Is the Poet Laureate job an anachronistic elephant?

Should the job of court poet go?

Popular poet Wendy Cope, known for her dry wit and keen ironic eye, and the favorite for taking up the cap when current British Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion (pictured, looking pensive), steps down this year, definitely thinks so.


Writing in the Royal Society of Literature Review, Cope has called for the position to be abolished, saying that there are too many expectations attached to the job.

After ten years of virtually writing to order, Morton agrees. Last year, he said that the job of writing verse for the Royal Family -- such as verse for the Queen's diamond wedding anniversary, and Prince William's 21st -- was "thankless" and a source of writer's block. As Wendy Cope pointed out, Morton has done a good job by dint of hard work and managing not to make a fool of himself. He has also used his prestige to found the online Poetry Archive. However, a poet should be a free soul who writes whatever poetry comes to mind at the time.

The Poet Laureate's job was first introduced in 1668 -- as an alternative for the unenviable post of Court Jester? Because it sounds an awful lot like it.

Dr Who wins Shakespeare Award

What? What, what? Gor Blimey, but Dr Who has saved the World again.

David Tennant's depiction of Hamlet has earned him a best Shakespearean performance trophy at the Critics' Circle Theatre Awards.

And that was despite injuring his back. He took up the role at Stratford-on-Avon but missed most of the London shows due to the problem.

He shares the award with Derek Jacobi as Malvolio in Twelfth Night.

Critics said it was a particularly strong year for Shakespearean performances. Well, the Force was with them.

Top editor fired

Tidings from the US publishing industry becomes more dire by the moment.

Breaking news from the Los Angeles Times book blog is that Sara Nelson, editor in chief of Publishers Weekly, the main trade magazine of the book industry, was laid off this morning. She is the latest victim of restructuring, in this case of the owners of Publishers Weekly, Reed Business Information Services, which is laying off 7% of its staff.

Pundits agree that this is a bizarre decision, because Sara Nelson, 52, has worked hard and forcefully to become a major advocate for books.

Could it herald an even stranger future? Could Reed possibly be thinking of combining PW with the other two publishers' and editors' bibles, Library Journal and School Library Journal? Brian Kenney, editor in chief of School Library Journal, will now be editorial director of all three.

The future of the book

TIME Magazine has published a marvellously upbeat vision of the publishing industry, present and future. Considering the awful state of the present -- meticulously detailed near the start of the story - the future, through the eyes of the writer, Lev Grossman, looks exciting, innovative, and maybe even profitable.

"What will publishing look like?" he asks. Certainly not dead -- "A lot of headlines and blogs to the contrary, publishing isn't dying. But it is evolving, and so radically that we may hardly recognize it when it's done. Literature interprets the world, but it's also shaped by that world, and we're living through one of the greatest economic and technological transformations since--well, since the early 18th century. The novel won't stay the same: it has always been exquisitely sensitive to newness, hence the name. It's about to renew itself again, into something cheaper, wilder, trashier, more democratic and more deliriously fertile than ever...."

What has triggered the change? Electronic publishing, plus the new respectability of self-production of books, what until very recently used to be called "vanity publishing." While the novel is becoming divorced from the dollar, with so many people publishing off- and online at their own expense, there is still a lot of money to be made. Recently there has been a spate of self-published books (think The Shack and The Lace Reader) that have been snapped up by regular publishing houses for huge sums.

And the books themselves are evolving - rapidly. "Novels will get longer," he says. "Electronic books aren't bound by physical constraints--and they'll be patchable and updatable, like software. We'll see more novels doled out episodically, on the model of TV series or, for that matter, the serial novels of the 19th century."

So, are there New Age Dickenses and Austens waiting in the wings? Grossman certainly thinks so.

The Inauguration Bible

When Barack Obama makes history, he will be using the same Bible that Abraham Lincoln used on March 4, 1861.

It was not the family Bible, because the Lincoln family possessions were still packed up and en route to Washington from Illinois, but one that was specially purchased on the eve of the inauguration by the Clerk of the Supreme Court.

And it wasn't even new, having been published by the Oxford University Press in 1853.

A handsome volume, it is bound in burgundy velvet and edged heavily in gilt. The two covers are both protected on three sides by a narrow metal edge, which accounts for what is described as its "tolerably good condition" now. Held at the Library of Congress, it even has provenance -- a handwritten testimonial by the Clerk who bought it.

Keyboard or Quill?

The Washington Post features a charming study by Joseph J. Ellis (Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Founding Fathers, the Revolutionary Generation, pictured). It is called The Writing Life, and sub-titled "Why the pen is mightier than the laptop."


I know several authors who swear by the pen. They write their manuscripts in longhand, and Mr. Ellis, it seems, is of the same mind. People, he says, call him old-fashioned, even anachronistic, and strongly recommend that he dump his beloved pens in favor of a laptop.


The spirit is willing, or so he says, but habit prevails. It begins with taking notes in writing as he goes through his research material -- something which no research assistant can do, as there is not a research assistant alive who can pick out the little gems from the mass of manuscript -- the little golden nuggets that are going to breathe vigor into the final book.



That is usual enough. I know from my own experience that there are not many people a historian can trust to find exactly the apt little tidbits needed. But Joseph Ellis then settles down to write the first draft of his manuscript by hand.


