Rosie Canning

I am a Doctoral Researcher at University of Southampton under the supervision of Ms Rebecca Smith. The focus of my research is the representations of orphans and care leavers in fiction. I am examining the research through the lens of both creative and critical practice. The creative piece will explore my experiences of leaving care as well as considering the positive aspect that reading fiction has had on my life. I hope to complete the PhD by 2021.

I recently worked as a Research Assistant in the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford. Conversations for care is a knowledge exchange project co-created with Aoife O'Higgins. Our aim was to engage people in the care community including care experienced people, foster and kinship carers, social workers, virtual schools, residential care workers, researchers and others, and stimulate discussions about care and how young people’s experiences of care can be improved. We did this through monthly Twitter chats and outreach activities at the University of Oxford. To find out more please visit our website or find us on Twitter at #CareConvos. Care in the time of Covid is a project that explores the day to day lives of care experienced adults in the UK during COVID-19. We wanted to know how the care community is coping and what helps them. We also wanted to record their experiences in history. Findings from the project will be published in October.

I am a campaigner for care leavers, and in 2013, helped set up the Every Child Leaving Care Matters campaign.

From 2014-2017 I was Volunteer Coordinator for Hackney Christmas Dinner (founded by Lemn Sissay).

2009-2020 Organiser of Greenacre Writers where we ran writing groups, workshops and festivals. #diverseauthorday in September 2015, was trending all over the world. We had some amazing contributions, read about the authors that were involved here.

Among other activities, I co-organised Your Life Your Story and curated the art exhibition for the Care Experienced Conference in April, 2019. Here is a write up about the conference from a talk: Oxford Children’s Rights Network at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights.

See more of Orphans and Care Experience in Literature.

Contact: rc11g14@soton.ac.uk

 

Recommendations:

I have known Rosie for a number of years and what strikes me is her level of commitment and dedication to a cause she believes in. Her drive to document the fictional lives of people in care is remarkable and unique. Only the most compassionate of all of us could undertake her task. The stories she has researched are harrowing and heartbreaking but she is determined that these tales should be read by all to increase empathy for all people who have been through the care system. I cannot reccomend her highly enough.                                                                                                                                         - Alex Wheatle, Author, Guardian Children's Fiction Prize (2016)

I first met Rosie when she invited me to speak at The Finchley Literature Festival in 2014, an incredibly well organised event with a really diverse group of authors. It was then that I realised how much of a powerhouse Rosie is, encouraging new writers, creating platforms for established authors, and providing audiences with inspiring talks - and all at the same time as furthering her own academic and creative writing career. Rosie is an excellent networker, with a clear passion for bringing readers and writers together.                                             - Caitlin Davies, Author

 

David Bowie's Top 100 books

David Bowie: 

January 8th 1947 - 

January 10th 2016

Still missing Bowie? Why not read the books he read, hear the words he heard. Think of what his thoughts might have had about the writing. Duncan Jones, Bowie's son, has started a book club:

David Bowie's Top 100 books:

The man who ate books.

• Interviews With Francis Bacon by David Sylvester

  Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse

  Room At The Top by John Braine

  On Having No Head by Douglass Harding

  Kafka Was The Rage by Anatole Broyard

  A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

  City Of Night by John Rechy

  The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

  Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

  Iliad by Homer

  As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

  Tadanori Yokoo by Tadanori Yokoo

  Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin

  Inside The Whale And Other Essays by George Orwell

  Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood

  Halls Dictionary Of Subjects And Symbols In Art by James A. Hall

  David Bomberg by Richard Cork

  Blast by Wyndham Lewis

  Passing by Nella Larson

  Beyond The Brillo Box by Arthur C. Danto

  The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes

  In Bluebeard’s Castle by George Steiner

  Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd

  The Divided Self by R. D. Laing

  The Stranger by Albert Camus

  Infants Of The Spring by Wallace Thurman

  The Quest For Christa T by Christa Wolf

  The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin

  Nights At The Circus by Angela Carter

  The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

  The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodieby Muriel Spark

  Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

  Herzog by Saul Bellow

  Puckoon by Spike Milligan

  Black Boy by Richard Wright

  The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

  The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima

  Darkness At Noon by Arthur Koestler

  The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot

  McTeague by Frank Norris

  Money by Martin Amis

  The Outsider by Colin Wilson

  Strange People by Frank Edwards

  English Journey by J.B. Priestley

  A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

  The Day Of The Locust by Nathanael West

  1984 by George Orwell

  The Life And Times Of Little Richard by Charles White

  Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock by Nik Cohn

  Mystery Train by Greil Marcus

  Beano (comic, ’50s)

  Raw (comic, ’80s)

  White Noise by Don DeLillo

  Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The Southern Dream Of Freedom by Peter Guralnick

  Silence: Lectures And Writing by John Cage

  Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews edited by Malcolm Cowley

  The Sound Of The City: The Rise Of Rock And Roll by Charlie Gillete

  Octobriana And The Russian Underground by Peter Sadecky

  The Street by Ann Petry

  Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon

  Last Exit To Brooklyn By Hubert Selby, Jr.

