Laurence Anholt will be running a free day of workshops, events and storytelling at the National Gallery, Sainsbury Wing in Trafalgar Square, London on Sunday 7th December and on other dates throughout January 2009.
If you would like to hear some of the amazing stories behind Camille and the Sunflowers and the other titles in the ANHOLT’S ARTISTS series, watch this space for further details soon.
Are these people being abducted by aliens?
No. They are visitors to the excellent End of the Road Festival at Larmer Tree Gardens near Salisbury. http://www.endoftheroadfestival.com/flash/index.html
Oooh I do love a festival - and especially when the sun shines, as it did this weekend.
The End of the Road is the last UK festival of the season and it is a deliberately small affair - just 5,000 people which makes for a very intimate and relaxed event. There were some good bands too. We especially enjoyed an outfit called Bon Iver…three identical men with identical beards and identical melodic harmonies.
The setting was beautiful. Larmer Tree Gradens were created by a man called Pitt Rivers, presumably a relative of the creator of the amazing Pitt Rivers anthropological museum in Oxford. These gardens display the family taste for the exotic and surreal - peacocks strut amongst exquisite trees. My favourite peacock as always is my lovely wife, Cathy…
I think she is trying to follow the extraordinarily badly designed festival brochure. I know monkeys who could do a better design job - here’s one of them, enjoying the festival fruits…
In fact if you want a REALLY good brochure or map, get in touch with my friend, the wonderful illustrator, Jim Coplestone at http://www.friendlymaps.co.uk
But in all, a big thumbs up for the End of the Road Festival. See you next year.
What an extraordinary month! Since returning from Korea, I have barely drawn breath. The big news is that we have sold our shop. Yes, it’s true…the amazing Chimp and Zee, Bookshop by the Sea is no more.
Catherine and I would like to say a huge thank you to our devoted shop staff and especially to the many thousands of children and families who visited during the last five years.
As I always said, the bookshop was an experiment. It was, as far as I know, the only shop of its kind – owned by authors and stocked exclusively with our signed titles. As anyone who visited the shop will know, it was also a little work of art in its own right; we are enormously proud of the awards and press attention the shop received AND it made a made a profit.
However, we live in uncertain times and we figured that if we were going to make a change, we should do it now. Although we searched long and hard, we just couldn’t find anyone who would take it on as a general children’s bookshop, so we advertised the Freehold premises and believe it or not, received a good offer within five days.
Of course you can still buy signed copies of our books at www.anholt.co.uk and our plan is to expand and develop the site so that it becomes a virtual version of the Bookshop by the Sea.
We are in the fortunate position of being busier than ever with a range of exciting projects underway. For example, the musical adaptation of Camille and the Sunflowers may come to the UK and I have been asked to write the English language libretto. http://www.anholt.co.uk/wordpress/?p=188
I am also in discussion with TV chef, Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s team about a series of River Cottage children’s books, with an eco theme, which could be very exciting. Hugh is on the left in the photo.
On Saturday, I had the terrifying task of giving the after-dinner speech to the bi-annual Society of Author’s children’s writers’ conference at Cambridge University. A room packed with 250 of the country’s leading authors and illustrators – my eyes flitted from Philip Pullman to William Nicholson. Not the best talk I have ever given as the PA system in the hall was appalling; but people were very generous. On the whole, children’s authors are a decent bunch. Lovely to catch up with friends like Jane Ray, Anthony Browne, Jamila Gavin, David Almond and Malorie Blackman.
Autumn is on its way. The crowds are thinning in Lyme Regis and I’ll be glad when I can settle back into my studio, put the radio on and work quietly on illustrations for Cézanne and the Apple Boy. I can’t imagine the reclusive Cézanne running a bookshop or giving an after-dinner speech for that matter!
Annyeong haseo! That greeting is one of the pathetically few Korean phrases I learnt during my recent visit to Seoul.
Cathy and I were the guests of COA Productions, the wonderful theatre company who have created, if not the first, then certainly the best, Van Gogh musical.
A musical about van Gogh may sound a little dodgy, but believe me, this production ROCKS!
The show is a faithful adaptation of my book, Camille and the Sunflowers which has been selling in Korean (and numerous other languages) for many years. It’s about the friendship between Vincent van Gogh and Camille Roulin, the young son of the postmaster in Arles.
