There’s nothing guaranteed to get an author worked up as a chat about book covers. We all have quite fixed ideas of how our book should look but sometimes a publisher thinks differently and we bow to their knowledge of the market. They usually do know best! As a reader too, I’m increasingly aware of … Continue reading Two similar covers, two very different books. The power (or pestilence) of genre.
When I visited A New Power, the Bodleian Library’s photo-history exhibition which ran earlier this spring, I was fascinated to learn how daguerreotype images were used to produce wood engravings which then became the basis for newspaper illustration, an application of the daguerreotype process of which I had been totally unaware, and so I turned … Continue reading More than history: The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre by Dominic Smith #fictionalbiography #photohistory @bodleianlibs
Julia Margaret Cameron Regular readers will know I’ve always had a soft spot for Julia Margaret Cameron whom I first encountered many years ago when working as a trainee in Oxford’s Bodleian Library. As a result, I took up an interest in photo-history and the following year I picked photography as a ‘specialist subject’ on … Continue reading Julia Margaret Cameron and The Glass House by Jody Cooksley #photohistory #PhotographyinFiction @theglasshousenovel
P. L. Travers and Walt Disney Farther to my recent thoughts on biopics, over Christmas we recorded Saving Mr Banks and watched it a few nights ago. As most of you probably know (spoiler alert!) this tells the story of Walt Disney’s attempts to get P.L.Travers’s agreement to let him film Mary Poppins despite her … Continue reading Believing Mr Banks: a lesson in how to link fiction and history
Previously published at justwritebristol.org.uk Let’s be clear, I’m a very intermittent cinema goer and I was never a big Elvis fan, but sometimes its good to get out and so I went last week to Baz Luhrmann’s biopic which I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed. It also made me think what a popular film … Continue reading Elvis rocks back to life: comparing a good film to a good read
Ali Bacon, Author 