  A People’s History Of The United States by Howard Zinn

  The Age Of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby

  Metropolitan Life by Fran Lebowitz

  The Coast Of Utopia by Tom Stoppard

  The Bridge by Hart Crane

  All The Emperor’s Horses by David Kidd

  Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

  Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess

  The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos

  Tales Of Beatnik Glory by Ed Saunders

  The Bird Artist by Howard Norman

  Nowhere To Run The Story Of Soul Music by Gerri Hirshey

  Before The Deluge by Otto Friedrich

  Sexual Personae: Art And Decadence From Nefertiti To Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia

  The American Way Of Death by Jessica Mitford

  In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

  Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence

  Teenage by Jon Savage

  Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh

  The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard

  The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

  Viz (comic, early ’80s)

  Private Eye (satirical magazine, ’60s – ’80s)

  Selected Poems by Frank O’Hara

  The Trial Of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens

  Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes

  Maldodor by Comte de Lautréamont

  On The Road by Jack Kerouac

  Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonders by Lawrence Weschler

  Zanoni by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

  Transcendental Magic, Its Doctine and Ritual by Eliphas Lévi

  The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels

  The Leopard by Giusseppe Di Lampedusa

  Inferno by Dante Alighieri

  A Grave For A Dolphin by Alberto Denti di Pirajno

  The Insult by Rupert Thomson

  In Between The Sheets by Ian McEwan

  A People’s Tragedy by Orlando Figes

  Journey Into The Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg 

  Happy Reading!

  
  

Beyond Agatha Christie

I attended this event on Wednesday, 7th June, organised by Goldsboro Books, and held at Browns Judges Court, where a panel of Agatha Christie experts discussed the Queen of Crime, her far-reaching influence over crime fiction and golden age crime itself. 

The panel, sponsored by GAMMA, was made up of Sophie Hannah, internationally bestselling author, and author of the first new Hercule Poirot mysteries since Agatha Christie’s death, Ragnar Jónasson, bestselling author of the Snowblind crime series and lifelong Agatha Christie fan. Ragnar has translated 14 of Agatha Christie’s titles into Icelandic. Also John Curran, Edgar-nominated author of Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks (2009) which won the 2011 Agatha, Anthony and Macavity Awards and his Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Making (2011) was also nominated for all four awards, and then finally, there was Agatha Christie’s own great-grandson, James Prichard, executive chairman of Agatha Christe Ltd, the company that manages the literary and media rights to Agatha Christie’s works around the world.

Introduced by David Headley, he quickly handed over to John Carran who was chairing.

John asked the panel: What was the first Agatha Christie (AC) book you read?

Ragnar Jónasson said Evil Under The Sun (1940) when he was eleven.

Sophie Hannah read The Body in the Library (1942) when she was twelve. And by the time she was fourteen had read all of Christie's novels twice!

James Pritchard, great grandson, had recollections of an old woman coming to stay. He was told he had to behave and not to knock her over. He discovered she was so much more on the day she died when he came home from school and his father had shut himself in a room and was unresponsive. And there was his great grandmother, Agatha Christie on the news. He said, "That was the day I realised there was this dual thing going on, on the one hand a warm woman and on the other, a legend. Two people in this one person." The first book he read was Death on the Nile (1937). He stole it off the shelves and read it really quickly so it wouldn't be discovered missing and he'd be able to put the novel back on the shelf without being caught.

John also asked: What was it that you enjoyed about Agatha Christie's novels?

Sophie spoke about the pleasure of the story, how it was foregrounded and of the elegance and flawlessness of the structure. She added that Christie's top priority was for the reader to have a brilliant time.

John asked Ragnar what made him start translating Christie's novels into Icelandic especially as the stories were so English, so old fashioned. And in particular he wondered how the clues translated?

Ragnar said he began translating out of necessity. He had read everything in Iceland, and he ran out of books. So he started reading in English. At 15, he wrote for magazines but didn't tell them his age. At 17, he went to the publishers and told them he was a big fan of Agatha Christie and wanted to translate her works. They let him choose which one. He chose Endless Night (1967), because it was the shortest one.

He said it was very difficult to translate some of the clues and so he sometimes used English words which meant the clue stayed in the book. He added Christie was a brilliant plotter and that the stories worked by crossing all boundaries. She keeps you wanting more. Very readable. A lot of people in Iceland read Agatha Christie first, it was their introduction to a foreign language.