COA Productions bought an option on my story several years ago, but I hadn’t realised that such a lavish and professional project was under construction.
The result is a celebration of Van Gogh which is also a heartwarming and intelligent story of tolerance and acceptance of those who are different.
The songs in the show (which range from haunting melodies to foot-stomping funk) are by this lovely guy, Kim Chang Wan, one of Korea’s most famous contemporary musicians.
Mr Kim also stars in a twice weekly TV drama, so he attracts a huge following all over Asia.
I must admit that I turned up to the theatre with some apprehension – if I hated the show, I would have to spend the rest of the week smiling and pretending I liked it. But there was no need for pretence; the whole experience was a joy.
Here’s me and Camille:
The stunningly colourful sets were magnificent….a full size train pouring steam; sunflowers as tall as houses; a perfect 3 dimensional re-creation of the Yellow House and so on.
I will never forget the sight of Camille flying through an animated starry night whilst Vincent, with candles on his hat, paints below.
To an author, it is sheer joy to see your work being treated with such care and attention to detail. I was told that every member of the production company had spent hours researching Van Gogh and his time in Arles. Even the secondary characters are directly based on Vincent’s portraits.
To be truthful, the sheer quality of the production and the beautiful songs brought tears to my eyes.
After the show there was a book signing and a big press conference. I was asked through an interpreter what I liked about the show…”Everything!,” I replied, “I loved everything.”
After three months in Seoul, Van Gogh and the Sunflower Boy is set to tour Korea, China and Japan.
This story is receiving lots of attention in the Korean Press: http://books.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2008/06/20/2008062001551.html
and in the Uk: http://magazines.scholastic.co.uk/content/1225
If you read Korean, the website is here: http://cafe.daum.net/artistmusical
I can’t help wondering what little Camille or Vincent van Gogh who sold just one painting in his lifetime would make of all it all.
And if Cameron Macintosh or Andrew Lloyd Webber should stumble across this blog…er, listen, boys, I’ve got a really great idea…!
PS: The hospitality which Cathy and I received in Korea was overwhelming …Hello Junyoung, Ko Chang Seok, Mr Heo, Mr Kim, JK, Insuk Jung, Jo Euna, Lee Mihae, Irene and all our friends in Seoul…GAMSA HAMNIDA!
As previously mentioned, my picture book about Van Gogh, Camille and the Sunflowers has been adapted as a musical stage show in Korea by Coa Production. The performance will run for several months in Seoul before going on tour.
You can see some material about the show here: http://cafe.daum.net/artistmusical
Cathy and I will be flying to Seoul in June to watch the dress rehearsal, meet the cast and give media interviews. Should be a fascinating experience. You can see early rehearsals here:
Looks like my post about positive thinking: http://www.anholt.co.uk/wordpress/?p=171 paid off. There are many exciting things going on at the moment here in lovely Lyme Regis; a couple of years ago a big Korean Theatre company bought an option on Camille and the Sunflowers. This week a charming guy called Junyoung Kim got in touch to invite Cathy and me to spend a week in Seoul next month. We will meet the production company and our Korean book publishers and watch the Dress Rehearsal of Camille and the Sunflowers Korean Stageshow. Seoul is the second biggest city in the world so a little different from Lyme Regis.
Lots of new books underway …dear old Arthur Robins is putting the finishing touches to illustrations for six new full colour Seriously Silly Stories which we think will be the best yet. My favourite is about two garden gnomes called Handsome and Gruesome.
I have been putting a huge amount of effort into my forthcoming story about Cézanne, seventh in my self-illustrated Anholt’s Artists series. What a fascinating character - he would often discard his paintings in the countryside and he had a phobia about being touched! For the first time, the child in the story will be a relative of the artist; in fact the boy is Cézanne’s son, also called Paul. This has raised a lot of complex psychological issues because I always want my readers to identify directly with the young protagonist - more difficult if the child is a specific relative. Anyway I think I have cracked it. I have been communicating with Paul’s great grandson which has been fascinating and I took a wonderful road trip to Provence in my campervan with my good friend, the illustrator, Jim Coplestone.