The "symmetry between the muscular movement of my hand and the flow of ideas in my head," he says, would be "destroyed by a keyboard," which, poetically he adds, "becomes an alien intruder in the dialogue within myself."


H'm. Does he finish up with scratched-out scribbles, pages torn and pasted in a different order? He doesn't say, but that would be the inevitable state of anything I tried to write by hand. And I would be forced to use a pencil. With an eraser on the end.

So I have to confess it: from the very first word of the very first draft, I am wedded to the computer. The keyboard functions as a smooth conduit between what passes as my brain and the unfolding story, and more often than not as I consult my own research notes my awkward writing baffles me and makes me angry. I abbreviate at whim, and half the time I can't decipher the result. I know without a shade of doubt that if I tried to write the draft, everything would be in the wrong order, and I wouldn't be able to cut and paste to set things right and make the damn thing flow. The keyboard is so much easier.


But then, I was taught to type properly, at the right age, which I believe is a huge advantage. I can touch type, which I notice very few people can do. It always amazes me that in this computer-driven age children and teenagers are not taught to type. Surely it should be a skill as basic as learning to write by hand?

The privateer barons of old New York

Defying Empire: Trading with the Enemy in Colonial New York uncovers the story of New York City merchants engaged in a forbidden trade with the enemy before and during the Seven Years' War (also known as the French and Indian War).

Ignoring British prohibitions designed to end North America's wartime trade with the French, New York's merchant elite conducted a thriving business in the French West Indies, insisting that their behavior was protected by long practice and British commercial law. But the government in London viewed it as treachery, and its subsequent efforts to discipline North American commerce inflamed the colonists.

Through fast-moving events and unforgettable characters, historian Thomas M. Truxes brings eighteenth-century New York and the Atlantic world to life. There are spies, street riots, exotic settings, informers, courtroom dramas, interdictions on the high seas, ruthless businessmen, political intrigues, and more.

The author traces each phase of the city's trade with the enemy and details the frustrations that affected both British officials and independent-minded New Yorkers. The first book to focus on New York City during the Seven Years' War, Defying Empire reveals the important role the city played in hastening the colonies' march toward revolution.

American Indians discovered Europe first?

Raising controversy already is Jack D. Forbes's The American Discovery of Europe, which speculates about Native American crossings of the Atlantic before the time of the great European discovery of the Americas: in effect, he says that Native Americans toured Europe before the time of Columbus.

The aboriginals of the Caribbean, it seems, were the Polynesians of America. Sophisticated boat-builders and mariners, they had the benefit of favorable winds and currents.

In the Middle Ages, there were rumors of "redmen" in Portugal.

Columbus himself noted Indian-like men in canoes off the German coast in 1410.

Inuit harpoon heads have been found in Ireland and Scotland.

Forbes is the professor emeritus of Native American studies and anthropology at University of California at Davis, so knows how to juggle terminology and logic convincingly. Whether he succeeds is debateable. That harpoon head business reminds me of my reaction when I was phoned by a radio station for comment, after the skull of a European woman who, according to carbon dating, had been killed sometime in the mid- to late-1700s, was discovered north of Wellington. Did this mean that women traveled on American whaleships to New Zealand before 1800? Nope, said I. The skull had been carried here by some Victorian traveler, or maybe even by a theatrical troupe with Hamlet on their playlist, and then had been lost or dumped.

So who knows when those harpoon heads arrived in Ireland and Scotland? Or can prove that they were carried there by Inuit travelers?

For a precisely argued review by Mark Meuwese of The American Discovery of Europe, read on.

Rumpole's creator Mortimer dies

Dramatist and author Sir John Mortimer, who created enduring character Rumpole of the Bailey, has died aged 85 after a long illness.

Sir John, who began working as a barrister in the 1940s, went on to becomeone of the most prolific writers of books and screenplays.

He first radio play was broadcast in 1957, and later wrote a TV adaptation of one of my favorite books in all the world, Laurie Lee's Cider With Rosie.

Sir John, whose daughter is actress Emily Mortimer, was knighted in 1998.

Story from BBC NEWS

Those romantic shortlisters

A comment left on my post about the shortlist for the Romantic Novel of the year made me realize that the nominees were not done equal justice. So here are all the fine writers, in a medley that covers a surprising amount of the globe:

First, Judith Lennox, whose nomination is her third, and whose enthusiastic fan I thank for the comment. Her book, Before the Storm, reveals what may be dark secrets in an apparently perfect husband's past. Judith lives in Cambridgeshire.

Susanna Kearsley is Canadian, but her time-slip book, Sophie's Secret, is set in Scotland. (Can she be following in the footsteps of mega-bestseller Diana Gabaldon?)

Lesley Downer's book has been described as "Gone With the Wind set in Japan." The author has an intriguing background, being half-Chinese with a passion for Japan, and has written a well-received travel book. The Last Concubine sounds even more intriguing, being the story of a shogun, a princess, and three thousand women, overtaken by civil war. (So my fears about another Jewel of Medina are laid to rest.) She lives in London.

Julia Gregson follows three women as they go to India for a wedding. (Which sounds as if it will make a splendid movie.)

Linda Gillard is nominated for her lyrical story of a blind woman and the stranger who arrives on her doorstep. Linda lives in Glasgow.

Cecelia Ahern, whose hero is American, comes, naturellement, from Ireland.

Have I left anyone out?