That�s not today�s library.

  When John Bayley proposed to Iris Murdoch she suggested going somewhere romantic to discuss the idea�the London Library! Last week, on the day it was opened, I climbed the neon escalator of the world�s newest library – the �189m Library of Birmingham, which over nine floors houses a collection of one million books, more [...]

Going Native

I have just watched (again) the incomparable Judi Dench star in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I love the film but after my daughter kept telling me I reminded her of Evelyn, the Judi Dench character, not in looks but in my behaviour, I thought I�d better see why. Evelyn embraces the new culture of [...]

Urgent: Message to Girls Leaving School. Find your inner rod of steel

Recently I gave a talk to almost 800 people�girls, staff, pupils and parents at St Mary�s Calne, the Wiltshire Girls� School celebrating �its 140th birthday this year with a new, dynamic American headmistress. �Reflecting on wishy washy prizegivings of my youth, I wanted to strike as stirring a note as possible because we all know [...]

Of Books and Babies

I am in the happy position of seeing a book that I wrote twenty years ago republished this month. Most excitingly, the book has been reviewed – a great surprise in these days of such tight space for reviewing even new books.� But then it wasn�t merely the old book in a new jacket. I [...]

April 23rd…white roses and free books

April 23rd…white roses and free books Last Saturday I was sitting in the grounds of London�s Middle Temple. It was a sunny day and I�d arrived early to hear the formidable Madeleine Albright talk about global political changes since her time in office as the US�s first female Secretary of State. There was no one [...]

Playing a role in an Original Greek Drama

I came closer to understanding what it means to be part of a Greek tragedy last week.�I’m�not talking about Aeschylus or Euripides of course but today�s everyday tragedy for many Greeks, feeling that the rest of the world despises or is mocking you, has many of the elements of traditional Greek drama. There are the [...]

Transformational Journeys

Since all life is a journey it�s hardly surprising that novels about transformational journeys are as old as the hills� well, older actually. Homer�s Odyssey, which sees Odysseus journeying around the wine dark Mediterranean is, in part, planned by the Gods up on Mount Olympus.� And, like all the best transformational journeys, by the time [...]