This story will be about FATHERS and SONS. My main inspiration was Cézanne’s troubled relationship with his father and his rather lovely relationship with his own son. This seemed to echo the very solid bond I have with my own son, Tom and the stormy and painful association I have had with my own father over many years….I guess these things are the ‘grit in the oyster shell’.
If I needed cheering up, there was a funny presentation of my story Shampoozel, read by Jo Brand on Junior Jackanory for CBeebies. You can probably see it on BBC iPlayer if you haven’t got anything better to do.
I wish I had time to write about all the other projects…a book about Pelé; a picture book project called Babies Love Books with Cathy in association with BookStart; numerous book events including Chimp and Zee and Seriously Silly events at the Cheltenham Literature Festival; the Society of Authors Conference…phew!
Good things flood in and I pray that life is good for you too.
What is there to say about the devastating events in Burma and China?
The sight of so many crushed schools is almost unbearable.
What we must pull from the rubble is the knowledge that humanity is all one vulnerable family.
There’s a joke about a fellow who goes into a book shop. “Can you tell me where the Self Help section is?” he says. The assistant thinks for a moment; “Wouldn’t that defeat the object?” he replies.
When I was a young man, I was addicted to Self Help books. I have read Ram Dass, Krishnamurti, Louise Hay, Paul McKenna and numerous others. Many of these books are spectacularly badly written; but sometimes buried within the psychobabble is a tiny nugget of gold.
I have found five main principles to be true and I have tried to pass these on to my children from the earliest age. There’s nothing particularly original about these ideas – it’s just that I have found them sustaining. You will either agree or think it’s all a pile of pretentious rubbish. For a change I have opened the comments form below, so why not post a response?
1) Think Positively. My father and many men of his generation, held the belief that if you expect the worst, you are never disappointed when it happens. The trouble with this negative philosophy is that if you expect the worst, the worst invariably happens. I know for a fact that framing things in a positive way creates ‘good fortune’. What you give out you get back. In general, it is better to like things (people, art and anything at all), then not to like them.
(By the way; that, for free, is what you pay a lot of money to find out if you sign up to commercialised pseudo-mystical claptrap like THE SECRET. It’s what they call ‘The Law of Attraction’.)
2) You are in charge of your own destiny. When my kids were quite small, I would say ‘You are the Captain of your own ship’. In other words, we should take responsibility for our lives – if something isn’t working, we should change it. This autonomy involves taking risks and inevitably, making mistakes. However it is well documented that this belief is a defining characteristic of contented and successful people across many spheres and disciplines.
3) Have Faith. At first this seems to contradict 2 above, but for me it’s the flip side of the same coin. We have free will, but ultimately there is a huge natural force behind everything. I find this incredibly comforting, because in the best possible way, nothing matters very much. Chill out. Nature / the Universe / God – call it what you will, has her arms around us. Some people reinforce their faith in churches, mosques or synagogues; for me it happens in natural places - the wilder the better.
4) Listen to your inner Wisdom. I believe that we are born with a ‘moral barometer’. Instinctively we know what is right or wrong in every situation. Following that voice leads to integrity and dignity. The answer is within us but sometimes our brain gets in the way.
5) Be happy. A sense of humour is the most underrated form of intelligence. Never mind IQ, how’s your HQ? Have you noticed that dictators and extremists all suffer from a major humour defecit?
In summary, as Bob Marley used to say: don’t worry bout a ting cos every little ting gonna be alright .
(cartoon stolen from my pal, Arf Robins without permission)
A couple of weeks ago, I posted an entry entitled DELL HELL in which I griped bitterly about the shoddy customer services at Dell Computers following delivery of a faulty laptop. I complained that I had ‘been sent spiralling into the bottomless depths that are DELL HELL.’
I whinged that I had ‘wasted 132,629,254,389, 637,837,707,786,767,6.4 hours of my life sending emails and making calls.’ And that ‘I was forced to listen to so many hours of recorded music that I had permanently damaged my neurological hard drive.’
‘Dear Mr Dell,’ I carped, ‘all I want is a replacement or a refund. Why have you made it impossible to speak to anybody except extremely polite young people in India, (Dellhi perhaps) who are not authorised to do anything except apologise profusely on your behalf?’
