Viva Brighton Issue #68 October 2018

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Celebrating Women Composers #UKPW18 Music by extraordinary, innovative and contemporary women composers Includes Rozanna Madylus performing newly discovered song by Alma Mahler Presented by Caroline Lucas MP Featuring music of Avril Coleridge-Taylor, Ethel Smyth, composer laureate Judith Weir plus a specially commissioned new work ‘Lead On’ by Lucy Pankhurst MOOT is a Registered Charity 1169015 St George’s Church, <strong>Brighton</strong> BN2 1ED Tickets available via eventbrite.co.uk General Admission £18 / 26 or under £5 / 18 or under Free Artistic Director/Producer: Norman Jacobs. Zongora Co-Producer: Maggie Grimsdell
LITERATURE .................................... Robert McCrum The lives and deaths of books Why do we recite poems at funerals? Because words console us. That’s the overall message I get chatting to former Faber & Faber Editor-in-Chief and one-time Observer Literary Editor, Robert McCrum, who’s speaking at this month’s Lewes Literary Society. ‘Consoling narratives must be patched together from transient fragments of experience’ is one way he puts it, in his 2017 book Every Third Thought: On life, death and the endgame (Picador). This intrigues me, so I ask what is it, does he think, about narrative that consoles us? “Storytelling is human. Our brains are wired to tell stories. We construct narrative from fragmentary and disturbing data to organise it into a satisfying shape. Say you’ve been diagnosed with terminal cancer”, he says, “to cope, you build a story – something you and your family can grab hold of.” In other words, arguably with all experience, but particularly at hefty or traumatic times, we compose ‘stories’. “It’s the coherence”, Robert McCrum believes, “that’s consoling. That’s why all the rituals around end of life are important. They help.” And yes, he says, storytelling helped him when, at 42, in 1995, he suffered a stroke (which became the subject of an earlier book, My Year Off). “I know my belief in storytelling came first”, he says. “But yes, it helped me cope.” As for McCrum’s stint as Editor-in-Chief at Faber & Faber in the 80s: was it fun? I can’t resist asking. “It was tremendously good fun”, he says. “If I’d understood quite how special at the time, perhaps I’d never have given it up! Every week the people coming through our offices were the likes of Harold Pinter, Seamus Heaney, Kazuo Ishiguro… And we were all young – under thirty-five.” He also thinks it happened to be “a quite extraordinary moment” in English literature and publishing – better than what’s come since, which he calls “grim and depressing and narrow and un-instinctive. I think history is like this”, he says. “Times of irrational exuberance are followed by its antithesis. We must take the longer view: it’s not for us to decide which books are really going to matter.” I mention a piece he wrote in The Guardian about the Man Booker Prize at fifty: how AL Kennedy once described it as ‘a pile of crooked nonsense’. “Well”, he says, “the prizes today are the least-bad way we have of recognising new writing. It used to be modulated by reviews – they were crucial. But with the onset of the ‘marketplace’, these have been replaced by prizes. They’re unfair, there’s no doubt, with many flaws. But in general are, I think, a good thing.” He seems enthused talking about publishing. “I don’t really know about death and dying, not yet”, he laughs. “I do know about the lives and deaths of books!” Charlotte Gann Robert McCrum will be in conversation with Nick Tucker at the Lewes Literary Society in the All Saints Centre, Lewes on 16th Oct, 8pm. ....59....
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RECRUITING NOW ALDI IN BRIGHTON STO
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OCTOBER CULTURE MONTH BN1 1BG DUKES
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CONTENTS ..........................
Page 8 and 9: THIS MONTH’S COVER ARTIST .......
Page 10 and 11: BITS AND HOLIBOBS .................
Page 12 and 13: CURATOR’S CITY ..................
Page 14 and 15: 'Fantastic place, full of beautiful
Page 17 and 18: BITS AND PUBS .....................
Page 19 and 20: BITS AND BOX ......................
Page 21 and 22: JJ WALLER .........................
Page 23 and 24: BITS AND BOOKS ....................
Page 25 and 26: BITS AND BOGS .....................
Page 27 and 28: “I Want! I Want!” from For the
Page 29 and 30: INTERVIEW .........................
Page 31 and 32: PHOTOGRAPHY .......................
Page 39 and 40: COLUMN ..................... Lizzie
Page 41: COLUMN ............................
Page 44 and 45: JACK WHITE Tue 16 Oct JAMES MARTIN
Page 46 and 47: MUSIC ........................... G
Page 48 and 49: FILM .............................
Page 50 and 51: Wed 10 Oct Michael Clark Company Su
Page 52 and 53: DIGITAL FESTIVAL ..................
Page 54 and 55: masterpiece THE NATIONAL GALLERY to
Page 56 and 57: The festive season is upon us once
Page 60 and 61: ART .................... Kevin Hend
Page 63 and 64: Image courtesy of Piano Nobile ART
Page 65 and 66: ART .................... and had be
Page 67 and 68: ART ...............................
Page 69 and 70: ART ...............................
Page 71 and 72: ART ...............................
Page 73 and 74: DESIGN ............................
Page 75: BRIGHTON MAKER ....................
Page 78 and 79: THE WAY WE WORK Michael Baker, Brig
Page 80 and 81: THE WAY WE WORK Debbie Hardy, Waste
Page 82 and 83: THE kariclub.com AUTHENTIC INDIAN H
Page 84 and 85: RECIPE ............................
Page 86 and 87: A hidden gem in the Open Market, Wa
Page 88 and 89: The Croque shop D ELI TO GO made in
Page 90 and 91: FEATURE ...........................
Page 92 and 93: MY SPACE ..........................
Page 94 and 95: CNM COLLEGE OF NATUROPATHIC MEDICIN
Page 96 and 97: INTERVIEW ...................... On
Page 98 and 99: INSIDE LEFT: 15, UPPER RUSSELL STRE
Page 100: EAST SUSSEX COLLEGE OPEN EVENTS EAS
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Viva Brighton Issue #68 October 2018

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