Articles

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Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales 2012 – a multimedia pilgrimage. Inspired by one of the English language’s seminal works, 24 modern-day pilgrims – including two from China and one from Bermuda – braved piercing April ‘shoures’ to undertake a full-scale re-enactment Chaucer’s masterpiece, acting out the tales as they travelled on foot to Canterbury in aid of the National Literacy Trust.

The Guardian’s article

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Author Ian McEwan in conversation with the Guardian’s deputy editor Ian Katz at the Guardian Open Weekend festival. Here, McEwan discusses hiking; the importance of indolence to writers; moving house, which means the loss of his writing room; and how on 9/11 he broke with his policy of refusing journalistic commissions. The Guardian interview

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Perhaps not all these characters would be in my own top ten Shakespeare characters list but six of them definitely are. Here is The Guardian’s list.

The 10 Best Shakespeare Characters

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Literary events in 2012. More Dickens and even more Shakespeare, but also new novels from Toni Morrison, Hilary Mantel, Zadie Smith, plus exciting new voices – 2012′s literary highlights.

The Guardian Article

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Charles Dickens’s London with Simon Callow – video. On the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’s birth, author and actor Simon Callow walks us through some of the London locations that were important to Dickens. from the Strand – where Dickens’s parents married – to the site of the blacking factory near Hungerford Bridge where he worked aged 12 Dickens’ London

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Our mutual friend: Charles Dickens at 200. The writer and Christmas reached a lasting confluence long ago – he deserves the absolute Dickens of a celebration.

Read The Guardian article

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Austen Passion. 200 years on, why Jane Austen’s lovers find new reasons for their passion, A literary historian argues that the author’s genius lies in the way she holds up a mirror to each generation. The Guardian article

 

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Simon Armitage: ‘poetry is a form of dissent’ – video interview

Poet and novelist Simon Armitage has been writing about Britain for decades now. In the latest in our National Conversations series of interviews, Armitage talks to John Harris about the obstinate nature of poetry and the culture of violence in Britain that he believes precipitated the UK riots.

 

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Quattro Centenary of the King James Bible.This is one of the most remarkable and influential books ever written, even if you are not a Christian. The King James Bible is more than a book of faith, it is a monument to the beauty and power of the English language Lord Bragg’s lecture at Hampton Court

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Contested Will: Who wrote Shakespeare? By James Shapiro. Shakespeare’s doubters reveal more about themselves than the Bard in this absorbing study. The Guardian Review