I ended my bleat by condemning that corporation with these cruel words: ‘effectively Dell take your money, then hide behind an insurmountable force field. What a shameful way for a company to behave!’
Well, dear Blogbuddies, sometimes life is full of magic. Just when your humble children’s author thought his despair could be no greater, I heard the friendly PING! PING! of my telephone.
Within five hours of posting my rant, I found myself soothed by the dulcet Dublin tones of an incredibly helpful gentleman named John Lundberg; ‘a senior member of Dell’s EMEA Executive Escalation Team’ he told me modestly. John had read my blog and, with genuine concern he was offering to sort the situation out immediately.
Faster than a speeding gigabyte, he sent me a spanking new Inspiron 1720 with extra software and a more powerful battery than the one I had originally ordered - a superior machine in every way. So there we are, dear readers, the power of the web, eh!
I ended my (now deleted) post about Dell by urging readers NEVER EVER to buy Dell computers…
…BUT “would Laurence recommend Dell now?” I hear you cry.
Well Dell do make swell computers. In my experience (and I have owned many) they are reliable and good value for money. HOWEVER, I stand by what I said about their customer services. The whole system needs to be rebooted. It is full of error codes. If one thing is calculated to drive a customer barmy it is the inability to communicate their frustration.
Come on chaps, customers should not have to resort to desperate measures like posting seething blogs before they receive attention.
There is a fellow in America named Jeff Jarvis who seems to have dedicated his life to battling with Dell. This may be rather sad. I think it’s important to speak up against bad practice, but it’s also important to acknowledge when people try to set things right and move on. Thank you, Mr Lundberg.
In the meantime, after a brief vacation in Dell Hell, I return to my normal routine - tapping out my humble blog and (rather heavenly) children’s stories on my faithful Dingly Dell…they’re really swell you know!
PS. Incidentally, it’s great to know that people actually read this blog. I wonder if the people at Dell know that they can buy SIGNED copies of my books here www.anholt.co.uk ?
PPS or they can make a telephone order on: 01297 442233 (our call centre is in Lyme Regis, England)
PPPS Or send an email: info@anholt.co.uk (our Customer Support team is drooling with anticipation)
Society of Authors Children’s Writers’ Conference
at Robinson College, Cambridge
Friday 29th August - Sunday 31st August 2008
After Dinner Speaker: Laurence Anholt
Other speakers at the 2008 conference will include: David Almond, Anthony Browne, Julia Eccleshare, Nicolette Jones, Graham Marks, William Nicholson and the Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen.
We will hold debates on the perils of reviewing; a frank look at the current state of the book market; the interaction between children’s publishing and other art forms (e.g. Hollywood).
Workshops will include: how to cope with school visits, taboos, finance, from picture book to cartoon film, how to establish yourself as a poet, the view from a young illustrator, a literary agent, pop-ups, innovative non-fiction, and much more.
Outings: punting, real tennis, croquet, and visits to college gardens, Kettles Yard, the Fitzwilliam Museum and Lucy Boston’s house. An on-site Heffers bookshop will stock delegates’ and speakers’ books. Exhibitions will feature various publishers as well as MA students in Children’s Book Illustration at Angela Ruskin, Cambridge School of Art.
Venue: Robinson College, Cambridge is a modern college set near centre of Cambridge - a ten minute stroll along a footpath takes one directly to King’s College. Robinson opened in 1981, built to a high architectural standard with specially commissioned John Piper windows magnificently displayed in the chapel. The wide lawns, small lake, informal woodland, mature trees and borders combine to blend old and new in a peaceful setting.
The standard of catering is excellent. All accommodation is en-suite and comfortable with the lecture theatre, dining hall, exhibition area and bedrooms all within the same central space.
Bookings
Details from: CWIG Conference 08, The Society of Authors, 84 Drayton Gardens, London, SW10 9SB together with payment details.
Download a PDF brochure: http://www.societyofauthors.org/downloads/public/subsidiary_groups/childrens-writers/cwig2008-form
Queries to Enid Stephenson by email at enid.stephenson@gmail.com
Or call the Society of Authors Office: 020 7373 6642.
Full details here: http://www.societyofauthors.org
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