Terror and wonder

This rather lovely Dave McKean illustrated invite came in the post this morning. It is to the opening of an exhibition and series of talks called Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination at the British Library in London in October. The opening is on 2 October and then runs from 3 October to January next year.

A box of books

Advance paperback copies of The Dead Men Stood Together arrived a couple of weeks ago. As I have said many times before, the excitement of opening the box of new books - even new editions, as in this case - never fades. Nor should it.

I can still remember the excitement I felt receiving my advance copies of my very first book Dog Magic! as though it was yesterday. I've only ever had one book published solely as an ebook - Christmas Tales of Terror - and there was a definite feeling of anti-climax. I need something to hold in my hand or it seems like it doesn't really count.

The last of the spirits

And here is the cover of my new book for Bloomsbury - published this November. It's called The Last of the Spirits and it is the last in my trilogy of metafictions - books that have been inspired by, and run parallel to, stories that had a big impact on me when I first encountered them.

It began with Mister Creecher, linked to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, then The Dead Men Stood Together, inspired by Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and now there is this book - a story that takes a sideways step out of the world and characters of Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

More about that later....

The dead men paperback

Just thought I'd share this with you - it's the jacket for the paperback of The Dead Men Stood Together, published this October by Bloomsbury.

Gate of honour

The nice thing about having visitors - apart from their company of course - is that you see the place in which you live through their eyes.  Even somewhere as extraordinary as Cambridge is easy to take for granted when you see it every day.

We walked across Jesus Green and along Trinity Street and, as it was open to visitors, we popped into Gonville and Caius (pronounced 'keys') College - through the Gate of Humility, past the avenue of trees in Tree Court, through the Gate of Virtue into Caius Court.

At the south side of Caius Court is the Elizabethan Gate of Honour, designed by Dr Caius, who had studied in Padua under Vesalius and who had been physician to both Edward VI and Mary.  The gate was built to his design (but after his death) in 1575.

Nicholas Pevsner is very snooty about this gate, but it is one of my favourite buildings - if it actually counts as a building - in Cambridge.   Graduating students pass through it on the way to get their degrees from the Senate House opposite.

Kettle's Yard

We also went to Kettle's Yard yesterday.  Kettle's Yard is a small museum in Cambridge, linked to the house of art collector and supporter Jim Ede who died in 1990.  He studied painting at the Slade and was assistant curator at the Tate at one point.  His house is open to the public and is a magical place.  I first came here many years ago with friends, long before I lived in Cambridge.  It is full of lovely pieces by the likes of Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood, but it is the little collections of stones and quirky pieces of glass and ceramic and wood that give it its charm.

We arrived near to closing time and it was dark outside.  It gave the house a totally different atmosphere  as there are areas of the rooms that were in deep shadow.  It made it feel even more like sneaking into someone's else's house than usual, somehow.

John Craxton

We had a friend staying with us for a couple of days - Susan Harvey-Davies - and she was keen to see the John Craxton exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum.

I like the exhibitions at the Fitzwilliam.  They tend to be small and a little bit eclectic.  It was filled with young school children when we first arrived and the atmosphere changed radically when they left.

I don't know what I make of John Craxton's work.  We have a lot of examples of his paintings in various books on our shelves, whilst not owning an actual monograph on him.  Some of his work I really like, but there is a lot I really don't like.  His influences are possibly too readable.

The exhibition starts with a lovely little painting, but the main thing that is so lovely about it, is that it is very like a Graham Sutherland (in fact it was painted when he went to stay with Sutherland and is a view of the very place that produced Sutherland's own Entrance to a Lane - and has the same title).  Elsewhere can be seen little (and large) echoes of Picasso, Miro, and Braque.

Having said all that, there were paintings I liked a lot here, my favourite being a small picture - a tempera I think - of a goat.  Craxton was fond of goats and they appear in a lot of his paintings.  It is a golden rule of exhibitions that they never have a postcard of the painting you liked most and this was the case here.  I have even tried Googling for it, but nothing appeared.  I shall just have to remember how nice it was.