Sophie felt the murder mystery books have a magic quality. You start reading for example Murder in the Mews (1937). It's just Poirot and Japp commenting how strange it is that people don't commit more murders on Bonfire night as the bang could disguise a gun going off, and what happens? There is a murder. The stories are archetypal. Can't get anymore storyish than Agatha Christie. Blends opposites. Good with evil. Not a light read and yet she is read all over the world. She is still the best writer. And we learn so much, for example in The Murder at the Vicarage (1930), there is the desire for survival and we learn about the human condition.

Ragnar added that being very English, is part of the charm. He didn't understand walking out of windows, until he realised this was the English French windows and that the characters seem to eat a lot of kidneys. Possibly, he said, that while translating, something of Christie slipped into his own storytelling either consciously or unconsciously. He learnt from her plotting. "She's done all the good plots." The other thing she did well was the setting. Her world is known as Miss Marple villages.

John asked Sophie whether when writing her Poirot continuations, had she told herself not to do this or that?

Sophie replied that she knew there were things it would be hard for it to be. It had to be Christie-ish. Unguessable. What Christie did was fool you until the end. And yet she waves all the clues around. Even tells you to think about the footprint in the snow. She's so confident you won't get it. None of this was conscious thinking. "Both my crime novels have openings where something very weird happens." For example in Closed Casket (2016), an elderly woman leaves everything to a terminally ill woman. In Christie's A Murder is Announced (1950), everyone goes to a house where the murder is supposed to take place and they turn it into a jolly event, well we'd better get some sandwiches in!!! It's deeply surreal writing.

John wondered if Christie is darker and more edgy than we're led to believe?

James replied that when he read And Then There Were None (1939) - he was blown away by how dark it was. Raw terror. Though, she believed murder was a terrible thing. There was only one case where she thought the murder was justified...

Ragnar added that in fact in Iceland, people didn't believe it was a real adaptation as it was so dark.

Sophie said, Christie had a literary agenda. She was exploring how people balanced their dark sides. And yet, Sophie added, the thought of reading an Agatha Christie is comforting, like chicken noodle soup even though the novels deal with heavy topics.

Ragnar said, Sophie is right. They are cosy to read, it is comforting to grab something you've read before.

Tony added that the novels are set in Agatha Christie time.

Sophie went on to explain Christie was dealing with warped, evil minds and yet the 'I' of the book has an awareness of the danger. In Death on the Nile (1937), the characters are warned they are heading for proper bad evil if they don't watch out. And yet it is comforting that Poirot know this, he is in control of the situation.

In those days, said Tony, murderers went to the gallows and then everything returned to normal. He then asked, Is Poirot a character or a caricature?

Sophie replied, he's a character, amplified, an exaggerated persona like a super hero. We never learn anything about the detective character's background, either Poirot or Miss Marple. They are there when needed like mary Poppins. In this way, it sets them apart from other characters, backed up by many years of accumulated wisdom.

Tony's final question was: Tell us what book you would recommend for someone who has never read Agatha Christie before and which one would you take to a desert island?

Ragnar chose The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), as the recommendation and for the desert island, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) which he read when he was a child. They couldn't buy it from anywhere and so he went to the library every week with his father and read it in there.

Sophie's recommendation for the desert would be The Hollow (1946) it has an emotional depth.
Her recommendation for someone who has never read an Agatha Christie is Body in the Library (1942), it was the first one she read herself.

James' desert recommendation was A Murder Is Announced (1950), and for a first read recommendation And Then There Were None (1939), he says it is her best novel. James finished the talk by explaining there were lots of exciting things happening in the future. He explained they would be republishing Agatha Christie's plays, some of which haven't been available before. And that one of the plays would be put on 'near here' it will be site specific, but he added mysteriously, 'I can't talk about it'.


I'll just add that it was a fascinating and interesting evening for an Agatha Christie fan like myself. I bought some books and got the authors to sign them. I told Tony Curran that when I was younger I always knew who the murderer was. He seemed astounded by this revelation and asked how. I told him I was very clever, and he said - good answer. But the truth is, I believe I had close on to a photographic memory which unfortunately doesn't work as well as it once did. I could never re-read a book or re-watch a film because I remembered everything from the first time round and it would drive me bonkers as I hated knowing what would happen. I wanted the mystery and challenge of solving the crime. As Sophie Hannah said, there is something very comforting about reading Agatha Christie. I'm not sure that she got to the heart of what that was. But for me, it is about the structure. I suspect I found safety in the reading that I didn't have in real life. And with Agatha Christie I had tradition, afternoon tea, Earl Grey (of course), an old England, front gardens, hedges and lawns. I knew I would be safe in the narrative of Christie's books even though the plots were often very different. But, they always ended up in the same place. Normality. Life would go back to how it once was though there was always change. Often love too. Even if in Poirot's case it was always unrequited.


