Tag: Christmas
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Radio, Poetry – and Christmas!
Forget Christmas for a moment, and consider instead the lovely bookish week that lies ahead on BBC Radio. There are some real treats in store on Radio 4, starting with Mark Forsyth’s The Etymologicon, which is being featured on Book of the Week. This takes a look at the hidden connections between words and is on my To Be Read list,…
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Journey of the Magi
I seem to be all behind hand with the Advent Bookfest. having missed day yesterday, but I have a poem for you today – TS Eliot’s Journey of the Magi, and if you go to http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=7070 you can hear him reciting it on an old and rather crackly radio recording. I love the way Eliot makes the…
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Christmas Comfort with Mr Pickwick
Christmas Eve at Mr Wardle’s, byHablot Knight Browne,known as Phiz. How can I have got this far through December without mentioning Charles Dickens? Dickens loved Christmas, and as the 200th anniversary of his birth approaches our image of the traditional, family festival is still shaped by his writings. So here’s a passage from The Pickwick…
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The Country Child’s Christmas
I’m celebrating Day 11 of the Advent Bookfest with a 1952 Faber and Faber edition of Alison Uttley’s The Country Child, illustrated with woodblock engravings by CF Tunnicliffe. Uttley is probably best known for her children’s books, especially the Little Grey Rabbit stories with their beautiful pictures painted by Margaret Tempest, so I’ve included one,…
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Be Nice to your Turkeys this Christmas…
It’s December and Christmas is on the way, so I’ve decided to celebrate with an Advent Bookfest, which will include poems, readings, diary entries, a bit of general information about the season, the odd recipe or two and, perhaps, some reviews! First off is Benjamin Zephaniah’s Talking Turkeys!, which is one of my favourite poems…
The Book Trunk 