The Book Was Better?
March 3, 2016
Leaving campus yesterday, I passed a student whose T-shirt stated uncompromisingly THE BOOK WAS BETTER. Sound stuff, and words to live one’s professional, personal and emotional lives by. And it started me wondering about films and adaptations which cunningly got around this problem by going a bit sideways. Refusing to just reproduce the original, these …
The walking dead of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
February 17, 2016
Last week I watched Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and came away with a rather warm feeling in my offal. Released in time for Valentine’s day, this movie has a great deal of cerebral appeal, a lot of heart, and some period ladies venting spleen to serious (tongue through cheek) comedic effect. The film is based …
Iphigenia in Westeros: Greek Tragedy Meets Game of Thrones
February 5, 2016
When HBO Game of Thrones Season 5 Episode 9, ‘Dance of Dragons’, first aired, in June 2015, viewers with an interest in Greek myth recognised the harrowing scene of the death of Shireen Baratheon as a re-telling of the story of Greek princess Iphigenia. In texts featuring the stories surrounding the Trojan War, and most …
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
February 1, 2016
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies sounds like an incongruous title. Up there with Apocalypse Snuggle, perhaps. Or Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Doilies. But on second thoughts, the combination of Austen and zombies might make more sense. Austen is, in some senses, a zombie author. She’s been reprinted, adapted, filmed, franchised, merchandised and monetised in …
Sadness sells? Death and the Young Adult Protagonist
January 14, 2016
An epic poem in Latin, about the foundation of Rome. A narrator and a protagonist, both young women. From bereavement at the beginning to a climactic death. All in all, Caroline Lawrence’s Queen of the Silver Arrow is a striking and unusual piece of children’s literature. It tells the story of the warrior princess Camilla, …
Science fiction vs. science fact
November 11, 2015
Dr Catrin Rutland from our School of Veterinary Medicine and Science introduces the lecture she’ll be giving this week as part of the Popular Culture series. In the 1950’s a new science was born, yet scientists and the literature had long been fascinated with what we now call ‘Genetics’. Long before the term genetics existed, writers …
Nina Allan on clocks, watches and time travel
October 19, 2015
British Science-fiction author Nina Allan explains the inspiration behind her award-winning collection of short stories, ‘The Silver Wind’. ‘The Silver Wind’ consists of six interlinked stories. All are on the theme of time travel, or travelling through time. Although each of these separate ‘chapters’ can be read as a standalone story, I have always thought …