Follow Sophie on Twitter: @sophiehannahCB1

Follow Ragnar on Twitter: @ragnarjo

Follow Agatha Christie on Twitter: @agathachristie

Follow GoldsboroBooks on Twitter: @GoldsboroBooks

Follow David Headley on Twitter: @DavidHHeadley

The Wild Air by Rebecca Mascull

In Edwardian England, aeroplanes are a new, magical invention, while female pilots are rare indeed. 

At the launch of The Wild Air in May, Rebecca Mascull spoke about the early female pioneers who risked their lives and how much we owe them. She told of how she sat in one of the Edwardian planes that looked so fragile she worried that her shaking with cold and fear would damaged it. 

When shy Della Dobbs meets her mother's aunt, her life changes forever. Great Auntie Betty, ‘the Broughton disgrace’ who married a ‘common fisherman’, has come home from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, across whose windswept dunes the Wright Brothers tested their historic flying machines. On the first night home, Betty discovers Della has inherited the family talent for fixing things.

A window opened in Della's mind, a dozen windows flung open. All this time, she'd crept through her life shamed by her uselessness. And now, to discover she had had a talent, born in her, handed down like a precious heirloom. She could be special. She could shine.

Puck, Della’s brother, gets pneumonia and Della is packed off to stay with Aunt Betty. Almost immediately they start to make kites and take them to Cleethorpes beach where they learn about the mechanics of flying. Della develops a burning ambition to fly and Betty is determined to help her.

But when Aunt Betty wants to take Della to see a ‘lady flyer’, Della’s father absolutely forbids it and she finds herself having to lie for the first, but not last, time to her family.

Once at Burton-upon-Trent, Della not only meets Hélène Dutrieu, a ‘lady flyer’ nicknamed Girl Hawk, but also gets to fly with her. It's reported that Dutrieu caused a minor scandal when it was revealed she did not wear a ‘corset’ while flying, 

Get me back down on the ground and I’ll never do anything so bloody foolish again…Closing her eyes, she couldn’t escape the wind and feel of speed all around her when her mind suddenly spoke to her…Open your eyes. Look around… Fear had dissolved, replace by wonder. There were so many things she could see from the air that she couldn’t have imagined on the ground. The serpentine pattern of tractor tracks in fields. Sheep like polka dots. Lakes as small as silver puddles that glittered like brooches…’

Hélène Dutrieu - Girl Hawk

This was a time where women did not wear trousers, though Girl Hawk did and had made a specially designed flying suit.

Della soars, and so too does the reader’s heart. But when the car breaks down on the way home from Burton on Trent, she and her aunt are stranded and they have to find a hotel to spend the night in. The following day, Della will have to tell her formidable father the truth of why she did not come home when she was meant to. Della of course deals with her father in her quiet, competent and determined way, the same way she will go on to disregard the taunts of men in the schools of flying.

With World War One looming, the reader will visit the airfields of Britain and Europe, the horrors of the First World War, and experience the bureaucracy and stupidity of rules and regulations.

The fictional quiet Della has a strength and determination that matches the real-life amazing exploits and braveness of the first female aviatrixes. Mascull’s research is meticulous, some of which she explains at the end of the novel. 

History, historical fiction and romance, the novel encompasses all three. Mascull travels back in time and writes her version of clever women’s lives by paying great attention to detail. We see the prejudice and misogyny that they had to deal with on a daily basis if they dared to leave the home, be different and insist on experiencing and claiming what was then a man’s world.

“If you were poor and a woman, you were seen as a different species. I questioned, suppose you had a good idea, how would people hear that? Statues throughout history are rarely to women. My books are like a statue to those people.” Rebecca Mascull, Launch of The Wild Air, Saturday May 6th, Waterstones – Piccadilly.

Thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for the review copy.

You can follow Rebecca on Twitter: @rebeccamascall

Note: 

At the launch, Rebecca mentioned Rob Millinship who helped with the research and apparently took one and half years to get her to go up in a light aircraft Cessna plane. Read about that here.

And for those of you interested in visiting Shuttleworth where Rebecca spent some of her research time, see here.

My Life in Books

I saw this via @PoppyPeacock some time ago and thought it looked like good fun. The idea is to answer the questions using book titles you read in 2016. Here's my attempt at describing my life in books. I've also included one non-fiction book as it is a book I often refer too and fits in with my PhD studies. Let me know if you have a go yourself. 

* Describe Yourself:

* How do you feel:

* Describe where you currently live:

* If you could go anywhere, where would you go:

* Your favourite form of transportation:

* Your best friend is: 

* You and your friends are like:

* What’s the weather like:

* Favourite time of day: 

* If your life was a book: 

* What is life to you: 

* Your fear:

* What is the best advice you have to give: 

* Thought for the Day: 

* How you would like to die:

*Your souls present condition:

The End