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Literature professor Simon John James and physicist Richard Bower were both involved in the curating the exhibition, Time Machines – the past, the future, and how stories take us there. Their conversations quickly revealed to them the many, wildly various, meanings of “time travel”. Here, they discuss how time travelling in literary and scientific terms might, one day, coincide.
July 4, 2017
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Despite the growing technological panic at the cusp of the twenty-first century, my parents only owned one CD player. It was too big to move from the sitting room, so the audiobook was bought for me as six cassette tapes to listen to in my bedroom. At nine years old, I had already amassed an impressive collection of audiobooks on cassette - I've always struggled to fall asleep and need to be tricked into unconsciousness by distraction from overthinking and worrying. I had Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox and The Giraffe, The Pelly and Me memorised, and had been forced to give up my Thomas the Tank Engine cassette to my sister, who was, in fairness, deserving; she's younger than me and suffers from the same problem sleeping.
June 26, 2017
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It sounds like a cliché, but I've always loved to read. My journey into personhood was guided less by those around me and more by the worlds I inhabited and the people I met on my fictional travels. I wanted to be Matilda for ages. I genuinely thought that if I read more books my brain would become so advanced I’d be able to close my curtains without leaving my bed.
June 23, 2017
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It’s the final day of our book recommendations, and we’ve saved the best for last with six sensational stories to listen to! From crime to dystopian speculative fiction to humour, whatever you’re looking for, we’ve got an audiobook for you.
June 22, 2017
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There is a strange and troubled kind of intimacy between our own moment of climate change and 19th century Britain. It was there that a global, fossil fuel economy first took shape, through its coal-powered factories, railways, and steamships, which drove the emergence of modern consumer capitalism.
May 30, 2017
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When dealing with the otherness of disability, the Victorians in their shame built huge out-of-sight asylums, and their legacy of “them” and “us” continues to this day. Two hundred years later, technologies offer us an alternative view. The digital age is shattering barriers, and what used to the norm is now being challenged.
May 22, 2017
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161 years ago today L. Frank Baum, best known as the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, was born. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was the best-selling children’s book for two years after its initial publication in 1900. But it was just one of the 55 novels, four ‘lost works’, 83 stories and 200 poems that Baum wrote. So for his birthday, we thought we delve a little into the varied and fascinating life of Lyman Frank Baum.
May 15, 2017
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May is Local and Community History Month - a great time to find out a little more about how your village, town or city grew up into what it is today. The more you dig, the more you'll find that people, events and buildings all have fascinating pasts.
May 8, 2017
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It started when an American academic noticed how frequently the acknowledgements sections of weighty academic tomes featured a male author thanking his nameless wife for typing.
May 2, 2017
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By the estimation of award-winning author Donal Ryan, there are times when 300 sales might be enough to make a chart topper – the bestseller mantle tends to have more promotional than monetary value. Of course there are the literary blockbusters — titles like Harry Potter and The Da Vinci Code — books that ship hundreds of millions of copies. But combine the sales of JK Rowling and Dan Brown, even throw in John Grisham, and you’re still lagging behind the sales figures of the world’s true bestselling author — James Patterson.
April 18, 2017
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