Anne Sebba's Blog, page 7
March 18, 2013
Throwing Away Time
After 20 years of accumulating detritus on a ridiculously wide range of subjects, I have finally been forced to clear out my study. It�s a grim business that I�ve been postponing for months. This is my private sanctuary, the room of my own where eight books have been written, and it�s the only room where [...]
February 11, 2013
Footsteps Biography
Footsteps biography�doesn’t�get more real than this. Young Wallis Warfield, barely ten years old and fatherless, lived in this building in Baltimore where I have just spent a night. Many times she walked up the same red brick-edged steps that I just have, with a heart – by her own account – almost as heavy as [...]
December 10, 2012
National Libraries Day – Happy Birthday Melvil Dewey
As a schoolgirl I discovered Dewey and my love of libraries began there. Let�s celebrate him now as part of the National Libraries Day campaign, read my blog post here.
Travelling for Work
Travelling to work takes on new meaning when you have to make a day long journey for just an hour of work, the length of a lecture. Last week I left home before dawn to get down to Cornwall but hit trouble as early as Reading station. Standing in the freezing, snowy cold, trains were [...]
October 22, 2012
A Greater Truth: Biography or Bio-fiction
I have just read a beautiful novel about a real person. In The Girl in White, the English poet Sue Hubbard has written an imagined life of the German expressionist artist, Paula Modersohn-Becker; it�s an art form with the unattractively scientific sounding handle �biofiction�. I already knew a little bit about Paula�s work, but from [...]
August 6, 2012
A perfect summer read�but where is the best reading place?
�I�m saving it up to take away on holiday,� is a familiar refrain to many authors. You smile gratefully when told this is the fate of the book you have recently written but wish they had said instead: �I couldn�t wait to read your new book and put everything else aside to finish it the [...]
July 4, 2012
Let�s hear it for Local Bookshops
I have just removed some buttons from my website. They were yellow banners and they said: ��Press here to buy my book on AMAZON.� The colour was a garish yellow and, if anyone ever used them, I never knew about it since I never received any payment. I was part of a scheme called Amazon [...]
May 31, 2012
Following in famous footsteps – Farewell from the Blue Mountains
Lilianfels and Norman (magic pudding) Lindsay On my last Sunday in Australia I make my way to Sydney Central train station. After an hour�s journey on a rickety old train full of graffiti, as well as hikers with rucksacks eager to get to the mountain trails and cliff walks of the World Heritage listed Blue [...]
May 21, 2012
New Zealand Women
In 1893 New Zealand became the first country in the world to give women the vote. After two decades of campaigning by women such as the Liverpool-born Kate Sheppard, who was also a temperance campaigner, politicians believed that empowering all women in this way might have a positive effect on morality in politics or even [...]
April 19, 2012
Florida Diary
Sitting in Orlando airport along with half of America�s school children (it is their �spring break�) I�m reminded of William Boyd�s observation that if you can�t see a six hour delay at an airport as an opportunity, don�t call yourself a writer. I am in Florida, grandly billed as the English Speaking Union (ESU) 2012 [...]
